Explore UCD

UCD Home >

MEEN30140

Academic Year 2024/2025

Professional Engineering (Finance) (MEEN30140)

Subject:
Mechanical Engineering
College:
Engineering & Architecture
School:
Mechanical & Materials Eng
Level:
3 (Degree)
Credits:
5
Module Coordinator:
Dr Pezhman Ghadimi
Trimester:
Spring
Mode of Delivery:
On Campus
Internship Module:
No
How will I be graded?
Letter grades

Curricular information is subject to change.

This Accounting and Finance Module may appear to some to be outside the typical scope of study normally attributed to Engineering, but Engineers, like many professionals, either undertake or are responsible for a wide range of business activities which ultimately affect the economic performance of the organisation. And how is the economic performance of an organisation managed? By measuring (“If you’re not Measuring – you’re not Managing”).

Measuring economic performance in a business context invariably introduces money-values. And this leads one into the field of accounting for costs and revenues. Engineers must therefore be familiar with the concepts, not just of financial accounting itself, but more importantly, in the analysis of accounts, the assessment of the cost-benefit of projects, costing, budgeting, and similar measuring techniques which will impact on the work of Engineers during their careers.

While this module has the objective of providing Engineers with the basic accounting and financial management skills required to meet the foregoing needs, it is not intended as a foundation accounting course, and hence avoids where possible the technical intricacies of ‘double-entry’ book-keeping. It focuses rather on the ‘bigger picture’ of understanding the underlying features of compiling and analysing financial statements, and developing good quality financial information needed for effective decision-making.


The text for this course is:
“Accounting for Non-Accounting Students” (8th. Edition) by John R. Dyson (Prentice Hall).

The indicative content of the module is as follows:

Introduction:
• Financial Reporting Statements in an Engineering context
• Business Types & Legal Frameworks
• Rules / Code-of-Practice and International Standards in Accounting
• Introduction to the basic Financial Statements

Basic Accounts 1:
• Accruals
• Prepayments
• Depreciation
• Taxation
• Revenue Expenditure
• Capital Expenditure
• The ‘dual’ concept – Debits / Credits (Book-keeping)

Basic Accounts 2:
• Profit & Loss Account
• Balance Sheet

Managing Liquidity:
• Profit – v – Cash
• Working Capital
• Controlling Stocks and Debtors
• Cash budgets

Interpretation of Accounts:
• Ratio Analyses
• Performance measurement
• Financial management

Costing and Pricing:
• Types of costs
• Break-even point
• Product Costing: Absorption costing / Activity Based Costing (ABC)
• Pricing tactics

Contribution and Pricing Decisions:
• What is ‘Contribution’?
• Contribution and Break-even analysis
• Contribution’s role in pricing decisions

Engineering Economic Analysis:
(Using financial data for decision-making in an Engineering Environment)
• Make or Buy decisions
• Accept / reject one-off order
• Returns to a limiting factor
• Transfer pricing
• Product withdrawal

Project Accounting:
• Understanding complexities of Financial Management of Projects
• Estimating cost of Projects
• Concept of Earned Value
• Progress Claims
• Impact on cash-flow

Project Investment Appraisal (Capital Budgeting):
• Simple Payback method
• ‘Time Value’ of money
• Discounted cash Flows (NPV + IRR)

Budgeting and Management Accounting:
• Why Budget?
• The Budgeting process
• Standards / ‘Standard Costing’
• Variance analyses
• Financial control

About this Module

Learning Outcomes:

1. Recognise different types of accounting/financial statements, including income and expenditure, profit and loss account, balance sheet.
2. Demonstrate approaches to calculating full product costs, including absorption costing and activity based costing.
3. Compute Break Even Point (BEP), Payback, Internal Rate of Return (IRR), Net Present Value (NPV).
4. Evaluate the progress of an engineering project using the earned value analysis approach.
5. Employ financial ratios to interpret the financial status of a public company through a preliminary analysis of published company accounts.

Student Effort Hours:
Student Effort Type Hours
Specified Learning Activities

12

Autonomous Student Learning

70

Lectures

24

Total

106


Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
This module utilized some of the key teaching and learning approaches used in higher education such as:

(1) Active/task-based learning; which is an approach where the planning of learning materials and teaching sessions are based around doing a task.

(2) Lectures: face-to-face and online presentations and discussions with module lecturer.

(3) lab and tutorials: various types of related problems will be covered during these sessions.

Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.


Module Requisites and Incompatibles
Equivalents:
Professional Eng. (Finance) (EEME30040)


 

Assessment Strategy
Description Timing Component Scale Must Pass Component % of Final Grade In Module Component Repeat Offered
Exam (Open Book): In-semester class test #1 (online quiz) Week 6 Standard conversion grade scale 40% No
35
No
Exam (Open Book): In-semester class test #2 (online quiz) Week 12 Standard conversion grade scale 40% No
35
No
Group Work Assignment: A group project assignment, which will commence in week 7. Week 12 Standard conversion grade scale 40% No
30
No

Carry forward of passed components
Yes
 

Resit In Terminal Exam
Autumn Yes - 2 Hour
Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 

Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment
• Online automated feedback

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Not yet recorded.

Accounting for Non-Accounting Students” (8th. Edition) by John R. Dyson (Prentice Hall).
Management Accounting for Business, 10th Edition, by Colin Drury, ISBN – 9781473749115.

Name Role
Daniel Watkins Lecturer / Co-Lecturer

Timetabling information is displayed only for guidance purposes, relates to the current Academic Year only and is subject to change.
Spring Lecture Offering 1 Week(s) - 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33 Wed 16:00 - 17:50