Proposal Template
See also Proposal Brief.
Download this template and edit off-line, then post as html to this wiki: File:Proposaltemplate.odt
Title of Your Proposal1
by Name and Your Picture; name is linked to your Team Culturing Survey2
Date (of proposal sbmission)
Your Website, your email
Abstract: – a high level discussion of your deliverable, its economic significance, relevance to addressing pressing world issues, relevance to Distributive Enterprise, its fit within the context of the GVCS, and relevance to the infrastructures of new civilization. Also include a summary of economic analysis and deployment timeline.
Deliverables – a clear and explicit overview of your deliverables, and overview of the timeline for their accomplishment. Please reserve the timeline section further down for a week-by-week breakdown of your milestone goals. Define a clear start and end points for your overall project, such as, “4 weeks from project approval, which is intended to happen on such and such date” etc.
Include sketches, drawings, CAD, CAE analysis, exploded part diagrams, conceptual drawings and other diagrams wherever possible.
Table of cost and performance comparison to other industry standards for the same machine. Select 3 other competitors with other diverse solutions.
Scaling calculations – these are basic calculations relevant to your design, which are also applicable to adapting your design to a different scale of machine
Systems Engineering Breakdown Diagram – break the concept down into components that need to be developed, and publish in the form of a diagram (see examples). The relevance of this is for the review team to understand the context of your work more clearly, and to define the necessary development points with precision.
OSE Specifications Assessment – Discuss how your work contributes to modular, lifetime design, design-for-simplicity, design for easy fabrication3, and design for high performance.
Resources – list the general resources and infrastructure required for project completion. Discuss both what you can bring to the table and what you would like us to provide. Discuss whether you'd like to spend your development time at Factor e Farm or remotely.
Timeline – in as much detail as possible, discuss the milestones you hope to reach on a weekly basis. Typically, a prototype or design takes one month of full time development. Include a Gantt chart of your expected deliverables.
Project Plan – Discuss how you will approach the delivery of the milestones that you outlined in your Timeline.
Budget – Discuss both material costs and your labor/consulting fees. Produce a detailed Bill of Materials for your project, with sourcing information for each part.
Provide sourcing links
Assessment – List the metrics by which you will judge the success of your project, and how these measurements will be made. This is important for clarity on project success/breakdown.
Failure Mode Analysis and Recovery Plan – Discuss the contingencies/dependencies that determine your project success or timeline. Discuss the things that may go wrong in your project, and how you will address these possible breakdowns (budget overruns, performance failures, supply chain issues, team breakdowns, lack of data, etc.). Please perform this analysis on a week-by-week basis for the duration of your proposal.
1Note that you are required to embed this proposal on a wiki page with Your Name Proposal as the title of the page. Embed via HTML export from a text editor, and include an upload of your file in open document format (.odt or similar). Note that this Proposal template refers primarily to machine development. If you are working on documentation, distributive enterprise development, or other organizational issues, all of the paragraphs still apply, though some details (such as exploded part diagrams) may not apply directly to your work.
2The Team Culturing survey is a survey that all developers of the GVCS need to fill out for purposes of team transparency. See discussion here and the actual survey here. The survey is submitted and then appears on the wiki with a page titled John Smith, where the name is your name. Successful project proposals/bids are marked by a thorough job on the team culturing survey. Please don't forget your picture and introductory video. Existing interviews with you taken by the OSE team suffice in lieu of your video.
3Note that easy fabrication refers to the simplicity of design. Simplicity of design needs to be coupled with simplicity of fabrication. We are assuming that we will have a wide range of advanced machines for fabrication and automation - but we are also assuming that we do not add bells and whistles. We believe that performance comes first – but performance is not defined as point-performance of highest power or efficiency – but instead – efficiency from an integrated perfaective that includes human, societal, and ecological factors.
