This is Part 3 of a series written by guest writer Ricky Nietubicz on his experience on the Formula SAE team at the University of Delaware. FSAE is a competition where students design, build, and compete with small formula-style racing cars. Ricky was President of his FSAE club, and his team went to the Nationals in Detroit during the 2006-2007 season.

Ok, so you have warm, interested bodies. Now you have to find a way to get them organized into a lean, mean, car-building machine. There are plenty of different ways to go about this, several of which our team tried, with varying success. In order for things to work smoothly, you need a degree of cooperation from the team members themselves, and you need a certain critical mass of individuals.

First, the basics. Above all else you need leadership. We had a group of officers who provided that leadership, consisting of a president, two vice presidents, treasurer, secretary and, due to some hilarious and exciting but not particularly kosher incidents, a safety officer, each with certain responsibilities. There wasn’t much of a “chain of command” within the officers, everybody was generally equal below the president. So, in reverse order (It makes the most sense that way. Really.):

Safety Officer - mostly self-explanatory, makes sure the shop is at least mostly up to OSHA’s demands, flammables are in the flammables cabinet, there aren’t empty drums of race gas on the back loading dock that end up getting the school in trouble for violating the Clean Air Act, nobody is welding wearing only sunglasses and a t-shirt as “safety gear” while an OSHA inspector comes by, that sort of thing. Also in charge of driver training to make sure inexperienced drivers get enough training to not send the car into a curb, light pole or Chevy Impala.

Secretary - records meeting minutes, handles correspondence with sponsors, school newspaper, etc., handles recruiting and sponsorship materials, etc.

Treasurer - keeps the books, contributes to budget as well as sponsor and fundraising needs. Most importantly, oversees the Cost Report.

Vice President-Design - oversees designing of parts, particularly “big picture” things like the frame, and most importantly, oversees the Design Report.

Vice President-Manufacturing - oversees the manufacture of parts, a big job to take on, as there are a lot of parts that need to be made. Doesn’t have to make all the parts, but coordinates the manufacturing so that things get done.

President - essentially the crew chief. Ties it all together. Very “big picture” in dealing with the bureaucracy that is any major university, keeps the team pointed generally, more or less, in the right direction. Must rely largely on officers and/or group leaders to handle the tasks assigned, as it is impossible to keep the “big picture” view and also spend time on each of the “little picture” items.

So there you go, now you have leadership. So what about the rest of the team? This is where the “critical mass” part comes in. Ideally, you’ll break off into task-based groups, with group leaders who report to the officers as to their projects’ status. These groups can be standing, such as “Driveline,” “Frame,” “Suspension” or they can be more flexible and formed to handle a task that arises such as our “Gut the wiring because it’s a rat’s nest and start the harness over again from scratch” group, formed in response to several shorts, including one wire that shorted on the gas tank, showering it with sparks, as I was driving (I’m told it was spectacular). In tracing the short, we found that 1. many wires didn’t, in fact, go anywhere and 2. a “wire” wasn’t one continuous strand of insulated copper, but a conglomeration of smaller ones (it’s the wire that starts from the throttle body as brown, goes to blue with a white stripe and then red…).

It’s OK to have overlap between teams, less so to have overlap between team leaders. For instance, it would be beneficial to have each leader devote his or her time to a specific task group at a time, but an individual team member could work on Suspension as well as Driveline as needed. Ideally everyone could devote themselves to a particular area, but this is an issue of having enough people, and the cooperation thing, people generally, in my experience, want to have their hands in more than one thing at a time, rather than only learning about one aspect of the car.

Solidarity also comes into play here, the individuals within the team have to be willing to give for the good of the team. Everyone has to understand that they have an obligation to the team, to perform as best they can and contribute all they can, no small order when you’re talking about a volunteer organization. For instance, nobody really wants to spend days or weeks forming molds for bodywork, and then covering it with bondo, sanding it, and repeating the process only so that he/she can ruin a set of clothes at the end of it laying up the carbon fiber. People want to be able to say “I built that engine” not, “I calculated the optimal spring rates” or “I calculated the torsional rigidity.” The point is, though, that the team is a cohesive unit. Which individual completes each task is largely irrelevant. The point is that it got done.

Solidarity also comes into play during the inevitable crunch times. Two examples stick out from my team. My freshman year, we spent the ~80 hours or so immediately preceding the commencement of finals week in the shop, basically nonstop, to get the car finished. I don’t know how many grades suffered as a result of that one, but it couldn’t have been any small figure. An entire weekend gone, parties blown off, studying shelved. At the end, the car didn’t fire, but that’s another story. Everyone was there.

My senior year, we had a running car for Detroit, but we wanted to improve upon it and tune it as best as we could, and learn as much about what we did right and wrong as possible. We use school parking lots for our driving days, and there is one week that has an optimal combination of empty parking lots and decent weather- spring break. I was amazed at how many of my teammates were willing to sacrifice their break to get the car in good working order, tested and tuned. Two guys stood out, as they were right there with me, the entire time, and you never forget the guys who come through when you need it most. (Dragon and Tomato- you were there when nobody else was. Thanks again.)

So there you have it. Ideally you’ll have leadership and task-based teams that get things done on schedule. Simple in theory- the officers set out goals and general timelines, then as tasks are broken down they are handed out in small packages to groups who can tackle them. Setting realistic timelines and deadlines is possibly the single most crucial part of getting projects done on an FSAE team, second most important is putting individuals in charge of tasks that they can handle. These officer roles and task-based groups can be modified to suit your team, this is just a guide on how we were trying to get things done. For instance, a very large team could break into big groups- Driveline, Chassis, etc., and then break those groups into sub-groups- Driveline could be broken into Engine Internals/Externals, Engine Management, etc., and Chassis can be broken into Frame, Suspension, Brakes, or whatever else suits your needs. Don’t be afraid to try things.