Every piece of graded work in the course, what it is worth, and when it is due.

Two pieces of work, weighted to 100% between them, and no final examination:

Full briefs, specs and marking criteria are below.

Calibration Diary

A semester-long record of ranges committed before you knew the answer, audited at the end for pattern rather than for how often you were right

Due 28 May 2027 · Weight: 45%

Client Estimate & Estimate Court

One real, already-settled target shared by the whole cohort, and a live cross-examination of the estimate you built to answer it

Due 21 May 2027 · Weight: 55%

What sits inside each one

Two assessments, but neither is a single sitting. Each is built from parts handed in at different points, and each part carries its own share of that assessment’s mark — the shares below are of the assessment, not of the course.

Calibration Diary — 45% of the course

Kept from Week 4 to Week 12: a running record of at least fifteen ranges, each committed before its answer was known, then the end-of-semester audit, the written analysis that reads the whole set, and a peer's note on it.

Diary discipline — entries, precommitment, resolution
25%
Calibration audit
10%
Pattern claim, evidenced
20%
Counter-case engagement
20%
Forward commitment
15%
Peer note
10%

Client Estimate & Estimate Court — 55% of the course

One target, shared by the whole cohort and answered in three stages: a written estimate and disclosure submitted before the hearing, the hearing itself in Week 11, and a revision note after it.

Written estimate and disclosure
60%
Estimate Court
20%
Post-Court revision
20%

How assessment develops through the semester

Six weeks put something into one of the two pieces above. None of them is a third assessment, and none carries a mark of its own: what the room produces is carried into the Diary or the estimate and marked there. Week 11 is the one exception, and it is not an extra — it is the hearing stage of the Client Estimate, happening live.

Week 4A Number With a Shape

The form every later entry uses — low bound, high bound, confidence in plain words, and a line naming what would make the range miss — and the first range committed before looking, as one supplied Diary entry.

Calibration Diary · Carried into it and marked there — not a separate graded item.

Week 8Ask the Room

Two round estimates, copied into the Diary as full entries before the slips are handed in, and the shared input your own estimate turns out to rest on — which the written estimate has to declare.

Calibration Diary and Client Estimate & Estimate Court · Carried into both and marked there — not a separate graded item.

Week 9Who Carries the Cost

The stakes note the brief asks for, written while the case is still specific: who bears the cost if the number is too high, who if it is too low, and whether that is the same party either way.

Client Estimate & Estimate Court · Carried into it and marked there — not a separate graded item.

Week 10A Number About Tomorrow

One forecast about a date that has not arrived, sealed in the room and not opened until Week 12 — the last of the four supplied Diary entries, and the only one nobody can revise.

Calibration Diary · Carried into it and marked there — not a separate graded item.

Week 11Estimate Court

The hearing: the written estimate and its disclosure read out and challenged by a panel, answered by accepting, rejecting, or widening.

Client Estimate & Estimate Court · Marked as it happens — the Estimate Court component, 20% of that assessment.

Week 12Your Own Track Record

The sealed forecast opened and resolved, the plain-count audit, the pattern claim and its counter-case, the forward commitment, and a partner's note on your record.

Calibration Diary · Carried into it and marked there — not a separate graded item.

Weeks 5 to 7 sit outside this list on purpose. They train the method the written estimate is built from — the bridge from a borrowed number to the one you want, what to do when two sources disagree, and holding a figure under pressure — but nothing from those rooms is handed in.