An engineering firm has been asked to deliver a bid for the design of a project in a highly competitive but lucrative area.In the past the firm has accomplished four similar projects. Prior data indicates that the third project took about 658.5 billable hours to complete while the mostrecent, the fourth project only used 615.7 billable hours to complete.

a. What is n? (number of compounding (interest) periods)

b. What is the Learning Rate?

c. The project is for the design of 5 similar units. Calculate the cumulative billable hours for the 5 units? Should the firm bid for this project if it's breakeven billable hours for this type of project is 3600 hours?