The engineer's log book
Your final project may be the first time you need to use an engineer’s log book, however it won’t be the last. So with that in mind, now is the time to master using it correctly.
You’ll come to find that the role of the log book is more important that you originally thought, as it plays an integral role in documenting your project.
One of the main ways that engineers communicate when working on a project is by careful record keeping. Good documentation is key to a successful project, and so the log book is an essential communication tool during the design and development process.
The log book serves as a tool for passing on all of your information from sketches, and design concepts to tests and schematics to all other team members. But they can also be important legal documents in certain cases, documenting your work at every stage, and proving that you were indeed the inventor if ever questioned.
In a nutshell, the engineer’s logbook is a work diary and a legal document; a place to report all your project work. It is intended to serve as a record of new ideas, research and development with its primary purpose being to serve as evidence of inventorship; including establishing the date of invention.
In order for this purpose to be possible, you must stick to a specific outline:
- Ideas, calculations, experiments, tests etc, which may have bearing on developments should all – and always - be entered into the log book
- Entries should include problems worked on, possible and actually solutions plus calculations and tests made
- The log book should be a bound book, loose leaf is not allowed
- Do not leave pages blank, and do not tear any pages out
- Photos, drawings, graphs etc should be used liberally. They must be dated and signed by your project advisor and attached to the log book using glue or staples etc.
- If a change is made, draw a line through the original entry and clearly indicate what the change is and why it was made. Initial and date it, however where possible, try to make a new entry rather than change an older one.
The most important rule to remember is this: when it comes to what you must record; simply record everything. Meetings, research, testing, writing, failures successes – the whole shebang.
In the working world, you will find that most engineers working on a project will keep a log book and once the work is completed, all the log books are collected, and placed in an archive, remaining the property of the company. This means the company has documentation of all engineering achievements that took place during the project – whether it leads to commercial use or not – also serving as a valuable legal document if the work if ever questioned on one way or another. So welcome to the world of the log book, it is likely to be with you for the rest of your career.
Log Books and Final Projects
Although you need to discuss with your tutors exactly what they expect from your log book when working on your final degree project, there are often similar guidelines from university to university. Below is some advice from the IET, but confirm with your tutors that this is what they expect from you and your documentation.
For starters, if working on a team project, each student must keep their own log book detailing the evolution of the project. Tutors should review the log book at regular intervals, signing the book to confirm that they have seen it.
Be aware that your tutors can request to look at your log book without any notice, so make sure you write the work you’ve undertaken on a daily basis. One handy hint; when you are first given your log book, start on page 5, as you can then use pages 1-4 as your index.
Use the log book as a design tool; enter everything in there, no matter how irrelevant you might think it is. Every day, put time aside to write up what you’ve done, detailing all your ideas, and keep a record of your successes and failures.
Keeping a detailed log book is one of the marks of a professional engineer, and your university experience will put you in good standing when it comes to approaching project documentation in your future career…
With thanks to:
Hugh Griffiths and Nina Thornhill. UCL
Iowa State University
