This assignment is an individual assignment.
This assignment requires you to answer both the following two questions:
Activity One (Word limit 400 words):
You are the urban development manager at the Jolly Town City Council. You are currently in charge
of a big project for the renovation of Jolly Town Rail Station. The City Council has entrusted the
project to the engineering and design firm Brooks & Brooks and asked you to supervise the
operations and the budget.
You have had a series of preliminary meetings with engineers at Brooks & Brooks during the last few
months to discuss the details of the project. The last meeting was on the 3rd January 2019. The
owners and senior partners of the firm, George and Georgina Brooks, who happen to be husband
and wife, were present. During that meeting you agreed on all the final details of the project and you
decided together that by the 3rd March 2019, the firm Brooks & Brooks would send you the first draft
of the project. You have also agreed that the renovations should be concluded by 2023 and that the
project should cost no more than £1 million in total, as this is the maximum amount of money that
the City Council can afford to spend. No other funds are available.
Since the 3rd January 2019 you haven’t heard any news, until on the 27th February 2019 you received
a very rude email from a junior partner at Brooks & Brooks who was present at some of the
meetings, Mr. Maverick Mitchell. Mr. Mitchell has always been quite aggressive in the meetings and
you have quite a cold and formal relationship with him. Here is the text of his email:
“Dear Mr/Ms [your name],
Following our meetings, I inform you that some of the points we agreed must be revised. In
particular, the budget must be reviewed. Your City Council should invest at least £2 million in the
project. This would allow us to renovate the Railway Station by 2022 instead than 2023 with a great
advantage for Jolly Town’s population.
The money would be also necessary to use innovative materials, such as the new experimental Blue
Steel Glass, a type of glass we are considering to use as the rooftop cover of the station in
replacement of the traditional glass we agreed to install at our meeting.
Also, I would need urgently a report on train traffic and timetables from you. Can you send it to me
by the end of the week?
Please give confirm that this is ok for you.
MM”
You are very upset by the commanding tone of the email and you are disappointed that, after you
have agreed all the details with Mr and Ms Brooks in person, a junior member of the firm is now
writing you in such a rude way. Moreover, you are quite disappointed that Mr. Mitchell’s email does
not contain any real update about the first draft of the project which is was due on the 3rd March. It is
so unprofessional to miss deadlines!
You need now to reply to the email, which should be read also by Mr and Mrs Brooks, to make the
following points and ask the following questions:
 Where is the firm with the project? Have they prepared the first draft of the project? If so,
you need to have a copy of it ASAP. The deadline has expired already.
 The City Council cannot afford to pay £2 million and such cost would never be approved. The
funds allocated to the project cannot exceed £1 million. This was agreed before and Brooks
& Brooks must contain the costs accordingly. Moreover, there is absolutely no need to rush
the project and the City Council does not need it realised by 2023. The station is currently in
a good state and perfectly functional: this is just an aesthetic refurbishment. Finally, you
certainly don’t need to have the Blue Steel Glass to cover the station’s roofop: Blue Steel
Glass is still experimental and there is no evidence on its solidity: you cannot take the chance
that it might break with a heavy shower or under the weight of snow in the winter.
Traditional glass is perfect for your purposes and used in all the stations in the area.
 You need to know whether any decision concerning the above issues (date of realization and
glass) has been taken and has influenced the drafing of the project. You need to remind the
firm that any such decision should be first approved by you.
 You cannot possibly draft the requested report on train traffic and timetables by the end of
the week. This is a task which requires several weeks. Moreover, you are quite sure that
information on traffic and timetables was included in the briefs you sent to the firm at the
start of your collaboration. Before asking you to draft a new report, Mr Mitchell should check
whether the information he needs is already included in the documents you sent him earlier
on.
 You do not like nor trust Mr Mitchell. In the future all major changes must be agreed
beforehand and you would prefer to discuss them with Mr and Mrs Brooks directly, so you
want them to be included in future communications.
Write the above email and make sure you indicate whom you decide to address it to.
Activity Two (Word limit 1,100 words) :
You work for marketing department of Coventry University.
Most commonly, a business report is prepared to solve a problem an organisation is facing.
Therefore, a topic (or a purpose) of a report is a resolution of a certain issue.
Write a report, using a Faculty of School at this university (your own if you wish) and, using existing
facts or manufactured, draft a report on how your Faculty or School can encourage students to enroll
from the UK (or if you wish, your country if not the UK) to study here in the new academic year.
You should apply the advice given in class on report-writing and you are encouraged to expand it
with appropriate research.
Points to consider:
– The writing style of a business report should be brief and to the point. Business managers
usually don’t have time to deal with paragraphs of information that are not essential—so the
more concise and precise your style is, the more useful your report becomes.
– A business report can be prepared as plain text, a graph, or a table, depending on the
company’s needs and requirements.
– Basically, business reports adhere to the following structure: 1) background 2) findings 3)
discussion 4) conclusion 5) recommendations. However, in businesses which often experience
time constraints, another structure is valued: 1) conclusions 2) recommendations 3)
introduction 4) findings.
– Accuracy is one of the significant features of writing a business report. This includes the
accuracy of presented information and accuracy of writing. Therefore, it is crucial to make sure
that all facts in the report are correct and that it is free from grammatical, punctuation, and
other errors.
– A business report must be objective and free from prejudice. When writing a report, make a
distinction between facts and opinions and use an impersonal style.
Criteria for Assessment
When marking the coursework particular regard will be given to the following:
 Identification of relevant issues;
 Appropriate use of form and structure in the documents
 Appropriate use of language
 Accurate spelling
 Accurate grammar and sentence construction
 Suitability of use within a business setting
 Ability to write within set word limits (see above).
The facts used are not important. For this course it is the presentation, as well as the above criteria
that are important.
Word Count
The total word count is 1,500 words.
There will be a penalty of a deduction of 10% of the mark for work exceeding the word limit by 10%
or more.
How to submit your assessment