Abstract
The Imperial College Integrated Design Project reframes the chemical engineering capstone as a structured educational journey that develops professional competence rather than simply delivering a final technical report. The programme is grounded in four pedagogical pillars-authenticity, integration, impact, and reflection-which align with the graduate attributes required by the Institution of Chemical Engineers. Authenticity is achieved through open-ended problems drawn from industrial partners and emerging research needs; integration connects knowledge from across the curriculum into a coherent systems perspective; impact emphasises user-centred, sustainable solutions; and reflection cultivates metacognitive awareness of decision making and learning from failure. A mentored-autonomy model supports student teams through weekly checkpoints, skills workshops, and access to disciplinary experts. Assessment deliberately balances artefact quality with evidence of process, rewarding reasoning under uncertainty, ethical judgement, and communication alongside technical performance. Ethics, safety, and sustainability are embedded through lifecycle analysis and HAZOP requirements rather than treated as add-ons. The four-phase structure-scoping, feasibility, detailed design, and deployment-scaffolds increasing complexity while maintaining measurable progress and accountability. A 2024 project on renewable-powered green ammonia illustrates how students integrate decision-making methods, simulation tools, and stakeholder negotiation within a realistic professional context. Educational outcomes include strengthened systems thinking, collaboration, project leadership, and the ability to justify design choices in social and environmental terms. Institutional benefits include deeper industry engagement and improved graduate readiness. The paper argues that capstones should be judged by the quality of learning processes as much as by final designs, and that this model produces reflective engineers equipped for interdisciplinary practice and responsible innovation.