This course centres on Systems Thinking, integrating Engineering knowledge with important theories, practices, and frameworks from economics, environment, social responsibility, sustainability, and governance. Building upon other ENGGEN courses, it introduces key concepts important to merge Engineering knowledge and skills with other disciplines to solve complex problems, create value, and improve society. Using case studies, individual assessments, and group projects, ENGGEN 403 applies engineering discipline knowledge and learnings from the course prerequisites to consider, understand, and develop complex solutions, improvements, interventions, and innovations to large-scale systems-level challenges, with a particular focus on the problems of sufficient scale to attract government attention. Building upon Innovation principles developed in ENGGEN 303, students work with key systems concepts such as GDP, productivity, cost-benefit analyses, causal loops, leverage points, the New Zealand Living Standards framework, and machinery of government, applying these to major group projects tackling complex problems.
ENGGEN 403 helps to equip students with the complementary knowledge and skills important to apply Engineering computational, foundational and problem-solving approaches to prepare them for the workplace, government, and decision-making roles and responsibilities. The course meets the criteria set forth by Engineering NZ and the International Engineering Alliance, qualifying graduates to tackle major projects across the globe. Further, it delivers important attributes necessary to prepare graduates to take on key roles in contemporary firms and organisations, offering the platform for students to develop as innovators, managers, policymakers, and leaders.
Building upon collaboration and communication foundations, the course integrates success mindsets, management tools, operations research, and organisational theory in practical and applied contexts to support students' ability to identify and understand large-scale wicked problems. Working at systems scale, students identify multifaceted root causes to wicked problems, consider a complex range of stakeholders, analyse alternatives, synthesise solutions, measure impact, and make comprehensive multidimensional recommendations seeking to address these challenges.
The course culminates in Systems Week - a focused week-long intensive team project in which students are given a major real world problem to research, analyse, synthesise, and develop appropriate recommendations. Systems Week teams offer the opportunity for interdisciplinary collaboration, providing a capstone experience that builds resilience, integrating learnings from across Engineering degree programmes, discipline knowledge, Part IV research skills and industry internships.