This is FSAE

Lights out Alice!

The article that i came across today and that i am going to share below captures the very essence of Formula Student and why it is THE THING that you should devote your college life to.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/key-points-successful-formula-sae-team-emily-anthony?trk=v-feed&lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_feed%3B9kjlnM0g%2Fsp2hpV2WaFh%2BQ%3D%3D

The above is the link to the article written by Emily Anthony, Captain of the Pitt Univ FS team. Let's hear it from her:

Key Points for a successful Formula SAE Team:

I was one of the captains for the University of Pittsburgh Formula SAE team for the 2015-2016 season. Riding off of the team’s successes in the previous year at Michigan International Speedway, the Hockenheim ring, and the Red Bull Ring, the team was ready to tackle another season with a North American tour in FSAE Michigan, Formula North, and FSAE Lincoln. Frankly, we killed it: 11th/120 in Michigan, 16th/30 in North, and 8th/80 in Lincoln. Not bad!

We’ve seen nearly every team at some point have an off year, a bad funding situation, or a catastrophic accident that leaves the team empty handed when May and June roll around for competition. How can we avoid these failures? How can we be better year after year? How can our organization grow and thrive? 

Team structure is the foundation of your organization.

First and foremost, how is your team managed? That seems to be a repetitive question when team captains talk to other captains over a beer and dinner in a pizza joint close to the track. What is the winning formula? How do you do succeed at these competitions?

In short: there is no answer. That is the beauty of Formula Student. If there were a winning formula (pun intended), each vehicle would be identical, every presentation would be the same, there would be no innovation, and the competition would stagnate. Boooooring.There is one point that I can say with 100% confidence:

You need a plan.

There are specific things that each team can do that work for the high level teams which are detailed in this article. These are not quick fixes, nor are they a complete solution. However, they are steps in the correct direction; as long as you are pointed the right way, you can make your own path!

First is a captain proposal:

1. Have a captain that serves as a liaison between SAE/Formula Student, the school, sponsors, and the team
2. Have a captain that serves as a chief engineer
3. Have a captain that serves as a chief financial officer

What? 3 team captains? But my team only has 10 students on it! I’ll get to that later.

The intent with this setup is to lessen the workload on a traditional 1 captain setup. Additionally, this builds a foundation for a tiered management system.

The liaison captain, or what we call him at Pitt, is the Executive Director. This individual does not need to be an engineering expert; we’ve had business students as well as engineering students fill this role. What this individual needs is confidence when speaking to sponsors, school officials, and competition officials. The Executive Director is the face of the team. They must have the ability to properly manage documentation of all types, hold students accountable for their projects, maintain organization of the office and shop, plan events, and handle all competition responsibilities. This person must know and understand the FSAE rules* as well as understand how to find information for the team - not necessarily know it all. This person is the Formula SAE expert and the team expert; not the car or finances expert.

The Chief Engineer’s role is pretty clear cut: hold students accountable for their design and manufacturing responsibilities, maintain organization of the SolidWorks PDM (or Dropbox, Drive, or whatever you use to organize your CAD files), make the final engineering decisions when there is a disagreement, and must be a full car expert. He shouldn’t design the entire vehicle, but if a lead can’t make it to competition, he should be able to present his teammate's portion in Design**.

Finally, the Chief Financial Officer’s role is to manage the team’s finances. At Pitt, we have two university accounts. These need to be monitored; invoices and receipts must be collected and students must be held accountable for the money they are spending. The CFO also organizes sponsor information and is responsible for the Cost Report and the Presentation event. Business students like Accounting, Finance or Marketing thrive in this role. Broaden your horizons and get more students this way. More on that later.

Below is the layout of the Pitt team. Forgive the incompleteness – it’s from a draft. The Executive Director is blue, Chief Engineer is red, and Chief Financial Officer is green. Their team leaders fall below them.

Some caveats: we are not unique in this setup and this setup is far from foolproof. Have suggestions? Share them in the comments.

We started this setup in the 2014-2015 season after a Team Captain studied abroad with UAS Munich and learned from the German FS teams how to properly manage a team. We’ve had tremendous success with this organizational style and I attribute most of that to him and our friends at UAS Munich.

*As does the rest of the team, but the exec should be the best at knowing the rules. Read the rules.

**Every team member should be able to present at least one portion of Design by himself successfully, but you should have multiple students with that capability. Pitt is successful in the Design event because of our ability as a team to present the sections of the car - not just as individuals. Full system understanding is critical.

Recruitment is a full-time effort.

I served as the Internal Affairs lead for Pitt’s 2014-2015 team where recruitment was my primary responsibility. We just came off of a poor season plagued by a young team, poor recruitment, major engineering oversights, and poor competition results. It was far from a failure considering the circumstances, but we were not satisfied with how everything turned out. Recruitment was vital to build the program back up.

• Recruitment for the next season starts the second you get home from competition.
• Recruitment does not end. Ever.
• Recruitment is not limited to University events – go to events in your city and get on social media. Most schools have “Pitt Class of 2020”-esque pages for incoming freshmen. Get students on there. Don’t spam the page. Look for engineering and business students. Talk to them. Introduce them to the team.
• Go to freshman engineering and freshman business class seminars and talk about the team. Keep it at a low technical level - these guys may not even know what a transmission is, so don't start talking about intricacies of the drivetrain system!
• Have a new member powerpoint/orientation planned for when they come down to the shop. Give them:

1. Who - who to talk to if they want to get involved in something specific
2. What - what is FSAE? No, this isn't a Formula 1 fanclub (well... depends on who you ask). Give them the macro level stuff: this is an engineering design and project management competition where we design, build, and race open-wheeled, formula-style race vehicles. Again, don't talk about the intricacies of the drivetrain system.
3. Where - where is the shop? The office? Where are meetings?
4. Why - why do we do certain things? Show them (briefly) the rules and some competition information.
5. How - how can they get more involved? What is the next step to becoming a full team member?

• Do not forget about upperclassmen – they are, typically, more useful than freshmen for these projects!
• Learn names. Make these students feel welcome.
• Freshman work (clean the shop, bend a tab, hold this wrench) sucks. Do the freshman work with them.
• Have recruit-specific meetings where you teach them about Formula and the team. Leave the sub-team specific meetings to the specific leaders.
• If money and space allows, bring your freshmen to competition.

We had a wonderful recruitment class in 2015 and now these students are all Team Leads and Team Captains. I expect them to get top 10 in Michigan in 2017 and build the best car Pitt has ever had. They are a great example of a fully established fact: these freshmen are your future team’s lifeline. Take recruitment seriously.

There is never enough sponsorship, and sponsor relationships are vital.

Sponsors keep most teams afloat and a new key sponsor can bring your team to the next level. Pitt has fostered a few new sponsors in the past year as well as maintained our long standing ones and that has allowed the team to do some fantastic innovation. For example, Investment cast, CNC, and 3D printed parts that we are incapable of making at our University are instead outsourced to sponsors. Imagine what you can create (fixtures, uprights, etc) without the geometric constraints of a manual machine! Through building these relationships. we've learned that sponsorship is a full time, full team effort. 

• Thank your sponsors periodically. Send them updates over email as the year progresses. Thank them on your social media accounts. Invite them to your events. Send them gifts (t-shirts or photos work well) after the season is over.
• Never pay full price without asking for a discount first.
• Learn how to solicit donations properly. This is a great resource (pdf warning): https://www.civicus.org/new/media/Writing%20a%20funding%20proposal.pdf
• USA teams: did you know that Formula SAE is a 501(c)3 organization? From their site: "SAE International is a 501(c)(3) organization, and thus, exempt from federal income tax. It is also classified as a public charity under sections 509(a)(1) and 170(b)(1)(A)(vi) of the Internal Revenue Code. SAE Collegiate Chapters and SAE Collegiate Design Series™ teams are considered SAE International, not independent entities." Read more about how this benefits your team here: http://students.sae.org/chapters/collegiate/manual/finance.htm
• Have a professionally made sponsorship brochure or packet. Bring it everywhere. Have business cards. Your school’s marketing department may be able to help you with this. Here’s Pitt’s, for reference (pdf warning): http://www.engineering.pitt.edu/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=2147536868 

Deadlines are everything.

As soon as SAE deadlines were announced, I put them in my personal Google calendar and the team’s Google calendar (psst take the hint: you should have a team Google calendar) and made it available to the team. 

• Consider using a project management software. We use Asana: https://asana.com/
• You know, you can submit documents early.
• My last point is the #1 thing you should take from this article: have prescribed design deadlines and manufacturing deadlines. You must have a complete CAD model at least 6 months before your first competition. You should have, bare minimum, a month* of testing time. For you NA teams, this design deadline is November 15. If a part is not in the model, it does not go in the car. Enforce that. Have part numbers and create drawings** after the deadline (2 weeks). 

*A friend at Stuttgart recommends raising this to 3 months minimum. I should clarify here - 1 month of testing with a complete car before competition, so April to May. If the weather allows, of course you should be testing with a rolling chassis before then! Summer testing is also very helpful and can let the team test new designs and concepts for the next prototype.

**To add to the last point: Create a part numbering scheme that is identical to the Cost Report numbering. Your CFO will thank you later. Have a chassis deadline before your CAD deadline. Have the tubes delivered and welding supplies ready on the first day of manufacturing season.

Meetings must be short and sweet.

Have general body meetings as well as technical meetings. Keep the hard engineering discussion out of the general body meetings - these are reserved for team management, deadlines, and events. Keep agendas to 5 items or less.

***Take advantage of resources offered by Formula SAE.***

Yes, it's that important. What are those resources?

I've already mentioned SAE's 501(c)3 status. We should all be aware of the SAE student membership benefits as well. There is also a pretty long list of equipment suppliers (software, primarily) that teams have access to as SAE chapters.

Did you know that you can have lecturers (we’ve hosted Steve Fox and Edward Kasprzak) come in and teach your team a variety of things for free? Tire testing, team management, aerodynamics, materials testing, and more are covered. There are over a dozen topics covered by the SAE Industrial Lecturers: http://students.sae.org/chapters/lectureship/lecturers.htm

There are tons of software perks as a Formula SAE student. For example, SimScale, a cloud-based FEA/CFD simulation tool, is free to Formula SAE students. Pitt alumni Jim Shaw wrote a great article regarding FEA/CFD and has great resources in this article if you cannot afford software: http://www.simscale.com/blog/2016/10/digital-design-formula-sae/

Small addition: you should read Pat Clarke's blog. He touches on a variety of subjects including design, team management, and sponsorship. It is a must-read for captains and new team members alike. His most recent post (as of July 2016) is entitled "Back to Basics".

Documentation, documentation, documentation.

I’ve already covered this a little bit. Documentation is vital to a team's success, whether it is a receipt or a design report. As engineers and businessmen in the real world, a paper trail follows us with every decision we make. We must learn how to manage that paperwork now.

• Every receipt you get should be filed and accounted for. This will make budget proposals to the University/sponsors and spending tracking a lot easier.
• Your design report starts at the beginning of design cycle, not 3 weeks before the submission deadline. Your university may have a writing center where students and faculty offer revision and proofreading services. Use those! Consult best practices for your drawings and get feedback from your professors. Something to consider from the 2017-2018 FSAE rules:"S6.2.4 (Design Report) - These documentsmay be graded as part of the Design Event score, and will be used by the judges to sort teams into the appropriate design groups based on the quality of their review."Want a good bay? Write a good design report.
• Your business presentation begins with your business logic case, which begins with your team management goals for the year, which begin right after competition of the previous year. Notice a common theme? Plan ahead.
• Have an organized Google Drive/Dropbox/PDM with complete file names (Part1.sldprt does not fly) and comments on revisions.
• Have a backup of your CAD model. Have a backup of the backup. Backup your CFD and FEA. Backup your meeting minutes. Get the idea yet?
• GET EVERYTHING IN WRITING. Whether it is funding promises from the school, deals for testing locations at a local restaurant’s lot, or the fact that the chassis lead bought you dinner last week, it needs to be in writing. Many fantastic teams have been, for lack of a better term, screwed when someone says “I didn’t agree to do that” or “I didn’t volunteer to do that”.

Play nice with the University.

The University is probably your lifeline and they can cut you off in a microsecond.

• Follow the rules.
• Meet their deadlines.
• Don’t piss the wrong people off.
• Go to their events. Smile. Shake hands.
• Don’t be irresponsible.

Nothing else has to be said here. It's this simple.

Hold others accountable without being the “bad guy.”

I struggled with this starting out. For some teams, this organization is a class (senior design, etc.) and for others, this is a purely extracurricular club. Pitt is a hybrid, but mostly volunteer students. Regardless of format, holding the senior design students responsible for their projects is easier – their grade depends on it; however, with the volunteers, what is the secret to motivating them?

Holding each other accountable while being constructive and positive is sometimes a difficult task. Tensions are high, expectations are higher, and many students degrade into pettiness and bad attitudes. The only thing you can do as the team captain to combat this is to not fall into the negative trap. Be positive. Be encouraging. Offer help. Do not be condescending. Be crystal clear about your expectations and reiterate these. Do not think the sky is falling, and if you do, do not show that you think the sky is falling. Keep your cool. Do not try to be everyone’s friend. Do treat everyone with kindness and respect. And, when the time comes, do not be afraid to hurt someone’s feelings by reassigning a project to another team member. The team is bigger than one individual.

I failed at many things listed above early in the year. I was a loose cannon, was receptive to the negativity (versus perceptive and avoiding it) and it brought me and the team down. Do not play into this. Michelle Obama's quote from her speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2016 applies here: “When they go low, we go high.”

In short, be a leader. Motivating your team is the most difficult and most important factor in a successful season.

Respect yourself.

We’re going to get very serious for a moment. Many team captains joke that they have lost years off of their life because of the stress involved in managing an organization of this caliber. Frankly, that is off-putting. There is no pride in developing an anxiety disorder or depression because the stress is too high. Take care of yourself. Take a shower every day. Eat 3 meals. Sleep. Don’t neglect yourself, your apartment, your friends, your fish, or your studies. You are a person first, a student second, and a team captain/member third. If you are feeling overwhelmed, ask for help from your team, your advisor, or school counseling.

At the end of the day, this is just a student club.

Conclusion - what is success?

A friend from TU Valencia asked for clarification: what is success? That is what your team must decide. We are all on different levels and success is determinant on that level - are you a top 10 team vying for top 5? Your successes will be different from a team looking to finish endurance or make it to competition. Step 0 would be to identify a goal and work towards it. The 2016 goal for Pitt FSAE was to get more points in competition than we have before, and we knocked it out of the park. Make your goals:

• Comprehensive
• Within the bounds of FSAE and Formula Student expectations (read: rules)
• Reasonable based on your available resources
• Aligned with your Business Logic case and Design philosophy
• Clear to your University, your sponsors, and your team

Nothing beats having everyone on the same page. Best of luck to everyone in the seasons to come, and I invite any discussion and insight in the comments.

Facebook: facebook.com/PittFSAE

Twitter/Instagram: @PittFSAE

engineering.pitt.edu/FSAE