PEV Task 2.2 Was a Horrible Question

bigmuggsy

I messed up on this - the wording was just not clear enough for me to be confident on answering properly. Has this kind of question cropped up before?

Laura88

This was an awful question!!! Totally made it up and didn't know what was going on with it!! What was it asking? I haven't seeen anything like this on any of the past PEV papers that I have been practising. Even our Tutor said to us after the exam that it was a nasty question!

bigmuggsy

I know, i sat there for a good 20 mins just looking at it thinking what the hell do they want me to put! I've defintely got the majority of it wrong but hopefully the report and recommendations made up a few marks. Just a nasty question!!

Laura88

What on earth did it mean when it said refer to your answer in task 2.1 a)?! Why? That just totally threw me! I think a lot of people have had problems with this awful task! Blooming Turbines!! Perhaps they may lower the pass mark if the majority of people have got it wrong. Well I hope so because I just bodged it/made up some answer with some very random calculations. I would be a bit disapointed if I failed because of 2.2 because I felt the rest of the exam was not to bad to be honset.

bigmuggsy

I'm the same, the other thing that got me was the standard cost card for the asphalt material or whatever it was called. Just couldnt remember how to do it. Ah well its over now, best of luck anyway

>Michaela<

I think....In task 2.1 we were asked to calculate labour cost per unit etc, 2.2 asked us to put them together to get the cost of 1 turbine. I think thats what it meant anyway. :confused1:

bigmuggsy

It probably did, it just wasnt explained properly. I couldnt work out how the answers in 2.1 related to 2.2 - my answers didn't have any relevance to 2.1 simply because i couldnt find any!! I can imagine alot of people will have botched that question..

Laura88

But didn't it say it 2.2 that the labour and materials costs were saved if the turbines were bought from Romainia?

Yeah - standard cost card was a bit...er..well I had a bash!! lol

I didn't know what the interest ratio thing was on 2.1 either?

And the gearing , i put Debt divided by Equity, don't know if that is right.

Laura88

And yes... I don't know hoe the gross profit margin, net profit margin ect from 2.1 related to 2.2 at all!! Confusing!!:confused1:

>Michaela<

Laura88 wrote: »

But didn't it say it 2.2 that the labour and materials costs were saved if the turbines were bought from Romainia?

Yeah - standard cost card was a bit...er..well I had a bash!! lol

I didn't know what the interest ratio thing was on 2.1 either?

And the gearing , i put Debt divided by Equity, don't know if that is right.

It did but then it asked what the cost per turbine would be if voltair produced them, think it was shockingly worded and made you think alot!

Laura88

It definately made me think...well at least I tried to think!! I spent ages on that question but I still didn't get it! I didn't understand it at all!! The wording was terrible.

vickybrown31

To get my head around it I ended up doing a mini P & L in the report and comparing the 10,000 & 14,000 against in house costs and outsourcing - must have written about 3 sides on it - god help the person who has to mark my waffle. Generally though it wasn't too bad and think most of us will get the pass.

Fi21

Basically, I think the phrasing of the Romania question was confusing - even the other memo/reports were difficult to understand.

They should have been clear and consice especially seeing as we only have 3 hours to understand all these questions and answer them.

After all, it's not an english exam is it?:confused1:

fpettifer

What confused me was they were going on about outsourcing the turbines but then asked you to calculate the unit cost if the company Voltair (was that it can't remember) made them. That's how I read the question anyway, or they just worded the question really badly and the idea was to calculate Voltair's costs after the outsource, which would have made more sense. I only read it like that though because it mentioned to use your answers from the previous question. I do hope getting that question wrong doesn't fail section 2 as the rest of the paper was fine. :001_unsure:

Han

I completely agree that 2.2 was worded strangely. I got stuck reading the question for about 30 mins trying to work out what they actually wanted. When I finally did answer the question (not sure if it correctly) I had about 10 mins to do the report so didn't have time to properly look at which option was best. I was also wondering if falling that question would cause you to fail the whole exam?

Fi21

I agree - that was really confusing - going on about outsourcing and then asking you to calculate unit cost for Volpair before outsourcing?......

It was really badly worded and I'm not sure, that by understanding that question and getting it right if it prooves anything. It didn't really make sense and it seemed that there were so many marks on it because it was such a huge question.

All I kept thinking about in the exam was if I fail this question I'll probably fail the whole of section 2 cos you can't be sure you got full marks on the rest of the section - there's bound to be silly mistakes somewhere.

Han

My tutor has always said that the ratios are the major question in section 2 which gives the most marks, but this 2.2 was a much bigger question than the second parts of past papers. I'm just hoping that it isn't a big % of section 2 otherwise the whole exam will have been messed up for me by one very confusing question. I have noticed on another thread that a lot of people have said they found that question really hard and couldn't do it. Hopefully AAT will see that a lot of us struggled with that question and lower the pass mark.

sair_19

Question 2.2

I also calculated the cost per unit when Voltair made the turbine from my previous calculations and added them up, i think 10,000 was something like £800? But when making the recommendation i somehow worked out that outsourcing 14000 to Romania was the way to go! I didnt include the full production costs in my calculations because i thought they were only for the maunfature when using Voltair! I got completely confused and now i am worried this will fail me. I felt the rest of the paper went really well!

Andrewh26

I clearly couldnt even read, i got the total costs for 10000 at about 7500000 and for 14000 at about 10000000, but everyone else worked it out into units. I just worked out avoidable and unavoidable costs into units. Ah well as usual i get different figures, but passed everything so for. Thought the rest was mostly quite ok.. ish

Sully786

PEV june 08 Task 2.2

I agree this was the hardest task in the whole paper.

Well i did calculate the cost per turbines. Can't remeber the figures but i think it was like this.
total cost including transpot £695
then your one cost form task 2.1 which we had calculted. not material or labour cost. there was another one as well, i forgot about it. any way then your fixed production cost per turbine. Just add all these up and you will get ''Cost per Turbine''. thats what they had asked you to calculate.

in tak 2.2(!!). they had asked to calculate unavoidable and avoidable cost per turbine which i believe was dead easy to calculate.

Same method for 2.2(b).

sorry guys i might be wrong but thats the way i calculated task 2.2.

Dee S

Yes indeed blooming turbines, from tea bags to turbines! spotted a mistake in calculation, that was it, went completely ga ga.

kiki

Laura88 wrote: »

This was an awful question!!! Totally made it up and didn't know what was going on with it!! What was it asking? I haven't seeen anything like this on any of the past PEV papers that I have been practising. Even our Tutor said to us after the exam that it was a nasty question!

I'm the same and eveyone that sat the exam at my centre had the same problem with task 2.2 I feel totally cheated as not correctly answering that question could cost me an exam. Just where did they get that question it was awful. I studied so long and hard and to come across a question of which I had no idea how to get the answer was very disappointing.

speegs

HI Everyone

I did not sit your exam as I only have PTC left to do, but I sat MAC last December 2007 and I did not have a clue what they were asking. In fact there was an error on the paper.

Anyway my point is, you should all complain to the AAT, because if enough people shout, they have to listen eventually. If you are sure there is something that was examined that was not on the syllabus, take them to task on this.

I always complain if I feel I have just cause to do so and I have not failed any exams so far.

It's worth a try.

Good luck to you all.

Speegs

mi|kshake

What confused me - and this was probably me misreading the question and missing out an important piece of information - was when it asked you to recommend whether to outsource. Normally in these questions you'd recommend one over the other. But if it was cheaper to contract out the 10,000 turbines then why wouldn't it also be cheaper to contract out 14,000? The refer back to 2.1 confused me too. Answered everything, but not confident.

mi|kshake~

AdamR

The cost per unit for 14,000 was less in house because of the lower overheads per unit (£3M/14000=£214.29/unit, compared with £300/unit for 10,000. This meant that outsourcing would work out at just under £11 a unit dearer if 14,000 were produced (old costs 300+200 [labour and materials] + 214 overheads = £714 per unit and an outsourcing cost of 650 [cost per turbine] and 75 (1.05M unavoidable overhead divided by 14,000 units) = £725).

10,000 worked out at £45 better off outsourcing as original cost of 300+200+300 = £800 (labour, material and overheads) was more than the 650 for the turbine + 105 overheads (1.05M unavoidable overhead divided by 10,000 units) = £755/unit.

Hope this helps; I'm not sure if my method was accurate but I think I could see what the examiner was getting at. I agree it was unexpected and perhaps poorly worded but surely it's just an ECR question and therefore not entirely off syllabus? Fingers crossed for all of us anyway, we shall see on 19th August whether we fooled the markers or not!

bigmuggsy

I agree it was unexpected and perhaps poorly worded but surely it's just an ECR question and therefore not entirely off syllabus?

---

Thats fine but having just 3 hours to deal with all the other questions plus a badly worded question that has alot of potential marks is a bit unfair in my eyes. I've never seen this kind of question before

LJ1

I totally agree!

The wording of both the question and information was really confusing.

The frustrating thing is, if you know what they are asking and the information is clear you know how to answer it but this task was not clear at all!

AdamR

Hopefully the examiner and markers will realise this when they see the papers. There's nothing we can do except complete the PCR survey found at http://www.aat.org.uk/surveys/examsstudentfeedback/ and if there are enough complaints it may stop something like this happening in the future. It certainly was different to the expectation of ratios being the heaviest in terms of marks...