Over the past several years, there has been increasing awareness of the impact that engineering works may have on people and the environment. Such pro-jects may cause families and businesses to be relocated and subject citizens to noise and water and air pollution. Many of these impacts cannot be simply
n 40 years
$924,000
$94,500 per year
reduced to a dollar amount. Techniques are available, however, to help the engineer, to some extent at least, quantify such impacts. These techniques gen-erally involve ranking alternate projects on a scale based upon some predeter-mined criteria. The rankings may be made by a panel of experts or citizens or based on attitude surveys. This approach is illustrated by the following exam-ple, which was abstracted from Reference 9.
Suppose that a city considering a new mass transit system has established the following objectives for the system:
1. The system should provide economy.
2. There should be minimum disruption of individuals by relocation.
3. The system should provide a high level of comfort and convenience.
4. The central area should be highly accessible.
5. The system should be accessible to low-income areas.
The following criteria were selected to provide a measure of each objective:
1. Benefit-cost ratio.
2. Number of persons relocated.
3. Load factor on transit vehicles in peak hour.
4. Accessibility index of core areas.
5. Transit accessibility index to low-income traffic zones.
A panel of citizens and engineers then established the following ratios of rel-ative importance for these objectives: 40 percent, 20 percent, 20 percent, 10 percent, and 10 percent. They then evaluated these objectives for each of three alternate projects, with the following results:
Possible
Effectiveness Score for Score for Score for
Evaluation Matrix: Score Plan A Plan B Plan C
1. Benefit-cost ratio 40 35 25 30
2. Persons relocated 20 10 20 5
3. Transit load factor 20 10 15 3
4. Core accessibility 10 3 5 10
5. Low-income transit availability 10 2 10 8
Total effectiveness score 100 60 75 56
Plan B was selected as being the most responsive to the goal statements that the transportation plan was designed to achieve.
5.5 EVALUATION AND SELECTION OF PREFERRED SOLUTION
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5.6 PREPARATION OF REPORTS, PLANS, AND SPECIFICATIONS
After the preferred design has been selected, it must be communicated to those who must approve it, support it, and translate it into reality. This communica-tion may take the form of an engineering report or a set of plans and specifica-tions. Engineering reports are usually directed to a client or to a supervisor (e.g., if the engineer is employed by a large corporation). Plans and specifica-tions are the engineer’s means of describing to a manufacturing division or to a contractor sufficient detail about a design so that it can be produced or con-structed. This important phase of the design process is treated more fully in Chapter 6.5.7 IMPLEMENTATION OF THE DESIGN
It could be argued that once the plans, specifications, and engineering reports have been completed, the design process is finished. Actually, however, the final phase of the design process is implementation, the process of producing or constructing a physical device, product, or system. Engineers must plan and oversee the production of the devices or products and supervise the construc-tion of the engineered projects. Different engineers may, of course, be involved in this final phase. This is the culmination of the design process; to the design engineer, it is the most satisfying phase of all.
Patenting
It is not uncommon for the work of an engineer to be of such value that it should be protected from exploitation by others. This may be accomplished by patenting.
A patent for an invention grants a property right by the government to the inventor or his or her heirs. It excludes others from making, using, or selling the invention. In the United States, patents are administered by the Patent and Trademark Office, a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
The patent law classifies subject matter that can be patented as “any new or useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvements thereof” (10). This means that patents can be obtained for practically everything that is made by humans as well as the pro-cess for making them.
In order for an invention to be patentable it must be new as defined in the patent law. The law states that an invention cannot be patented if:
1. The invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication of this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent, or 2. The invention was patented or described in a printed publication in
this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country
more than one year prior to the application for patent in the United States. (10)
To apply for a patent, the inventor must submit an application which includes:
1. A specification, a clear, concise, and exact description of the invention presented in such manner as to distinguish it from other older inventions.
2. An oath or declaration made by the inventor asserting the belief that he or she is the original and first inventor of the subject matter of the application.
3. A filing fee. Reference 10 gives a schedule of fees, beginning with a basic fee of $630.
4. A drawing prepared to Patent Office specifications whenever the nature of the case requires such to understand the invention.
The Scientific and Technical Information Center of the Patent and Trade-mark Office in Arlington, Virginia has a Search Room where the public may search and examine U.S. patents granted since 1836. There, patents are arranged in over 400 classes and 120,000 subclasses. By searching these clas-sified patents, it is possible to determine, before actually filing an application, whether an invention has been anticipated by a U.S. patent.
Since a patent is not always granted when an application is filed, many inventors attempt to make their own search before applying for a patent. This may be done in the Search Room of the Patent and Trademark Office or at libraries located throughout the United States which have been designated as Patent Depository Libraries.
The preparation and processing of an application for patent is an undertak-ing requirundertak-ing the knowledge of patent law as well as knowledge of the scien-tific or technical matters involved in the particular invention. Most inventors, therefore, employ the services of registered patent attorneys or patent agents.
The Patent and Trademark Office maintains a register of attorneys and agents qualified to help inventors with the patenting process (10).