getting started in SAE at the university of western sydney

[mal-the-man]

Hey guys,
Im trying to start an F-SAE team at my university (university of western Sydney) for my thesis. I was wondering if anyone would have any information regarding project timelines, how to gain sponsorship or any other relevant information that would help our group get started. There seems to so much work involved and we don't know where to start so any info would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks mal.

[mal-the-man]

Hey guys,
Im trying to start an F-SAE team at my university (university of western Sydney) for my thesis. I was wondering if anyone would have any information regarding project timelines, how to gain sponsorship or any other relevant information that would help our group get started. There seems to so much work involved and we don't know where to start so any info would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks mal.

[PatClarke]

Welcome aboard Mal,
I live West of Sydney, not a million miles from UWS. If I can help you in any way, just ask.
A little research will tell you who I am ;-)
Regards
Pat

[terra_dactile]

Hi mal,
The honourable Pat Clarke forgot to mention that he wrote many good papers on the formula student-Germany site that will help your team get started and undertsand what the competition is about, www.sae.org (http://www.sae.org) and Formula student (UK) also have many pertinent papers to your inquireries.

This forum can be very helpfull, but try and keep your questions very precise and sign your name university and role at the bottom of each message so that others can see who you are. As long as you show that you have made un attempt to understand your question, this forum should help you get started,

One of the great things to do at first is to use the search function as I would be ready to bet good money that your questions have most likely been brought up in the past,

Sincerely,

Jude Berthault
ETS FSAE 2003-Current
Team Captain & Vehicle Dynamics Leader

[PatClarke]

The 'honourable' Pat Clarke???? Good grief Jude :-) Who is that other Pat Clarke?

Seriously, there are many 'Pat Clarke' papers on the FSAE-A site too, if one reads the newsletter archives. As Mal is in Australia, he should be well aquainted with the FSAE-A site.

And good luck to all newbies to the best Student Engineering Competition in the known universe.

Cheers
Pat

[BrendonD]

Find more people who will back the team and bring younger members in to sustain it when you are gone. Starting a team is difficult, at least for us there was a LOT of overhead and we are now a little behind. I wish you the best of luck, find the gearheads and put them to work.

[Dallas Blake]

The most important thing, and I cant stress this enough is document everything. If you do any testing, write down funny things you see during the test, write down your initial thoughts, these litle bits of information can trigger thoughts in people who read it later. Keep everything well documented, write reports at the end of the year, keep them filed etc.

[BrendonD]

Yes, I wish I would have done that, but I am always helping with other projects and am basically running every aspect of the team that is not build related. Like I said, the overhead is KILLER....

[markocosic]

Timelines:
You know when the competition is, you know what today's date is, and you know when your major project/exam/schoolwork deadlines are. There won't be much slack time, so the way we're running (also a new team) is to just keep nailing things in sequence and cross fingers that a copetition-ready vehicle arrives before the competition. Pay attention to lead-times on components as they can bite if you're not careful, but else hitting things in sequence works. You will have to invest or carry people early-on - ie, spend longer explaining something thatn it would take to do it yourself. Do this for the first 3 months or, but after that people should only be there if they bring more to the table than then take. Six is enough to design and build a basic car in our experience so far. Nothing groundbreaking technically, but well engineered/executed. It also helps reduce management overheads/systems integration issues if the chunks are bigger! Honestly though I can't really offer much advice here for two reasons: (1) project-management is undoubtedly the loosest part of our ship and will be whilst we 'firefight' our way through the first year and (2) for us our course time commitments have really dictated a lot of it and that'll be specific to you.

Sponsorship:
Sponsorship tiers and standard covering letters were a waste of time in our experience, as is email. Website generates no money by itself, but equally it is expected such that sponsors can show people what they're supporting easily. Don't do what we do and think that you can maintain it 'as a team' (nothing will get done) - website and newsletter is a job in itself and one that lacks immediateimpact/thanks/gratification in the way metal-bashing or pitching to sponsors does, so should be one of the better people.

Well-tailored letter, aimed high (always useful to have your letter passed down by the boss rather than up!) and a seriously glossy brochure (zero content required - all it needs be is slick enough to not look like a non-commital student's production) gets you the right phonecall/meeting, and that's where your interpersonal/blagging skills come into play. Sometimes just the act of telephoning 'reception' in your efforts to find the right numbers/addresses can be enough to secure sponsorship, sometimes it means a full-on sales visit... (Proctor & Gamble were our first major sponsor, and for that 1000GBP in cash we had a 10 minute slot in which four students pitched to their marketing, branding and recruitment heads in a 'dragons den' style event: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dragonsden/ - thrilling and terrifying in equal measure!) No set answer is what I guess I'm trying to say.

Don't burn bridges by putting on shoddy performances. Don't be afraid of aiming high either. Do tailor your pitches - is it recruitment that they're after, publicity, future custom from you engineers, simple interest in anythign with wheels, generosity? (if you find the latter - do let us know!) Don't be afriad of throwign some of your own money in, more than you can afford - initially - as there's nothing better than big lumps of hardware arriving to let the powers that be know you're actually serious. Engine, set of rims, radiator, harnesses etc. Actually relatively inexpensive if done right, but easy to show 'major' progress this way and demonstrate your seriousness/commitment, after which sponsorship becomes easier. We had issues with the University explicity stating that we were nothing to do with them and therefore couldn't use their name etc when fundraising, so this was especially applicable to us, but when speaking with current sponsors after signing on the dotted line, seeing that we meant business was top of their priority list. If you speak to venture capitalists and the likes, often they'll say the team is more important than the business plan, and I realyl do think the same is true for FS programmes. People are investing in YOU and YOUR TEAM, not A CAR or A PROGRAMME as it were.

I reckon you need 10,000GBP as a mixture of cash/benefits-in-kind to do a basic entry - from scratch. Subsequent years can re-use things.

Management/Continuity:
Documentation? I'd say no - nothing over and above what you'd do for the competition in your first year. If you're much like us, there won't be a huge amount that isn't covered by this. The team will be small and you'll be developing the next year's captains/team as you go. Secodn year - definitely a priority. Somethign that's relatively easy for us but harder for you guys is choosing which competition to enter. We'll be enterign Formula Student Germany 2007 with the 'debut' car and Formula Student UK 2008 with that same car but a new team to ease the transition/continuity issues. The new team can do the development work/learning/stuff that really want's documenting, starting with a base to work from this way. Maybe think of it as a "two year programme" - developign the car to enter in competition over two years rather than one (this is ok by the rules), but with the opportunity for a small team to trial it in competition the year before - to have an interim sign of progress, satisfy sponsors, give the outgoing team/brand newbies a chance to have a play etc whilst the killer-entry is done for the next year.


Heck, if I carry on rambling this'll end up as a post to rival one of Big Bird's essays. Top-tip/most useful source of info for us: going to a comp as spectators, listening, asking, mucking in etc. The teams love tellign you all they can and the judges aren't too dissimilar either when they're not arguing about who to position where. Germany beats the UK and the West Coast US for atmosphere, but I guess for you Detroit in May or Cali in June will be the easiest/quickest/cheapest events to get to. If college will fund it, or you can find a grant for the air fares, all the better!

[murpia]

Marko has done a good job covering the organisation side of things. I thought I'd like to add a little from the engineering perspective:

This format of competition has been running for 20+ years and there is a lot of info and particularly photos out there. The problem will be making sense of it all.

Get yourself a room and a photo printer, and start benchmarking all the solutions to all the problems out there as a team. Set yourself a few major topics: frame construction, suspension construction, uprights, engine installation etc. Try and find as many examples of each and critique them: how many parts, how easy to manufacture, how easy to assemble, how easy to calculate the loads, etc. This will give you a good grounding in how to put a car together, and how to identify the good solutions from the bad.

Then do a basic top-down design study: take the rulebook and a basic set of expected performance figures and block out a design. Locate the major masses, decide on the basic dimensions. Calculate the expected contact patch loads, engine/transmission loads, steering loads, etc. Apply those loads to your subsystems to get an idea of the mass requirements, brake requirements. Iterate a few times to get an idea of total expected vehicle mass. Once happy you can start the detailed design & manufacture process, using your benchmark info.

I realise that's pretty brief, but I hope it's useful.
Regards, Ian

[PatClarke]

Thanks guys for all the good advice, not just for Mal, but also for anyone savvy enough to check the archives before setting out on a FSAE/FS journey.
I think Mal's first problem will be in selling FSAE to the UWA management.
It is in this area where I can possibly help. When you get the core of a team together and have a rough idea what you are going to try pitch to the Uni, then give me a shout and I'll look at what you are presenting.
Then, if it's a help, I will come talk with Faculty for you. But you guys have to do the hard stuff! That's all part of FSAE :-)

Cheers
Pat

[markocosic]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by murpia:
This format of competition has been running for 20+ years and there is a lot of info and particularly photos out there. The problem will be making sense of it all. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Go back to Pat Clarke here. I had (tried to get at least) my guys 'n gals go through Pat Clarke's FS photos and explain *why* each one was taken ~80% of them you should be able to answer. Other people's photos are good too, but they tend to photograph /everything/ rather than specific items...

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Get yourself a room and a photo printer, and start benchmarking all the solutions to all the problems out there as a team. Set yourself a few major topics: frame construction, suspension construction, uprights, engine installation etc. Try and find as many examples of each and critique them: how many parts, how easy to manufacture, how easy to assemble, how easy to calculate the loads, etc. This will give you a good grounding in how to put a car together, and how to identify the good solutions from the bad.

Then do a basic top-down design study: take the rulebook and a basic set of expected performance figures and block out a design. Locate the major masses, decide on the basic dimensions. Calculate the expected contact patch loads, engine/transmission loads, steering loads, etc. Apply those loads to your subsystems to get an idea of the mass requirements, brake requirements. Iterate a few times to get an idea of total expected vehicle mass. Once happy you can start the detailed design & manufacture process, using your benchmark info. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Good calls there. Add another benchmark though - the rules! Once you start designing you should find yourself going 'aah, that's why that's there!' quite a lot, as your design falls into place around the rules.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">I think Mal's first problem will be in selling FSAE to the UWA management. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Ask nicely/pitch well first - they may bite. If they don't (usually something along the lines of insufficient resources, it'll get in the way of research, you can't possibly do it on your own etc) - not to worry, just go ahead anyway but on the quiet then start rolling out finished items later. When they see the progress without any apparent resource utilisation or faculty supervision then the tap on the shoulder for a chat - on your/more pleasant terms - follows soon after. It'll be more fear of the unknown rather than beign out to get you specifically that gets a 'no'to fsae.

[Mechanicaldan]

Mal,

Tons of great responses, without the sarcasm. Ditto on using the search function of this forum. The owner is nowhere to be found, and there is little moderation, but there is TONS of great information here if you do the reading.

I've started a new forum and website with the intension of trying to organize all the Frequently Asked Questions, just like this one as where to start.

Here's a couple other FAQs I've tried to answer on my forum: http://www.fsaenetwork.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=15

I highly recommend these as first reads:
http://students.sae.org/competitions/managingprojects.pdf
http://students.sae.org/competitions/formulaseries/fsae...erence/orgteam01.htm (http://students.sae.org/competitions/formulaseries/fsae/reference/orgteam01.htm)
http://students.sae.org/competitions/formulaseries/fsae...erence/orgteam02.htm (http://students.sae.org/competitions/formulaseries/fsae/reference/orgteam02.htm)

and some props to Pat for this one:
http://www.pcm.unifi.it/formula_student/ITA/Files/Tech_Guide_Article.pdf

Then, read the rules:
http://students.sae.org/competitions/formulaseries/rules/rules.pdf

Have fun!

[Pete M]

Seeing as how we've now got yet another team starting up in sydney, is anyone keen to get together for a bit of a friendly drive day? Might be a chance for us to all learn something and maybe show the western sydney guys a couple of cars in action?

[Pavs]

Hey Mal,

This is a bit of a delayed response so i hope everything is going well. I have just spent the last year doing an engineering management thesis for my degree and was very similar to what you would be facing.

I have looked at overhauling the entire Curtin Motorsport operation over the past 12 months - a team which has been under-achieving from day one. This work has lead to capturing concepts of engineering management and volunteer management into one cohesive and efficient framework. Having said that - NO ONE management style will work for you as it is highly variable upon the specific situation/team environment.

I have however generated management handbooks for ALL team members which finally culminate into a pretty huge management handbook for the project manager. This guides the person right from:

*planning and organising
*job design and recruiting
*screening and interviewing
*orientation and training
*evalution and supervision
*retention and recognition

Let us know how your travelling and if you need any help just give me a shout. The 30,000 odd words ive written might be boring but possibly applicable.

Nick
2007 Engineering Project Manager
Curtin Motorsport Team