news October,
Photo: ALAN - SLV
B’ENERGY RACING TEAM FACENS
Captain’s Letter Ramon Ruis We know that adapting to this “new normal” is really hard due to the scenario we are living in, without physical contact and presential meetings, while the responsibilities and deadlines keep on coming. In order to go around the situation we are currently in, we are remotely working mainly in simulations to make the number of prototypes and amount of time spent on manufacture as minimum as possible, just as the future projects' designs starting still on this year, because then, we can develop high quality projects and get to the competition more confident each year. We from B’Energy Racing have adapted to keep working at high level to achieve our minor goals, and then as a consequence achieve our biggest goal of being the national champions. So, we should get a better communication with you to present the team’s news frequently, to make this happen, we are creating the B’Energy Racing’s newsletter where we will show a little about our projects, curiosities, partners and sponsors!
Implementing the Scrum’s framework Letícia Íris Until 2019, the team’s management was done in a traditional way, spreadsheets were used to the execution of Gantt’s graphs using MS Project. At the end of 2019, we started the team’s management in a different and more visual way to manage the activities. We noticed that this way of management was highly satisfactory and beneficial to the whole project’s management, after that we started a study of project management styles looking for best suited for the team. We found on the Scrum’s framework something that we were looking for in our project: Communication and integration between the team members. We realized that the Scrum develops people into a self-management way of working, which makes them feel like a bigger part of the project. That’s why we chose the Scrum’s framework and started implanting it in a more concrete way. At first the team’s management system had to be ready and prepared for this change. To do that, it took them 2 months of studies about the subject. After that, there was a team’s restructuring, pointing new roles for the
members (Scrum Master, Product Owner and Developer) and setting basic parameters for the Scrum’s implementation like: Sprint’s length (our sprint length is 2 weeks) and the Product Backlog planning. Once we had these parameters settled it was necessary to plan our first sprint that started on the Saturday of February 29th. It was a new way of managing the project, so there was the need to help the rest of the team understanding the framework. After that, we started training the team members, due to the social distancing we proposed an online certified course from SCRUMstudy in “SFC (Scrum Fundamentals Certified)”. We had a good collaboration from the rest of the team and we already have 80% of them team members certified. It’s important to say that we follow all the necessary Scrum’s events and meetings, and they are: The Sprint, Daily Scrum, Weekly Scrum, Sprint Retrospective, and Sprint Planning. All of the events listed previously happen in an online way on our meeting Discord App server. The weekly Scrum is not an official framework event, the team uses it to talk about subjects related to the project halfway through a sprint.
Right now, we have two tools the help us with the maintenance and analysis of the working Scrum method at B’Energy Racing, and they are: The Burndown Chart and the Scrum’s Maturity Analysis. They help us read and draw the Actions plans for each situation, there’s also the Sprint Retrospective meeting: A moment for feedbacks and opinions from all members. All these tools help us to promote the best working environment and team management. Just like all management methods, we are still developing and molding the framework for the B’Energy Racing, but as we are right now, Scrum has showed positive results for all team members.
Rugby Scrum play, in which the framework is based.
ISOLATION SURVIVAL MATHEUS VUADEN The COVID-19 affected – and still affecting – the daily lives of a lot of people. Schools and universities are closed and everyone who is able to work from home, should work from home. This also goes for us in B’Energy Racing. It was Friday, March 13th, and the team at our general meeting was discussing how the corona virus might affect the team, and what our action plans would be. At the end of Monday morning, we received the information: "The school is closing down". Not a very unexpected message, but one with a lot of consequences. At that time, we were preparing for the FSAE Electric competition in California that would be in June. The aerodynamics team was about to start the under-tray diffuser lamination that we would use in the world championship. Members of the electronics systems were working with the manufacture of spare PCBs, as well as the suspension team manufacturing suspension arms as spare parts. Everyone had their lab work interrupted. All B’Energyers went home to set up offices in their home offices. The laboratories may have been closed, but there was still a lot to do. We still believed
that world championship could take place it has always been our biggest dream to compete in the USA, and we were still not really accepting that SAE International could cancel it. However, in the same week we received the information that FSAE Electric 2020 would happen in a virtual way. This affected the feeling of everyone on the team, because knowing about our car, we knew we would achieve great results abroad. And on top of that, getting used to the fact of working at home, where suddenly it was a big change for any member of Formula SAE, since we usually only go home to sleep. Lucky for us, the world of technology allows us to stay in touch with the rest of the team. Meetings are being moved to digital conference calls, where we have an online “lab”, and we can continue working together using our Discord meeting server and our project management via Monday.com.
Besides that, the isolation also brought its benefits, mainly in the issue of knowledge management where the team acquired new document libraries, starting with our Intranet through the team's SharePoint, hosting our online tools to archive our CAD's, electronics projects and softwares. Using these tools, B’Energy works almost normally. Even the Friday meetings are still taking place. Gathering all members together into one big conference call, with the presentation on a shared screen. Thus, we discuss how to progress forward and what the current status of our projects is. During meetings like this, it is important to utilize the virtual backgrounds fully, where the comfort of your chair in your room should not be underestimated. After meetings with the whole team, we come to some conclusions, because up to a certain point, it was unpredictable when the College would open again. That wise, the members who had been at least since 2019 were focused on preparing the static tests for the SAE International virtual competition, and managing and executing the B20 design, a vehicle that - after SAE Brazil's decision to cancel the competition of 2020 - will compete in March 2021 in Brazil, and in June 2021 in the USA. With SAE Brazil's decision to postpone the competition, this also gave
us other project opportunities. The first from which we started our studies was the B21 project - which in the case will now compete in 2022 - this being a new design, changing our car from 13” wheels to 10” wheels. Therefore, starting the mathematical modeling of the suspension system, dimensioning of the components of wheels and tires, in addition to the mathematical model also of our tractive system. After two months of isolation, SAE Brazil together with Ballard launched the challenge of building a vehicle powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Of course, B'Energy could not be left out of this project! We did the project based on the 2019 car, thus redesigning the vehicle's tractive system, changing the platform from EV to FCEV. The H2 project, is the first different platform that the team uses, leaving the “comfort and knowledge zone” of an electric vehicle. But these are not the only cars that B’Energy is working on. The work together with Facens' research laboratory BRAIN - the team started studies and already has an advanced development for a future autonomous vehicle.
The team learned a lot from isolation, and continues to learn, always extracting the maximum benefits from each situation. In this way, we want to thank our partners for their support and for believing in us and the project. We wish you all the best of luck in this situation we live in, and we cannot wait to invite you all to an event with OUR CARS, once Brazil and the world recover.
B’Energy Meeting at Discord Server
SCRUM Board at Monday.com
PARTNERSHIP HIOKI/GETROTECH MARIA YOKOTA
The use of the right tools to protect who will manipulate any element that owns a high voltage is essential, and it’s so important that in the Electrical Technical Inspection checklist the third item considers that the team has the Basic set of HV-Proof tools to work with HV. In a Formula SAE EV competition, you can expect to see several electrical motors and moving with its maximum power, turning the teams into increasingly competitive. What feeds these powertrains is a High Voltage battery. Every caution and attention is necessary when it comes to its maintenance, that is how Getrotech provided us all the equipment we need to open the Accumulator Container, every step with maximum safety. We immensely appreciate the partnership with Getrotech and Hioki, for providing us all safety needed and requested by the Formula SAE competition, ensuring quality and excellence in hazardous maintenance, trusting our project.
BALLARD H2 CHALLENGE Vitor Bertoni During the 2020 second semester, the team is developing a FCEV-H2 Hybrid Vehicle project. The initiative took place for us to participate the Student H2 Challenge, a pioneer challenge that the university teams will have the opportunity to work with an advanced technology, interacting with experienced engineers from national and international industries. During the first month of the challenge, that started in July, the teams had several trainings about the Hybrid Vehicle Automotive market, project development and about this evolving technology. The development base of this Project is the Ballard 1020ACS Fuel Cell that was made available to the 10 classified teams to participate the second stage, and B’Energy is one of them.
Vitor, team leader in the Ballard Challenge and author of the text, receiving the Ballard’s Fuel Cell.
B’ENERGY ON SOCIAL NETWORKS B’Energy Racing Team’s Facebook page currently has over 3,400 likes and followers, that keep up with the team’s updates, like the competition photos and videos, news and memes. The team’s Instagram page has almost 1,800 followers and posts contents about competition, challenges, news, memes, and even interactive content in the stories.
The professional B’Energy’s social media has over 1,200 followers, that contemplate contents like competition and news, with a more formal bias.
Flickr is the platform where you can find pictures of our projects and competitions, being possible to glimpse a few of the last years of the team.
https://benergyfacens.contactin.bio/ benergy@facens.br