Motivating and developing future engineers

On 6 and 7 May, groups of young engineers participated in a set of workshops near to Bilbao. Paul Riley, Industrial & Academic Liaison Officer - Northern Region, IMechE Iberia Group, describes the weekend's events.

IMechE Affiliate Members at the University of the Basque Country (UPV) recognised they needed to understand the electrical scrutineering process in more depth in order to prepare their vehicle design and manufacturing process and so organised this event.  

Objectives

Activities of the Greenpower Engineering Trust were also being launched in Spain and Portugal, so this seemed an ideal opportunity to combine activities from both competitions to review how the abilities of the students in different age groups evolve in preparation for the start of their professional careers.

The event was designed to run the two activity programmes in parallel:

• structured learning activities to meet the requirements of each of the participating FS EV teams
• fun bodywork preparation followed by the technical setup and test driving of the Greenpower Goblin and F24 cars.

FS EV Workshop

It was interesting that the team members from the UPV themselves had identified the need to consider the control process when undertaking the product and process design activities. Therefore, the first stage of this event asked the participating teams from each university to reflect on:

• their experiences from previous Formula Student competitions
• the manner in which system errors had been found during scrutineering that they should have anticipated or detected themselves.  

The participation of volunteers with key specialist knowledge, such as Robin Boyd of Jaguar Land Rover and Andoni Olozaga of Valmet, was key throughout this event in helping to guide the students’ reflection on the processes that should be considered for scrutineering relative to different aspects of their vehicles electrical and mechanical systems. 

In the main part of the event, each team learned how to scrutineer the electrical and mechanical systems of their vehicles.  In the short term this will provide the universities with a stronger knowledge base on how to prepare their vehicles in a secure manner. I hope that in the longer-term this will also make the competing engineers aware of the value of their role as future volunteers to help develop new students in years to come. 

On the Sunday, the third part of the workshop was for all universities participating in a reflection of:

• the information that they had learnt
• the benefits of the workshop
• how they would like to prepare a similar event to address their needs for next year.

Greenpower Goblin and F24 Workshop

The Greenpower activities were based on a review of the standard kit builds that teams had completed:

• refining details of steering geometry
• electrical system set-up and areas for improvement

• the design of prototype bodywork prior to starting the design and build preparation for the cars that each school will be using in the next academic year’s range of competitions.  

School staff were able to discuss the level to which different schools could incorporate the Greenpower build and learning tools as part of their curricular activities. 

During this session, Formula Student team members, who were not reviewing their scrutineering techniques, were able to act as mentors giving guidance on how the Goblin and F24 technical issues could be addressed.  They also provided further encouragement and motivation for the primary and secondary education students into STEM learning passing on their experiences of designing, building and driving the Formula Student electrical vehicles.

Event review

It was very interesting to have the full spectrum of electric vehicle teams present, from the 9-16 year olds of Goblin and F24 teams up to those of the Formula Student vehicles. This provided networking opportunities, with the younger students seeing where their participation in Greenpower could take them, while at the same time, the university students having the opportunity to guide and mentor younger students in the design of their cars.  Students and their families were able to reflect on the importance of promoting volunteering in order to facilitate the implementation of the Greenpower framework to be implemented in Spain and Portugal.

From the IMechE Iberia Group perspective, this event was an opportunity for integrating industry, education and society and to promote STEM learning.  I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Gestamp Technology Institute, the Kid’s Kitcar Educational Association, as well as Jeremy and Andoni for their participation, making this event possible.