Monash Motorsport on Project Management in Formula Student

On Friday April 9 at 10 AM IST, Monash Motorsport (MMS) of Monash University, Australia, shall be delivering an interactive virtual presentation on Project Management in Formula Student, via the Students Conclave initiative by Formula Bharat. This is a closed session and participants will be required to register via the form available on www.formulabharat.com/students-conclave.

Overview by Monash Motorsport

We are excited to share our secrets with you all. They are not actually secrets either; we share them with everyone who asks us. In this 2 hour session, we will go through a range of interactive tasks and opportunities for reflection on “How to Formula Student”. There will be no absolutely no discussion of roll centers, aero coefficients or cold start enrichments. We will leave all the technical stuff at the door. Instead we will try to change the way you think about this competition.

Depending on time, some of our topics for activity might include:

• Getting your priorities straight: Why Formula Student is a project management competition, not an engineering one.
• Stop trying to win: Why winning is the laziest and most counterproductive goal you can have.
• Measuring success: If we don’t care about winning what should you care about?
• The Pyramid of Performance for Formula Student: How high have you gone and what is the next step? 
• If only we had “X”: Coming to terms with being an underdog in Formula Student.
• Your greatest resource in Formula Student: It is under your nose and most teams don’t even realize it.
• Can’t buy me love: Professionalism doesn’t always cost money, but it does take effort.
• Know what you don’t know. Or much better, know everything about your past car and teams.
• The long game: Learning to care about the team you leave behind.

We will also show some examples of what we do here at Monash on all of these topics. We look forward to meeting you all and changing the way that you think about this competition!

Setup Requirements

This is an interactive session. Get together with your current leadership and faculty advisor, in-person (only if possible) and join from a single Zoom connection (again, only if possible). Bring a good knowledge of your team and be ready to work on your computers or laptops. Webcams and active microphones are a must, there will be no hiding on mute in the back corners of the Zoom meeting.

About Monash Motorsport

Monash Motorsport (MMS) was established in 2000, and the first five cars that the team built, failed to finish the Endurance event at FSAE Australasia. After a lot of ‘soul-searching’, the team took a long hard look at the competition as a whole and its approach to it. This led to MMS implementing a lot of changes. Most of these changes angered or disappointed design judges at the time (some continue to do so to this day). Some have also become common features on cars around the world – wings, direct acting suspension, locked differentials etc. More importantly, these changes made MMS’ team members, families, sponsors and university very happy to be associated with the team. It also led to the MMS’ first competition win in 2009, and the team’s current World Rankings at #1 in the Combustion Category and #3 in the Electric Category. 

About the Speakers

Dr. Scott Wordley

Academic Adviser, Monash Motorsport 

Scott is a Monash Mechanical Engineering graduate and member of the very first MMS FSAE teams from 2000. He completed a Masters (Exhaust noise) and then a PhD (Aerodynamics) at Monash and has been Academic Adviser to the team since 2011. Scott is currently Director of Student Teams in the Faculty of Engineering and looks after a cohort of 15 teams who undertake activities that range from brewing beer, to blacksmithing, to AI. He has the best job in the world!

Jack Church

Chief Executive Officer, Monash Motorsport 

Jack is currently pursuing a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering (Honors) and a Bachelors in Commerce, majoring in Management. He joined the team in 2019 as a Technical and Business member in the search for extra curricular activities to compliment both sides of his degree. Since then he has gained expertise in Stakeholder Relations, Marketing and High Performance Management through the roles of Business Head of Department and now CEO.

Malhar Palkar

Chief Operating Officer, Monash Motorsport 

Malhar is currently pursuing a double degree consisting of a Bachelors in Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering (Honors) and a Bachelors in Commerce, majoring in Finance. He joined Monash Motorsport in 2019 as a Technical team member, looking for an outlet to apply what he learnt in his coursework in a field that interests him, that would provide him with opportunities to learn more, and that would prepare him for the standards expected in a professional environment.

Malhar’s previous roles on the team as Finance Manager and Electrical Systems Engineer have provided him with experience ranging from the technical aspects of the team, liaising with key stakeholders within the team, to the management of team operations.

Ben Robinson

Chief Technical Officer, Monash Motorsport 

Ben is currently pursuing a double degree in Mechanical Engineering and Econometrics at Monash University. He has been a member of Monash Motorsport since 2017 and has worked on a diverse range of systems from low voltage and firmware development, to the structural design of the team’s new in-wheel gearbox for their all-wheel drive platform. This required extensive requirement analysis and integration, as well as time and resource management.

All of these skills has helped to prepare Ben for his current role as Chief Technical Officer of Monash Motorsport. In this position, his job is to direct the technical objectives of the team, in order to meet the team’s vision with available resources.

Interested in learning about future Students Conclave events? Visit www.formulabharat.com/students-conclave.