1.

0 Introduction
This entry will reflect on my experiences during week 7 and the Easter break of semester 1
(14.04.2014 - 28.04.2014). It will include aspects in regards to personal reflection, academic
reflection and Stage 1 competency development.

2.0 Progress to Date

Over the course of the past 2 weeks, our group successfully produced the first draft for our paper on
the limitations of existing wind codes in the design of tall buildings. I feel reasonably pleased with
our progress so far as I can sense that our team is putting in a lot of effort into this paper. Based on
our meeting with the supervisor, it was satisfying to hear that he was reasonably satisfied with what
we’ve written so far. Our supervisor put a lot of time into providing us very useful comments for our
paper and as a result of his efforts, I feel our whole team is motivated to do our best in response to
his comments. There is still a lot of work left to be done as our supervisor said we are only about
50% done at the moment, the main critique being lack of references used in our literature review. As
per our lectures, our supervisor enforced that the literature review should show deep understanding
as well as development of the topic over current years to show we have properly reviewed the
current literature. As per my experience so far, I find literature review one of the most difficult parts
as there is a lot of material to read and it is not only time consuming and difficult to read and analyse
each paper, but it is also time consuming to find relevant papers. Following advice of my supervisor, I
will use the references within a relevant paper to find more relevant papers for my future works.

Compiling this document for the first time, I realised the difficulty of compiling different writing
styles into a document to make it flow coherently. I believe this is one of the more difficult aspects
of having a report written by more than one person as everyone has their own style and opinion
about that topic. Our supervisor commented that our flow does not currently flow that well so that
is an area that we will all have to work on. It will be time consuming but we have all agreed that the
best way to make the report flow better would be to each read the report as a whole a few times
and edit the parts which do not flow that well.

3.0 Stage 1 Competency

As per the previous journal entry, I planned to keep progress of my individual competencies in the
few areas identified previously. I will document my progress here throughout the year.

3.1 Knowledge and Skill Base: (1.3) In depth understanding of specialist

bodies of knowledge and (1.4) Discernment of knowledge development
and research directions
In the past two weeks, I did not manage to develop much in relation to “discernment of knowledge
development and research directions”. However, through my work on the first paper, I personally
feel that I have increased my knowledge in the area of wind design using the Australian code,
American code and the Chinese code. Since I wrote the section about the Australian code, I feel I
have a much better understanding of the limitations of the Australian code. However, by reading
through my group mates work, I still gained knowledge about the limitations of other standards. I
aim to develop skill 1.4 more in the next week as I continue to do more work on the project
proposal.

3.2 Engineering Application Ability: (2.1) Application of established

engineering methods to complex engineering problem solving.
My primary area I aim to develop in this area is the use of ANSYS Fluent software in analysing
structures. In the past two weeks, I have begun to learn how to use it but my proficiency level is still
considered very basic. I still have a lot of work to do in this area but I am satisfied with my progress
now as the application of ANSYS Fluent in analysing structures subject to wind loads will only be
more relevant in the second semester as I begin to write my final report.

3.3 Professional and Personal Attributes :(3.2) Effective oral and written
communication in professional and lay domains (3.6) Effective team
membership and team leadership.
As per the previous entry, one of the methods I think would help me improve in this area was to be
more outspoken during my meetings. In this matter, I was in charge of giving the project progress
report to our supervisor this week. Although only a short 15 minutes presentation and a small
audience of five people, I still think this was a very good opportunity for me to practice giving a
presentation. I asked my group mates for their opinion and they did not have any major criticism.
Speaking once will definitely not make me have effective oral communication but I will continue to
work on this in the future.