Introduction:
Starting the summer of 2024, I took on the responsibility as the President and Project Manager of the UC Davis Formula Racing EV team. With a team of 100 students, 16 different subteams, and 25 subteam leads to manage, it was a challenge navigating through technical issues, team conflicts, logistical nightmares, and very limited budgets. I am now reaching the end of my second year in this role and cannot be grateful enough for the problems I faced and the thousands of mistakes I made along the way.
There are still plenty of things to learn about managing an engineering team, but these are some of the processes I’ve had the privilege of building over the past couple years, I get to share!
FE13 Final Design Review Presentation
Every year, the Formula Racing team hosts four design reviews throughout the design season (around 5 months). This is a chance for all subteam leads to present the work and validation for their designs this season and receive feedback from alumni, advisors, etc. As the project manager, I present teamwide updates and progress as well as any major setbacks and timeline changes that have occurred since the last review. In this presentation, I talk about how I use tools like Gantt chart, slip charts, and FMEA to analyze bottlenecks, recognize slippage, and mitigate risk. I also talk briefly about the tools I used to justify timeline critical decisions. Below is a recording of the presentation and a PDF of the slides.
FE13 FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis)
At the beginning of my time as a PM for FRUCD, risk assessments were not deemed necessary and were not taken seriously.
I took on the responsibility to implement and enforce risk analysis on all subteams in order to stay on top of planning.
The goal of creating and maintaining a risk assessment sheet is to recognize and rank risks and implement backup plans ahead of time.
Risk assessments are made and evaluated at scheduled quarterly “Gantt Meetings” along with each subteam.
