Minimum number of team members

[Panayiotis Pavlou]

Hi,
We are a new entry team from Cyprus called FUF from Frederick University.
It is very difficult to find new team members since nobody believes on the project because it is halfway finish.
My question is that what is the minimum number of team members can be in a team? Now we are 5 and we expect to be up to 10.
For Example can the team leader make the business logic case, design the frame and design the steering system?
How the pressentations work at the Events with the judges?

[JulianH]

Hey Panayiotis,

so you need at least 4 team members in order to compete as you need 4 different drivers for all events.
Other than that, there is no minimum number of team members.

But of course it makes everything more difficult.
In such a small team, you can expect the team leader to do something like designing the frame and maybe even do the steering, yes. Business Logic Case is something to do on a slow afternoon ;) As you probably will not aim for the overall victory, some points lost there will not hurt you.
Focus on the Design report and Cost, that is sufficient for statics.

In 2009, Zurich had about 9 to 12 active team members, won overall dynamics and placed 3rd overall in the UK. To be honest, I don't think that this is possible anymore but to get a good car running, it should work out with 9-10 team members that are fully committed.
I guess that a team that has 5 people now will have a really hard time to have a running car in July... You should finish your design by end of January and have the car assembled in May at last..

Otherwise I'd suggest to stop as early as possible and aim for 2018. I think a well-thought project for 2018 will give you a better learning experience than to try it for 2017 and basically ending up putting things together that you find or buy somewhere...

Best
Julian

[mech5496]

Hello Panayotis, and welcome! I will echo what Julian said; we have always been a small team as well. You can find that 8-10 devoted and passionate team members can get you a long way. Best piece of advice I can give, have a concrete plan, stick to your timeline and talk to each other as much as possible. Oh, and keep everything simple.

[Charles Kaneb]

It takes eight. You're allowed to have fewer, but doing a decent job of designing and building a car in a year takes 8 people who are committed to the job.

[Freddie]

I'm with Charles on this one: while you'd might be allowed to be fewer than eight people, that is (in my opinion) the absolute minimum to be able to make it through. Especially for a first year team, there's so much that needs to be done to make the car ready and go to competition that the workload becomes too high for a smaller team. We were 25 on paper for our first car, maybe 15 were involved in the design, 7 or 8 built the car during summer and there were 12 of us going to competition. The amount of hours needed then is immense, and tend to break people.

[Dunk Mckay]

It also depends a lot on experience levels. If I was forming a team from all the past team members I've known and worked with, then I'd be quite happy picking only 4 or 5 of them, and would be confident of having a very good car design. We'd then just need to rope in some extra hands for the event itself, just to havea few extra hands for carrying fire-extinguishers, etc.

It also helps if you already have a previous vehicle design to work from. With a completely inexperienced team, one that has to spend time understanding the rules and requirements, then I'd want at least a dozen, maybe more. Just to have enough to do all the research, CAD work, simulations, etc. But they would all need to be committed, don't waste your time on people who are only half-hearted about the project; it's a false investment, they'll be a drain on your time and energy and ultimately won't deliver what you need them to. (Note that if someone wants to joing the team initially, it is the team leaders job to make sure they are motivated to be fully committed.

[Will M]

Don't forget about succession planning.
You might be tempted to only recruit senior (4th year) students.
But to really build a team you will also need to recruit younger students for the following years.
This is true even for teams where FSAE is a senior design/capstone project.

Four or five really talented, dedicated, and experienced team members could build a competitive car given time and resources.
But younger students will need training before they can contribute to the challenging parts of FSAE.
There are also lots of threads here about how a simple design can succeed at FSAE.
A smaller team will do much better with a simple design than a complex one. Especially for the first year.

-William

[Panayiotis Pavlou]

Thanks everybody for replying back. All of your answers are very usefull and helpfull.

Merry X-mas
Panayiotis Pavlou
FUF Team