Proposal

Introduction:

The participants of this project are Grisel Peña, Susan Ugoji, and Jennifer Borwey. Jennifer’s father, a senior safety engineer, recommended Mr. Coaker as a source for this technical writing assignment. Jim Coaker, a professional engineer, is the Senior Vice President of Codes and Standards for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He was able to provide the opportunity to write an article for Elevator World magazine.

Problem/Needs Statement:

Safety Code for elevators has been constant for over 80 years. Jim Coaker supports a new developing standard for safety involving new products in the elevator industry. These new developments do no currently have a code book, so the new products are not accepted yet by most companies in the industry. A code book is being created for the new designs.

Jim Coaker wrote an article for Elevator World magazine explaining new technology and benefits of this technology. This new machinery has been criticized and has incurred misconceptions in a later article, written by attorney Marvin A Jacobs. The significance of this dilemma stems from why it is beneficial. The new products occupy less space, use less energy, and are light in weight, thus they are cost efficient.

Objectives:

We are going to write an article to further explain the new technology and its advantages. One group will update the audience, which will primarily consist of people in the elevator industry, regarding the status of the proposed design and the direction it is headed. In this article we will politely correct the misconceptions of the previously mentioned attorney, while addressing his legitimate concerns and instilling confidence in the end product.

Plan:

All of our group members will be required to know background information and to analyze researched documents. We will work closely to produce an informative yet persuasive article. Every Friday will be our designated meeting day to discuss and compose our project. We will being researching individually the basics of this new design during the first couple of weeks. We will then divide the work to create a first draft of the document.

Date	Grisel	Susan	Jennifer
10/20/04	Research	Research	Research
10/27/04	Research	Research	Research
11/03/04	Progress report Begin composing article	Progress report Begin composing article	Progress report Begin composing article
11/10/04	Work on PowerPoint pres.	Work on PowerPoint pres.	Work on PowerPoint pres.
11/17/04	Revise article	Revise article	Revise article
12/01/04	PowerPoint slide presentation	PowerPoint slide presentation	PowerPoint slide presentation
12/08/04	PowerPoint slide presentation	PowerPoint slide presentation	PowerPoint slide presentation
12/13/04	Turn in project	Turn in project	Turn in project

Evaluation:

Currently we know only the basics in the elevator field, but we will have a firm grasp of the new technology and benefits, as well as the basics of language, codes and safety requirements. We have started researching and through this article aim to provide information and a persuasive argument for the new design. The end product of efforts will show if we were effective in our goals.

Personnel and Qualifications:

Jennifer is an English major with a concentration I nonfiction writing and editing. She has done mainly analytical writing in her college career and has worked on numerous research projects. Because a lot of research is required for this article, this background will be beneficial to the overall project. Grisel has a psychology major in which writing and understanding of distinct journal articles is necessary. She has also met the general requirements in English for her major. Susan is also a n English major with a concentration I nonfiction writing and editing. She is an administrative assistant with e engineering department in the Fairfax County Government and is quite familiar with general engineering terms.