Graphic organizer Grade 11 Engineering & Design
Standish Creek Plant Upgrade: A Project Roles Organizer
A grade 11 phase-by-role organizer mapping who leads each stage of a water plant upgrade, what preparation each role takes, and which decisions are costly to reverse.
Objectives
- Students will sequence the five phases of a capital water project.
- Students will match each phase to the roles that lead it and the preparation those roles take.
- Students will identify a decision in each phase that later phases cannot easily undo.
Vocabulary
Key words: capital project, preliminary design, permitting, commissioning, operator license class
Teacher overview
This organizer is a phase-by-role matrix covering one capital project from the first needs study through the first year of operation. Each row is a project phase, and the columns record what happens, who leads it, what preparation that role typically involves, and which decision made in that phase is expensive to reverse later. The structure matters because a capital project is not designed in one office and then handed over to another, and the people who will run the plant for thirty years review the drawings while changes are still cheap. The misconception worth naming is the assumption that every consequential decision belongs to degreed engineers and that operations staff arrive only at the end. A process chosen in preliminary design can require a higher operator license class than the utility currently employs, and that choice, made in a meeting long before construction, sets the staffing plan for decades.
Organizer
The fictional Standish Creek Regional Water Authority is upgrading its treatment plant. Complete the matrix for the five phases below. In the preparation column, name the education, training, or license a person in that role typically holds, without ranking the paths against one another.
| Project phase | What happens in this phase | Who leads it | Preparation that role typically takes | A decision here that is costly to reverse |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Planning and needs study | ||||
| Preliminary design and alternatives analysis | ||||
| Final design, permitting, and bid documents | ||||
| Bidding and construction | ||||
| Startup, commissioning, and first year of operation |
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Completed Exemplar
The authority below is fictional, while the pay and openings figures describe the water and wastewater operator occupation nationally.
| Project phase | What happens in this phase | Who leads it | Preparation that role typically takes | A decision here that is costly to reverse |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Planning and needs study | Demand is projected, the existing plant's shortfalls are documented, and an affordable spending level is set | A planning engineer, working with a hydrologist on source yield and a rate analyst on affordability | Engineering, geoscience, or finance degrees, with graduate study common for hydrology and a professional engineer license earned by exam and experience | The design capacity chosen for the upgrade, since a plant sized too small cannot be enlarged cheaply once built |
| Preliminary design and alternatives analysis | Competing treatment trains are compared on cost, reliability, staffing, and residuals handling, and one is selected | A process design engineer, with the plant's chief operator reviewing operability | A four-year engineering degree and licensure for the engineer; for the operator, a high school diploma, on-the-job training, and a state license whose class, such as I through IV in many states, is tied to plant size and experience | The treatment process itself, because it fixes the chemicals, the residuals stream, and the operator license class the plant will need |
| Final design, permitting, and bid documents | Drawings and specifications are completed, permits are obtained, and the project is packaged for bidding | Design engineers with design technicians producing drawings, and an environmental permitting specialist handling approvals | Two-year engineering technology or drafting programs for technicians; environmental science, planning, or policy backgrounds for permitting specialists | The specifications, since a material or equipment requirement written here governs what contractors may supply and what change orders will cost |
| Bidding and construction | Bids are received and evaluated, the work is built, and the inspector verifies it matches the documents | A construction inspector for the owner and a superintendent for the contractor, with line workers and pipefitters building the work | Trade apprenticeships and on-the-job training, with inspection and materials certifications; commercial driver and confined-space credentials are common | Accepting buried work without inspection, because a pipe bedding or joint defect is expensive to reach once the trench is backfilled |
| Startup, commissioning, and first year of operation | Equipment is tested, control loops are tuned, staff are trained, and the plant is proved at design flow | Treatment plant operators, with an instrumentation and SCADA technician and a laboratory analyst | Operators earn a state license by exam, with a median wage of $60,020 per year (May 2025) and about 10,000 openings each year nationally; technicians typically hold two-year electronics or instrumentation training; analysts hold science degrees plus method certifications | The control strategy and alarm settings written during commissioning, since operators inherit them and rarely revisit the reasoning behind them |
Differentiation
Support
Give these students the phase column and the "what happens" column already completed for the fictional authority, and ask them to fill only the role and preparation columns from a provided card set of job titles. Reduce the matrix to three phases if the full five make the page too dense.
Extension
Ask these students to trace one role across all five phases of the fictional project and describe how its work changes from phase to phase, then to write a short argument for which phase the fictional authority should spend the most money on and why. A second task is to identify a role missing from the matrix, such as a safety officer or a public information coordinator, and to place it in the correct phases.
ELL supports
Provide the job titles with a photograph or icon and a one-line description in plain language. Allow the preparation column to be completed with short phrases such as "two-year degree" or "state license by exam," and give the frame "In this phase, the ___ decides ___" for the final column of the fictional matrix.
Extensions
Have students look up the license classes their own state uses for water treatment operators and record what experience each class requires, then place those requirements in the preparation column of the commissioning row. A second step is to invite two guests whose paths into the sector differed, such as an operator who started as a maintenance helper and an engineer who finished a graduate degree, and to have students ask each guest which phase of a project they most influence. Students can then revise their organizer with what they learned rather than starting a new one.