Teacher Comments: The range of writing required of professionals in mechanical engineering

Dave Alciatore, Mechanical Engineering: There are many other types of writing that occur in industry that we don't do [in our curriculum]. Proposals, feasibility studies (part of proposing a project)--convincing your managers that it's going to make money and that it's feasible and we have the resources to accomplish this project, that's all part of the proposal. Constant progress reports in industry--they're often called design reviews with a concise executive summary of the progress to date; you give a presentation to peers company-wide because they want to review and make sure you're on track and give you constructive feedback. So a lot of design reviews, all the engineers I know working in industry right now are doing lots of design reviews. . . .

Another one is lots of technical memos in industry and we really don't do too much of that. A lot of engineers write specifications. These are like calls for proposals. They need to have a job done and they're not going to do it in-house. They have to write a full specification of what has to be done, send it out for bid to other companies and other groups. Those are design specifications.

There's also maintenance specifications and operational specifications where they have to describe how a certain facility is going to be maintained and how the staff working around there should do their job. . . . Related to that is procedures and that's usually in a specifications document, lengthy maintenance procedures. . . .