(Alumni) Lessons learned / What would you do differently?

[exFSAE]

This may be a worthwhile thread, especially for sophomores, juniors, and teams going into the next season. Think we've had similar things, but it'd be nice to collect some 'wisdom' in one spot. Maybe even as a sticky.

Any of the alumni out there.. if you were to do FSAE again, what would you do differently? Not so much from a technical standpoint as much as organizational (believe it or not, this basic shit will score you heaps more points than flexure joints, carbon a-arms, and electronic traction control).

I'll start...

Accountability - Especially as a capstone project, students need to be held accountable for flaking out or not meeting their expectations. No different than any 'normal' class. Otherwise people flake out and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Incentives / Motivation - People work more, and do a better job, when they want to come in and be around the shop. Weekly team bbq? Pizza? Study group? Something social and fun.

Project Manager, not Superman - Either be a PM, or do grunt work. Not both. DON'T put yourself in a position where you're doing the frame welding, the CNC machining, suspension design, AND project management. It is such a shitty position to be in, and ultimately you get burned out, angry, and can't focus on MANAGING the project.

Time Line - Before you do any work, set a completion deadline. For each system or part on the car, work backward and figure out milestones. STICK TO THEM. The 'oh don't worry I'll just make up for it next week' approach never works. This also plays into 'accountability' above.

Retain Knowledge - If your design guys have to re-learn everything every year you will not go forward at all. Hold people accountable for individual design reports. If you have seniors or grad students around with a few years of knowledge, might even be worthwhile having them as 'technical experts' and project leads, delegating the actual grunt work to sophomores and juniors.

Be an Engineer, Dammit! - Don't believe everything you hear or read. Doesn't matter if it comes from Claude, Millken, Smith, or whoever. No one knows everything in this profession. If someone tells you to do 'X', figure out WHY and make sense of it or prove it to yourself first. Engineers make decisions based on data, not bullshit handwavy arguments. Anything you state or try to pass off as fact, you damn well better have some data to support. Otherwise it is unfounded BS. Drives me absolutely nuts both among FSAE students and even in industry. Someone makes a statement.. you say "prove it" .. and they have nothing to back it up with.

[js10coastr]

Figure out why people are coming and play to that. The people you want to keep around are those who want to learn and to be challenged... those who want to "be cool" or "work on cars" you can pretty much do without.

You have to give those team members challenging jobs, which hopefully are relevant to what they are learning in the classroom.

Culture: Create an environment where people are not afraid to make mistakes... everyone makes them, and the fear of making a mistake is usually bigger and has a larger impact than actual mistakes (well... as long as you're not working on the engine).

Finally, and probably most importantly... listen to your alumni, especially those who want to help you and those who have had success... even more so if they work in racing and if other universities ask for their advice (not that this happens ).

[vandit]

If i were to do FSAE again with my first team then i would have

>>Document my work properly and setup a minimal but effective documentation system for future team members to follow.

>> designed some training modules for fresh members entering into the team.

>> requested my College to conduct 1 extra manadatory exam of FSAE Rule book every semester so that people can learn to read rule book.

>> open channels with other teams in the country and discuss common issues of Engine procurement, shipping of car etc.

----On a lighter side---
>> Would have thrown away the Turbocharger on very first day if i knew the Engine guy is gonna make our lives crazy. (Just because the turbocharger was shipped with the crashed bike engine it doesn't mean you have to use it)

>> Would have given equal importance to Ergonomics and Suspension.

[RollingCamel]

Don't be naive and believe that ppl can change in one year......

[Big Bird]

Nice topic, a welcome relief from the “tell me how to design chassis” queries that are filling these pages.

My 0.02 cents worth:

Play your own game
Don’t waste time worrying about what everyone else is doing. Take a look at your opposition, identify their strengths and weaknesses, and then move on. I’ve seen good teams spiral into mediocrity worrying about what the others are doing. The common symptom is loss of confidence, paranoia, and a subsequent obsession with trivialities.

Know your own game
Tied in with the above. I read something recently, (maybe on these boards??), that I thought was a gem:
Power. Light Weight. Durability. Pick any two.
FSAE rewards a range of vehicle design attributes: power, light weight, durability, fuel economy, low cost, manufacturability, driver comfort, controllability, timely completion, and probably a few others that aren’t coming to mind. The fact is, you can’t have them all. There is no such thing as the perfect FSAE car, otherwise we would have all converged on the same design by now. Identify the mix of attributes you are going to focus on (keeping in mind the resources you have available to you), learn it, and stick to it.
Balance is the trick. Almost by definition, when you find balance, there will always be an alternative direction that will give you more or less of each of the individual attributes. The art is in resisting the temptation.
I’ve been watching with amusement over a number of years now as successive teams have picked the eyes out of our original single cylinder vehicles. The critique usually goes along the lines of “Team X is lighter, therefore we need to be lighter. And Team Y is faster in a straight line, so we need more power”. Etcetera. So the team embarks on a mission of sub-optimization, and subsequently finds that some of the original balance is lost – durability gone, fuel economy lost, timelines blowing out, costs increasing, etc. (What’s more, the panic response to such a situation is “well the competition has changed, so we need to lose even MORE weight, and we need even MORE power.” And thus the downward spiral…).
If I were to prep a checklist for success, I’d be asking myself the following:
Are we the lightest car at comp?
Are we the fastest car in a straight line?
Are we fastest around skid pad?
Are we using the least fuel of all the teams?
Are we the cheapest car?
As long as we answered “no” for each of the above, I’d be happy we’d have a good chance of winning.

Don't second guess the judges
The FSAE community is full of ill-founded advice about what judges want. The judges don’t like 10” wheels, the judges want cars to be under 400lbs, the judges hate inboard brakes on diffs, the judges don’t like wings, the judges prefer carbon monocoques because all the finalists at comp X had monocoques, blah blah blah. You could tie yourself into a knot trying to cherry pick features to “make them happy”, and still get nowhere near presenting a decent vehicle.
From what I’ve seen, (and I’m almost contradicting myself here by second guessing the judges…), the senior judges couldn’t give a stuff about specific features. To sum up what I’ve learnt from guys like Pat Clarke, Steve Fox and the like over the years, as far as features go they’ll look at two things:
1. What your rationale is for the individual feature
2. Whether it is in harmony with the rest of the vehicle.
After that, forget features. Testing and validation, followed by testing and validation.
If you want to present inboard brakes, or outboard brakes, or wings, or no wings, or a steel chassis, or a monocoque, then as long as you know why they’ll give you a fair hearing. But if your concept is cheap and simple and you present a monocoque, or if you present a spool rear end with diff geometry, or if you show complete ignorance and claim your car is everything to all people, then they’ll crucify you.
Don’t even design for the judges. Read above about knowing your own game, then test and validate, test and validate.

[pablo180]

I'll chime in on the management bit from my experience in 07'...

The project is unique in that team members are putting in an insane amount of hours for little or no credit. As such, it is really important for leaders/captain/managers to show appreciation to the people putting in the time to make the car. A simple thank you or recognition for meeting simple milestones or after pushing all night to get a component done goes a long way.

Going back to the accountability mentioned above, you also have to have a hard line on those who don't meet the goals proposed by the team...this motivates the ones who are working hard to continue to do so and helps keep the project on schedule.

Since a lot of teams can't fire or exclude someone who is not meeting their expectations due to school regulations, the next best thing would be to relieve them from their responsibility and give them something easier to take on. Repeat if necessary and they'll eventually weed themselves out.

Lead by example. If you're in the lab everyday the rest of the team will follow suit. Even if you have to do coursework, do it in the lab. It makes you available to answer questions should your team have any.

Scheduling is a huge part of it as mentioned above. What worked for me was to have an overall schedule for the team to look at, and at every meeting, look at what had to be accomplished in a given week as well as look at what was coming up 2 weeks ahead.
Success breeds success so having simple bi-weekly milestones to get the motivation going early on helps a lot.

Threats and insults don't work, so don't bother with them.

Set some realistic goals and make sure everyone knows them. Top 10 finish, 45 days of testing, 440 lbs weight....make them known and visible to everyone.

[Peter7307]

Following on from some of the ideas posted above...

Have a project planner / schedule board or whatever you want to call it clearly visible to all and with agreed responsibilities and areas duly noted on it. It doesn't have to be fancy but it does have to be there.

In other words "MANAGE THE THING".
Delegate responsibly ; don't abdicate responsibility.
There IS a difference.

Don't expect people to have ESP or be clairvoyant and don't suddenly announce "This was Fred's area to deal with" when Fred has no idea it WAS meant to be his area because no one told him.

Cheers , Peter.

[js10coastr]

Read posts by BigBird, PatClarke (including Pat's Corner), DougMilliken and Kevin Hayward...

[murpia]

Originally posted by Big Bird:
Don't second guess the judges
The FSAE community is full of ill-founded advice about what judges want. The judges don’t like 10” wheels, the judges want cars to be under 400lbs, the judges hate inboard brakes on diffs, the judges don’t like wings, the judges prefer carbon monocoques because all the finalists at comp X had monocoques, blah blah blah. You could tie yourself into a knot trying to cherry pick features to “make them happy”, and still get nowhere near presenting a decent vehicle.
From what I’ve seen, (and I’m almost contradicting myself here by second guessing the judges…), the senior judges couldn’t give a stuff about specific features. To sum up what I’ve learnt from guys like Pat Clarke, Steve Fox and the like over the years, as far as features go they’ll look at two things:
1. What your rationale is for the individual feature
2. Whether it is in harmony with the rest of the vehicle.
After that, forget features. Testing and validation, followed by testing and validation.
If you want to present inboard brakes, or outboard brakes, or wings, or no wings, or a steel chassis, or a monocoque, then as long as you know why they’ll give you a fair hearing. But if your concept is cheap and simple and you present a monocoque, or if you present a spool rear end with diff geometry, or if you show complete ignorance and claim your car is everything to all people, then they’ll crucify you.
Don’t even design for the judges. Read above about knowing your own game, then test and validate, test and validate.

Geoff makes a very important point here. The most important things for teams to communicate to the Design Judges are:
a) justification for a feature (need not be engineering, could be cost etc.)
b) demonstrate an understanding of the engineering principles involved
c) consistency with stated objectives

I would say 90% of criticism falls into one of those categories.

Regards, Ian

[Mike Cook]

I'm not alumni...yet. But I do have some thoughts on the topic.

First off, I don't think theres any one thing any of us can say that 100% correct. Different strategies work well for different teams. Some years we have strong teams, sometimes not- I'm fairly sure every school has this problem. One reason the top schools stay on top is because they have someone making decisions based on the people and man power they have (lets call this the team potential). If your team isn't that strong, you need to pull the throttle back and limit the amount of changes you are making. If you are really strong in engine development, maybe you shouldn't be focusing on a carbon fiber monocoques for example. Its all about being realistic with your goals and having someone who has been through the process before to say ya, thats doable, or no way thats going to happen.

Most students, since they only will be with the team for one or two years at most, want to implement every gizmo imaginable right away, when they have no idea how difficult it is to even get a basic car to competition. In my opinion, someone needs to step and dictate whats reasonable and whats not.

Now my opinions stem from the fact that I hate to lose (more than I love to win). Our team goals align with this so we tend to favor reliable basic systems as oppose to science experiments. Other teams might care about just having fun and trying new things and thats fine, but my team structure and ideas wont reflect this.

NEXT-

The best advice I ever got was from an ex fsaer who was at VIR. I don't think he was judging, I think he was with a grandam team working and just swung by the paddock. I had just got my ass reemed by steve fox, (literally had a tear come to my eye)...Anyways, his advice was to just build a car you would like to drive. Don't worry about what you might think the judges will say, just build something your happy with. If you do this you will probably know exactly why everything is the way it is, and do fine in design. And what he said made a lot of sense. I mean how many teams struggle to make a light weight car (before they have the basics down) and everytime they take it out it breaks? I like driving the cars and I want it to be able to run all day long everyday. I don't want to worry about some fatigue life. But I digress..

So,
1) Have realistic goals-
2) Build a car you would want to drive.

and 3) Start early

Its so hard to take guys off the current car to work on future cars but you have to do it if you want to be successful. We do some work in the fall, and then start ramping up in the spring, and hopefully by september have a lot of the car designed. We start building what we can then, and then finish designing the rest at the same time. Speaking of which, too many people want to machine every little part on the car. I get it, but its not the best way to be successful. A little extra design time spent on drawings and tolerances goes a long way. Send the easy stuff out to be machined, and do the tough stuff in house.

Finally - the most important thing --
The real reason I think all the successful teams stay successful is that they have very active mentors and faculty advisors around to carry information from year to year. I have yet to figure out how to get students to document anything (if you guys figure it out let me know-most college students suck at writing -don't take my post as a reflection on my writing skills either). The most we ever do is a design report (which btw takes at least a month to do and I would guess probably has 400 hours into it).

Anyways, getting a little long for tonight.