Level 4 Engineering – Operations and Plant Maintenance

Pearson/Edexcel BTEC Level 4 Engineering – Operations and Plant Maintenance

This unit can be studied  as part of a BTEC HNC or HND in Engineering. 

Unit introduction

The challenges of modern manufacturing industries require today’s operations engineers to adopt a multi-skilled methodology when dealing with the array of complex engineering problems they are faced with. Long gone are the days of ‘pure’ mechanical or electrical maintenance staff; operations engineers may well specialise within one discipline, but they must have the knowledge and ability to safely tackle problems that could encompass many varied engineering fields, if they are to keep
the wheels of industry in motion.

The underlying aims of this unit are to develop the students’ knowledge of the engineering fundamentals that augment the design and operation of plant engineering systems, and to furnish them with the tools and techniques to maintain the ever more technological equipment.
The students are introduced to the concept of thermodynamic systems and their properties in the first learning outcome; this will provide a platform for the topic of heat transfer in industrial applications (as covered in learning outcome four) and underpin their future studies in subsequent units. The second learning outcome examines common mechanical power transmission system elements found in numerous production/manufacturing environments, whilst the third learning outcome investigates fundamental static and dynamic fluid systems.
On completion of this unit students will be able to describe the fundaments that underpin the operation of the systems they deal with on a daily basis and apply these fundamentals to the successful maintenance of these systems.

On completion of this unit you should be able to:
1. Analyse fundamental thermodynamic systems and their properties.
2. Investigate power transmission systems.
3. Determine the parameters of static and dynamic fluid systems
4. Examine the principles of heat transfer in industrial applications.