It is known that assessment drives learning and hence a good assessment design is key to effective student development. This paper gives some case studies in effective assessment strategies within engineering. The main contribution is to demonstrate how one can simultaneously meet a number of requirements with individual assessments and therefore be efficient in both the student and staff assessment load. The paper also proposes that assessments should be challenging and the benefits of expecting students to rise to this challenge and also how one can meet many independent learning objectives in a single assignment in order to manage the overall assessment load for staff and students.