Proposal for UQ Analytics Club Expressway

Below you are presented with an analytics business case proposal that you are to analyse and present an approach to solve the problem. Please outline the techniques you will use and then analyse any non-technical challenges you foresee. Finally discuss data concerns and inputs. You are also to provide a business case. 

This means for example, when analysing the proposal, have you done your analysis in such a way that a non-expert could understand it and that your analysis of the business case is also technically sound. Do you point out the non-technical challenges of the approach and their implications? Etc.

Background and Proposal For Analysis

You’ve taken over the leadership of an established student club with 115 student members at the university and you have an ambition to make it the greatest club on campus. This will not happen if you do nothing, so you are determined to take on an ambitious project to achieve your vision. To be able to convince the leadership team of the club that this project is worthwhile, you need to analyse it and present an honest assessment of the opportunity (so not just the benefits but the challenges in carrying it out). The project you’d like to do is described below.

A proposal to build the UQ Analytics Club Expressway

University students have a problem. The campus is becoming bigger and bigger and it is taking longer and longer to get from one side of the campus to the other. The students of your club all seem to study Life Sciences in the Centre for Microscopy and then have a course in Business Analytics at the BEL faculty and need to walk for more than 30 minutes to get between lectures.

Connecting the two areas is a direct pathway that is approximately 1.5km and winds through the university campus. At the moment people have to walk along this crowded pathway and due to the crowds they cannot walk faster than 3 km/h. There are other ways that are faster as they are less crowded, however, they are between 2km and 3km long, typically students can walk along these pathways at 5km/h. For students with a disability, they need to take the longest route of 4km as it is the flattest route and avoids the crowds and the hills and goes along the roads.

Your proposal as the club president is to speed up transport around the campus because for many students with full schedules it is no longer possible to make it to all lectures on time. You have a number of ideas based on the new e-scooter craze that has landed in Brisbane and want to propose to the club to provide such a service for your members.

You have assessed the options and there seem to be two viable mobility devices:

1. Acquire a set of scooters for your members to ride quickly between lectures at a cost of $800 each – they are offering you a discount as you are students
2. Acquire a set of mobility bikes for your members (which can accommodate people with disabilities) at a cost of $2,500 each

A scooter or mobility bike both travel at 25km/h, however, they must go along the longer pathways, as the fastest route is always crowded and mobility bikes often need to go along the longest route on the road. Each student only needs a mobility device for a short period of time, however, they will need it where they are located. The students will also likely need them at similar times due to the start and finish times of the lectures.

What course of action should you take? How many scooters do you recommend? How many mobility bikes do you recommend? If you only have to charge the scooters once per week and the electricity cost is $5 per scooter per week, how does this affect your recommendation? What about if you lose one scooter per year to damage?

Assuming that other students will see students of your club zipping around campus and want to join your club due to this, can you make the strategy work based on attracting more students if membership fees are $50 per student per year? How many more students do you need to attract to make it worthwhile? What about if you increase the membership fee to $80 due to this amazing service?

Also look into the non-technical challenges arising from this as well as the data required to manage such a network ongoing and predict future demand based on new members and membership pricing.

Submitting your Response

Please submit your response in PDF format to Blackboard. The expected length of your response is between 1800 and 2200 words. Note that you can include tables, diagrams and images to support your arguments.