How did you first get involved with Formula Student?
I first heard about FS in 2003 from Allan Staniforth and Ian Scott who were both Design Judges and fellow competitors in UK hillclimbs and sprints. I managed to combine a US business trip to Michigan with the 2003 FSAE competition in Detroit. I then volunteered for FS UK in Summer 2003 and have been involved ever since. I was also a Design Judge at FS Germany for the first 3 years but have had to miss it in recent years because of clashes with my own UK hillclimb/sprint competition calendar.
Why did you become involved in the Business Presentation?
When I went to Detroit and Bruntingthorpe in 2003 I was so impressed by the standard of the top running cars that I wanted to stay involved. The commitment and enthusiasm of the students was infectious. I had been involved with various Engineering Institution initiatives over the years and this was one way of putting something back into industry and education whilst having a lot of fun in the process. In turn FS has taught me a great deal. I learn something new from the students every year.
What is your top piece of advice for the Business Presentation?
Read the rules and understand that this is a business presentation role play i.e. a sales pitch. Be objective; identify areas of technical and commercial risk. Eliminate or control them to the extent that you would invest your own money in the scheme. If you don’t believe in the proposal then the judges won’t either! Use the full 10 minutes and practice, practice, practice!
Ideally, at what stage should teams be at now, with the Presentation?
You should be able to write the Business Presentation at this stage in the competition even if the car isn’t finished. Admittedly you may not have pretty pictures of the finished car, or the ability to demonstrate a running prototype, but the business case follows from fundamental design, manufacturing and commercial decisions that you make very early in the project. So even if you haven’t written the PowerPoint presentation (and many teams will not have done) you should have the core content available to you. If you find yourself retrofitting a business case to the car, struggling to justify the declared design targets and key ‘decisions’, then you have probably attempted it from a bottom up approach, preferring welding to planning. The judges will see through this in all static events and your scores may suffer. Next year use the Business Logic Plan (BLP) to steer your project in its early stages.