Engineering Systems Optimisation

Design and process optimization is inherent to Construction Manager's and Engineers' reasoning and decisions taking, for instance, when maximizing effectiveness, minimizing risks, optimizing life circles, etc. Whereas the goal is usually clear, how to achieve such a goal is not so obvious. In fact, the currently common sequential design process for engineering systems is likely to lead to suboptimal solutions. Moreover, decision-makers very often have to navigate between several competing optimization goals at the same time they guarantee the fulfilment of current regulations, e.g., minimizing construction costs and time within a challenging environmental framework.

The Engineering Systems Optimization (ESO) course will provide future designers and managers of engineering systems with the knowledge and tools required in their professional development to support a quantitative, model-based, and multi-criteria decision-making process. This oriented-to-practice course has been designed to guarantee students can give solutions to the real problems that will face during their professional life.

Some of the topics presented in the ESO course are:

• Unconstraint optimization

• Linear and quadratic programming

• Mix-integer linear programming

• Non-linear programming

• Multi-objective optimization and Pareto optimality

• (Meta)heuristics

This course is designed to build students' knowledge and skills through a continuous learning process. To guarantee an adequate learning process, a formative assessment is introduced within this course. Formative assessment implies that the student will receive regular formal feedback from the teachers, although they won't be graded. Therefore, the students will have to upload four deliverables related to the different topics discussed in the sessions. They will receive the teacher's feedback before the next practical session. The students will only be able to submit their final project if 3 out of 4 deliverables have a positive pass.

The course evaluation will be based on a Final Project. In this Final Project, the student will answer the optimization problem related to the chosen Case Study. The student should demonstrate the learning and development achievements, by explaining the process, decisions, and strategies adopted based on the concepts learned during the course.

For more information on grading, see article 14 in the Rules and Guidelines (RGBE): https://www.tudelft.nl/en/student/faculties/ceg-student-portal/education/education-information/educational-rules-and-regulations

Permitted Materials during Exam

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