Team Structure

[Gonzo]

We're starting a new team from Auckland University this year and visited the Australasian comp but I would like some feedback from other team on our proposed structure.

We will have one team leader with a chief engineer below him that is responsible for the design and build of the car. This will leave the team leader free to deal with admin, sponsorship, team issues etc. Under the chief engineer will heads of departments eg chassis, suspension, powertrain with their associated teams. Then a couple of guys will be used to help the team leader on the management and financial side.

Is this how other teams are structured? Does anyone have a better idea?

Also are your teams run as official university clubs which must allow open membership so as not to discriminate? I am slightly concerned we could get people trying to join that cannot benefit the team and will only take up valuable resources.

[Gonzo]

We're starting a new team from Auckland University this year and visited the Australasian comp but I would like some feedback from other team on our proposed structure.

We will have one team leader with a chief engineer below him that is responsible for the design and build of the car. This will leave the team leader free to deal with admin, sponsorship, team issues etc. Under the chief engineer will heads of departments eg chassis, suspension, powertrain with their associated teams. Then a couple of guys will be used to help the team leader on the management and financial side.

Is this how other teams are structured? Does anyone have a better idea?

Also are your teams run as official university clubs which must allow open membership so as not to discriminate? I am slightly concerned we could get people trying to join that cannot benefit the team and will only take up valuable resources.

[Matt Gignac]

Personally, I think it would be a better idea to let anybody join the team. It takes more than a few core people to make a car. You're gonna need people to machine little things that you might have put off otherwise, go get sponsorship, etc. Also, it's not like you're paying them so I don't see how ressurces would be taken up...

[joeinthedark]

I agree with Matt. The more the better. Any help is better than no help.

As for the orginazation of your team, how you have it sounds good to me. Your team sounds a lot more orginized and structured than my team is and so it should work fine.

Joe
University of Utah
www.mech.utah.edu/fsae (http://www.mech.utah.edu/fsae)

[Brent Howard]

In my experiance we have treid both selective membership and open and both seem to work terribly. With selective membership I found that the people that you feel will be the best asset to the team are normally the ones who don't show up ever. The ones that just get through normally end up surprising you and make you wonder who else you cut that wpould have been great. Also, GPA seems to have no effect, or even an inverse effect as those people with high GPA's spend most of their time on school...and always leave the car as second or thrid priority. This is not always true, but somewhat.

Then last year and this year we tried open membership. This cause major difficulties with organization because we started with like 70 people who said they were interested. It took like 2 months to just sort through the poeple and assign them to sub-teams. Then invariably 80 percent of these people stopped coming after the first few meetings. I really love the people who would show up twice all year and then show up the week before Detroit expecting to have us show them how to machine simply because they had time now that school was finished http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif. However I think open membership is better because you don't lose anyone who is going to be very useful. Just be sure to not waste time trying to get most of the people to commit, because it's even worse to give them a project and have it not completed on time (or at all). Spend your time with the core group getting things finished. Having a small group make the decisions also really ends up making the car easier to package as well, because these people know where every bolt, nut, tie-strap is going and will not have to iterate designs as much.

Brent

www.ucalgary.ca/fsae (http://www.ucalgary.ca/fsae)

[Frank]

I've found the comments previously from Michael Jones in this forum to be very insightful.

and this is very, very true

http://www.sae.org/students/fsae_organizingteam01.htm

this year, our team was organised with more of an emphisis on "skills based" orginisation, rather than "engineering system" based orginisation.

ie We saw no point having 20 guys that can reseach and use a CAD package and no-one who can use a lathe etc etc etc

[Ben Hatfield]

We're also a first year team looking to compete in the Oz comp for 2004. We have our team set up the same as you ie: Team Manager, Chief Engineer, Sub System Leaders, etc. We also have a Sponsorship Manager and a Finance Manager in place to deal with those issues. I also agree with Frank there are some really good tips on team setup and structure on this forum.
As far as membership goes we have an open membership policy. We find we need all the help we can get, we do however reserve the right to boot out those who we don't feel are pulling their weight. We also don't operate as an offical uni club because of a few finance issues that become more complex if we are setup as a club.

[Frank]

"We also don't operate as an offical uni club because of a few finance issues that become more complex if we are setup as a club."

It seems very few Aussie uni's do operate as a club, due to the significant funding required.

All up for parts, shop labour, supervision, transport, accodation, phone calls, internet usage etc etc etc

Your looking down the barrel of AUS 60K for a decent car.

Up to AUS 100K for a show stopper

[Farls]

This structure has been tried at the past at my uni without a great deal of success. In previous years, the team members ended up only listening to the chief engineer, because they knew what was going on with each part.
The team leaders and chief engineers have had poor relationships because of a lack of understanding by the team leader on the requirements of the other team members.

This is not to say that the structure will not work, but it hasn't for us. I would look at the people you have in mind for the team leader & cheif engineer, ask who is most likely to keep people to deadlines and put them in charge. In my experience the hardest thing to do with a new team is instill a sense of urgency early in the year. Thus you need someone who will keep people to deadlines and lead by example with these.

------------------------------
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of my team or University.

[Farls]

On Frank's point, we got free internet, phone calls, welding, NC time, lots of free materials and parts (the chassis and body cost ~$100 inc painting) and still finished in the red. Don't underestimate the need for cash, especially for things you need quickly in the last month before the comp.

------------------------------
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of my team or University.

[Big Bird]

Great topic, I know it has been done elsewhere on these forums a few times but team structure and management is such a critical aspect of FSAE, so the more info sharing the better.

Just in response to Matt's comment above - we considered resource management to include not only budget but also time and personnel/labour management, and that is where having too many team members can hurt. Every conversation / email / phone call / meeting soaks up time, and this is perhaps the most crucial resource of all. There seems to be this exponential relationship between the number of people involved and the time it takes to organize them. Our meetings at the start of the year, when we had 60-70 people involved, were the most drawn out and unproductive of all.

Also, as Chief Engineer of the project, the first phase of the project when we didn't have our core group finalized was a nightmare - it seemed that every time I went somewhere there was another team member who wanted to offer advice, ask questions about stuff, voice complaints, etc. It nearly burnt me out, and I don't think I was too effective early in the project.

I remember reading somewhere that ideal human management involves no more than 10 people under any one manager, better around 5 or 6. You'll find that most major corporations are structured this way, with levels of team leadership forming a pyramid right up to the top. Have too many team members and you need to structure more levels into the team to make it work properly - efficiency goes out the window.

When it all boils down to it, if you get 15-20 good engineering team members you'll do the project well. If you can get a few project management types (from other faculties??) to handle finances, promotions, sponsor relations, uni relations and the like that would be grand, because to do these things well soaks up heaps of time.

The other thing that soaks up heaps of time is writing stupidly long posts on these forums. My apologies!

Cheers,

Geoff Pearson
RMIT FSAE 2003

Design it. Build it. Write it off two weeks before the event.

[Big Bird]

p.s.

Agree with Farls - choose your leadership team well. You'll get people wanting to be at the top level for all the wrong reasons, primarily to look good on the resume. We had a guy like that as team leader last year - all talk, but about as effective as a chocolate saucepan. You need to weed out these types right now.

If you can get someone with previous motorsport experience somewhere at the top, that will help. Years of racing gives you a really practical approach to what works and what sucks. If not, at least try to get some older students involved, as any sort of industry experience helps see things practically. I'm thinking of Frank up at UQ - he's an old codger, but I'm really impressed with the cohesiveness and morale of the team up there. Also Wollongong - I believe their Faculty Advisor has previous race experience, and you can see it in their consistently practical approach to the whole project.

To the Auckland and Ballarat lads, having met a few of you I think you should be fine. There seems to be sensible heads involved. Just keep it simple, and enjoy!

Cheers

Geoff Pearson
RMIT FSAE 2003

Design it. Build it. Write it off two weeks before the event.

[PatClarke]

And never forget the immortal words of the late Mr Smith.
1. The first 50% of the project takes 90% of the time, and the second 50% of the project takes the other 90%!
2. There is never time to do things properly, but there is always time to do them again!
PDR

Rudeness is a weak mans imitation of strength

[Alan]

I was wondering how many co-op schools there are out there and how it affects your team. Our school is split into an A and B section which creates our biggest organizational challenge by far. Up until the last couple of years our team was essentially two seperate teams trying to build one car with the B section being dominant because Pontiac is during B section.

I think RIT and Drexel have a similar co-op situation. Any others?

Kettering University FSAE

[Dipper]

Excellent topic with a lot of relevant points. I'll add my observations to the mix.

More important than knowledge of Motorsport is a commitment to basic engineering principles and a good handle on what it takes to make things happen in the real world.

Based on my time at Wollongong, I can tell you this. The team was started by students who were cadets, students who had been working almost full-time and completing their Uni degrees over a space of 7 years. None of these guys had a lot of Motorsport experience, but they knew how to accomplish things in the real world. They understood how long it took to finalise a design and produce it and de-bug it. They were committed to exploiting basic engineering principles. Put things in tension not bending, focus loads into nodes, mount everything as low as possible to the ground, etc. They had seen how their chains of management were setup at work and they set the same chains up in the team. The team had sub-groups led by group leaders, and then once a week the group leaders would have a meeting where minutes were published to the whole team within 24 hours. May not be the perfect setup, but it worked well.

Whatever the case, don't under estimate the power of a cohesive team. Wollongong doesn't even offer an automotive engineering degree yet they have done well in the past. I would say this was because they worked effectively as a team and stayed true to the basics of engineering.

Justin

-And in my experience, the Wollongong faculty advisor is extremely relaxed and has very little experience in racing. He essentially lets the students run the project and offers his advice when asked for it or when there seems to be a safety or legal issue on hand.

[Mechanicaldan]

Just a little note about general membership. We set the car out in the center of our campus where there is the most student traffic the first 2 weeks of classes, and have members recruit a few of those days around lunch time. We bring in 60+ people to the first few meetings. While they are still interested, we present membership forms. $30 for membership, of which $10 goes to SAE membership. They are all VERY interested at first, so they join.

Need funding? Well, $20 x 60+ people brings in the money quick.

We realize that people always drop off. The people that are really interested stick around until the end of the semester/year. They're the ones that get their money's worth. In the mean time, we've raised a little money to start the year.

Cyclone Racing
www.cyclone-racing.com (http://www.cyclone-racing.com)
Iowa State University
Project Director

[Brent Howard]

That's what we did this year Daniniowa. We charged them 50 bucks Canadian and promised them a team t-shirt($10 bucks). In the end we cleared about $1000 which went a long way to start us up with some material and a few important parts. The people who drop out tend to waste at least a little bit of the core team members time, so you might as well make some money off of it.

Brent

www.ucalgary.ca/fsae (http://www.ucalgary.ca/fsae)

[George]

Some very good points raised in this thread. A big thing I would agree with is as Big Bird said - you need people with some real world experience and some understanding of what a project like this entails.

You'll be amazed at the amount of dreamers and just plain idiots that come out of the wood work when a project like this comes up - and you need to identify them and take some action before you find yourself in a situation where you have to take over their work as their obviously never going to be able to finish it properly or on time ...

You will also always have 2-3 guys who know virtually everything about whats going on with the whole picture of the car, in our case this was Frank and myself. As Big Bird put it, he's an old codger http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif hehe ... but many many hours were spent in arguments between us, typically me saying just get it together and him saying it has be done precisly like this! In the end we generally reached a compromise, which is exactly what you want, and well resulted in a good final product.

Best of luck for those starting teams this year, hopefully i'll get down to the comp again in 2004 to see how its all come along.

Cheers
George

UQ Racing Team Leader 2003
www.uq.edu.au/fsae (http://www.uq.edu.au/fsae)

[Charlie]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by George:
You will also always have 2-3 guys who know virtually everything about whats going on with the whole picture of the car, in ... but many many hours were spent in arguments between us, typically me saying just get it together and him saying it has be done precisly like this! In the end we generally reached a compromise, which is exactly what you want, and well resulted in a good final product.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Sounds awfully familiar George. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

Team structure to me starts with people. Get as many as you can, find thier strengths and see where they fit within the project. Base your team structure around your team, don't try and fit your team into a specific structure. Especially in a new team, you are people limited. Obviously you need some structure, because even if you have 12 engine guys, you need manpower everywhere else too. But make sure you build your structure keeping your available talent in mind.

The Cheif engineer position is a great one, in fact 2003 was the first time we had a cheif engineer. But the CE and captain must both be people willing to put thier grades and lives on the line for the team. Thier work ethic will be the model for everyone else.

As far as team building, take everyone in that you can. The good people have always risen to the top before the semester is half over. Others might show up later on in the 'season', and still become core members (I did). In my opinion few if any teams have the luxury of turning people away.

-Charlie Ping

I just need enough to tide me over until I need more.

[ben]

At Birmingham we have a lot of personnel changes year to year. Our project is completely undergraduate.

Last year we had two very good managers; a female team leader (management only) and a tech director in the true sense of the term, who did no design work.

The team under that was divided into focus groups (chassis, engine, vehicle dynamics, drivetrain, and electrical).

This year the focus group system remains, but due to the available human resources, the team leader is also our chassis designer. Meanwhile, I'm tech director and suspension designer. In theory we could have recruited some admin only leaders, but they'd be newbies and we'd have to show them the ropes anyway.

My point is that from year to year the people you have available dictates the structure. You have to be reactive, and what works best for Cornell's team of fifty for example, may not work for a smaller team.

The key dynamic between this year and last for us is that we currently have 5 or 6 lab rats such as myself who are doing the 30-50 hour weeks, rather than last year's 10-20 people.

We still appear to be changing everything though. In all seriousness we have three carry over parts from last year :-)

Ben

University of Birmingham
www.ubracing.co.uk (http://www.ubracing.co.uk)

[roadrunner]

At brookes we work slightly differently again.

The only people actually designing are people using the competition as projects for there final year dissertations. This means that building the car and competing actually comes secondary to most people because of the valuable nature of the dissertation project.

The team is supervised by 4 permanent members of university staff, comprising of lecturers and workshop geniuses!!!! The only people who actually work on the car from year to year.

We then have a team leader (who has their own project to do) but oversees everyone elses work and basically moans when stuff isn`t done on time!!! We then all have a specific are of the car to work on. Theres not enough of us to be split into sub groups so we just sort of run ourselves and discuss problems with each other.

Were not open to outsiders but some smaller problems are given to second year students as coursework, and then checked heavily!!!!!

So were all final year students with little experience in motorsport (a couple of guys know there s**t!!!, but generally this is a very steep learning curve!!!) and no experience in formula student.

Somehow though it works, but don`t ask me how!!!!

Word to ya moms but i came to drop bombs!!!!!

[Frank]

what's this "old codger" crap?

Geeeeoooooooooorrrrgggeee?

http://www.uq.edu.au/fsae/Frank/old-man-frank.jpg

[Michael Jones]

Even in a team of 50 (well, 30-35, with spring recruits gets up to 40...) I agree with all the points mentioned.

Building the team around what you've got is essential. Our team structure changes year to year based on that. So, some years we'll have some R&D work on aero, telemetry, traction control, active suspension, dry sump, materials research, engine selection, etc. depending on team goals for the year and availability of resources. Each of these teams are contigent on that - they've sprung up and disappeared a few times that I've lost track, almost.

The standard teams even get shuffled - so, frame has been part of chassis and part of its own group, and engine and electronics have merged and separated, depending on the nature of the people starting the teams themselves. Self-organizing systems, if you will.

There will always be strong and weak team members - this is inevitable. Less committed team members are useful if they pick projects that need to be done and deliver on them in due time with due quality. If that's all they do, well, at least it's one less thing for someone else to do.

And some team members are strong in other areas that are important. Katz & Kahn (1967) identify six important subsystems within organizations - internal social cohesion, external relations, task/production systems, systems maintanence, innovation, and leadership. The super-strong team members are often central members in many or all of these - but most team members can be seen as strong in one or two subsystems, capable in one or two others, and absent entirely in the rest. So, myself, I'd consider myself strong in internal and external social relations and counselling leaders (but not necessarily leading teams/subteams myself), and have slowly gained some experience in the rest by sheer exposure to the environment (so, I can provide some good advice on composites manufacturing, but not machining for example).

The team as a whole needs all these six cylinders running to be properly effective, although inevitably they're not operating at equal efficiency. Some years we're more innovative than others. Some years we have our shit together as a system better than others. Some years are very fun, others are plagued with personal politics. Some years we do great PR jobs, some years we have posters that thank "Good Year Tires" (oy...) Some years are leaders are brilliant, some years they need serious help.

Again, it's hard to predict - depends on the nature of the beast that year. With such high turnover (about 50-66% per annum here) it's amazing that any team can be consistently good. The most important thing there I think is to consider the medium- and long-term viability of the system as a whole and work to make it viable for future years when you're not going to be there - and to keep in touch with alumni who can help out to keep that going.

Another thing I've been good at doing - I know too many people here now and can at least trace the right ones down for advice and assistance as required. Without this, you lose contact within two years, even - of all the people on this year's team, only four were there to see the 2002 car win, including myself. Three are now team leaders, another a good content expert in his areas of expertise. Then there's people such as myself and a couple of others who are still around and can help out as required but largely doing other things.

Everyone else is gone, so you better know where they went and bring them back in the fold as required. Our 2002 engine team leader was here earlier in the week on a visit, which was cool, and our 2001 organization/manpower leader called me last night to announce that he was drunk and going to get way drunker.

---
Michael Jones
Coordinator, Student Project Teams, College of Engineering

Cornell Racing
http://fsae.mae.cornell.edu

[vinHonda]

Mike, the new car looks fantastic. We should hit the ground Feb 22. as planned. Did Yuki come back to visit? Gimme a shout if you're head'n back up to T.O.

Vinh

University of Toronto Formula SAE Racing Team
www.fsae.utoronto.ca (http://www.fsae.utoronto.ca)

[Michael Jones]

Yuki's biggest fan still. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif Haven't heard from him recently, will have to drop a line sometime. Yeah, I'll probably be back sometime over spring break, if so I'll definitely drop by and see how the 2004 Toronto car is going.

I'm sure you guys will be a force to be reckoned with again, especially if you can finish endurance. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif We should've won in 2000, but we didn't. We should've finished outside the top 10 in 2003, and almost did, but we got lucky that the car managed to restart every time it conked out on hard braking. Ugh. Always sucks to have good teams conk out due to random elements, but that's the way things go.

---
Michael Jones
Coordinator, Student Project Teams, College of Engineering

Cornell Racing
http://fsae.mae.cornell.edu

[vinHonda]

I think it's the common asian thing be'n a fan of Yuki's! I don't see many in FSAE.

It should be my last car so..... we'll see what we can pull outta the bag. Fast, consistent endurance times will be our goal.....and with consistency means...finishing. We know what we have to do. So, we'll see.

Looked carefully at those tyres...... even for a quick shakedown, looks like u guys put on some nice.....Yokos? What are those?! Red lettering? Cornell special? Did u guys dry sump her this year?

So weird......we'll also have our own wheel centres this year!

Vinh

University of Toronto Formula SAE Racing Team
www.fsae.utoronto.ca (http://www.fsae.utoronto.ca)

[Michael Jones]

Yoko wets, yep. Not our favorite wet tires from testing, so we have more of them around. Wheel centers are very cool. Great minds think alike.

Yuki is, as Tom Waits puts it, big in Japan. He was interviewed on camera for something the last couple of years in Detroit. If he's smart, he'll spin it into a Hello Yuki! collection of stationary, bubble tea covers, and personal hygiene products.

Here's hoping that you get to the finishing line. As much as de-fault are the two sweetest words in the English language, you do want to earn the trophy in the end.

---
Michael Jones
Coordinator, Student Project Teams, College of Engineering

Cornell Racing
http://fsae.mae.cornell.edu

[Denny Trimble]

We're running custom wheel centers this year too... creepy.

University of Washington Formula SAE ('98, '99, '03, '04)

[Michael Jones]

LOL. Wheel center innovators of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but a little unsprung weight, and some pimp wheels to gain.

Welcome to the club. A good one at that. Always liked UW's car, especially since someone in 2001 commented to me in awe that Cornell was actually bothering to take pictures of it.

Man, we had our heads up our asses back then. Apologies in full for that. We're really nice people now. I've kicked their ass for years to make sure of it. We still want to kick your ass of course (just ask Vinh, that's how we got to know him - Yuki cc:ed him on a message to our internal list, the schmuck) but we do it with a smile and a kind word now.

Kind of like George W. Bush, but much less evil.

---
Michael Jones
Coordinator, Student Project Teams, College of Engineering

Cornell Racing
http://fsae.mae.cornell.edu