Finance, Contracts, and Compliance for Technical Professionals - 595.676

This course introduces the technical manager to all aspects of business management within an organization, ranging from tactical project planning and control, and contract management to higher level corporate financial and legal topics. Students will be guided through weekly topics in the areas of planning a project, scheduling, tracking and the evaluation/assessment of a project. It will also cover contractual considerations for the technical manager. The course will move from managerial business management to financial accounting topics such as direct and indirect costs, revenues, and profits; indices to financial position; use of financial reports; return on investment, net present value; internal rate of return; and financial management (including cash and funds flow statements). Finally, this course will also use the management approaches and practices above and apply them to the world of contracting and legal analysis. Tactical contracting principles, including acquisition planning, contract award, performance, and termination will be covered. Basic legal principles that a senior technical leader will encounter in their career will also be presented. Course discussions covering corporations and partnerships, professional liability, risk management, intellectual property negotiations, and ethics are presented for students to recognize issues that are likely to arise in the engineering profession and introduces them to the complexities and vagaries of the legal profession.

Course Prerequisite(s)

595.660 Planning and Managing Projects. Systems Engineering majors may contact the Systems Engineering Vice Chair regarding prerequisite substitution opportunities (this does not apply to Engineering Management / Systems Engineering Track students).