Roderick Brogan - Team Leader, Lead Electrical Engineer
Progressing through this project has taught me a multitude of lessons critical to the success of any engineering project. The first and foremost of these lessons is punctuality. As my father has told me since I was young, 50% of success is just showing up. Working on this project has taught me the importance of punctuality for even the most menial of tasks or meetings. Not showing up to meetings on time breeds a type of laziness which plagues all industries and leads to a significant loss in a groups ability to set deadlines and accomplish their given tasks by those deadlines.
Another critical lesson that has been taught to me through this course is that materials are often more expensive than they appear. However, there is generally a much cheaper way to accomplish the same goal, assuming no costs are cut which results in the endangerment of the customers or individuals working on the project. I have spoken to numerous groups who are ordering their pieces from costly online websites specializing in custom cut metals and parts. It is also a problem my group has encountered. We, however, overcame this obstacle by using the extensive resources found within the Lyle School of Engineering at SMU to realize our prototype designs in a safe, yet cost effective manner.
Another lesson I have learned is the critical importance of keeping the group in total cooperation. Although my group has been extraordinary lucky to not encounter these problems, clashing individuals cause stalls which can delay the entire production time of the product. Avoiding these conflicts and quickly finding some sort of middle ground before a disagreement becomes a fight is critically important to the overall efficiency of a group, and is one of the most important lessons I have learned thus far.
The final lesson I have learned is the importance of showing enthusiasm from the perspective of the leader. As the team leader, the task ultimately falls to me to keep the group on task and operating as efficiently as possible. If I show a lack of willingness to meet or perform the tasks required of me, the same is shown in the rest of the group. This constant need to show enthusiasm and motivation as the leader is perhaps the greatest lesson I have learned from the project thus far.
Andrew Posada - Lead Mechanical Engineer
The process of taken an idea and bringing it to fruition has been an experience that had no shortage of hiccups. Through this experience, I have come to appreciate many different aspects of engineering that one doesn't encounter in the classroom.
A major role that any engineer will have to take on is scheduling and accountability. Engineering projects require the collaboration of a group in order to accomplish the task at hand. This project made evident the importance of scheduling. At several points during this project, scheduling became an issue with the busy schedules of everyone involved and the time consuming tasks that needed to be accomplished. Because of this, it was important to schedule ad budget time weeks in advance to assure time was allotted for the completion of the project. Additionally, it was highly beneficial to have an idea of the timeline of the project when scheduling to assure the completion of the project timely manner. Scheduling, in retrospect, is something that should have had more time dedicated to it.
Similarly, the fluidity and unexpected changes in scheduling is something to be very aware and weary of. As I found many times during the course of this project, the time allotted for the completion of a task is not always accurate. I believe that in the future, being conservative is not beneficial when setting timelines. Being realistic about a schedule is crucial and requires experience and intuition that will be developed as I take on more projects. Schedules are constantly changing and because of this it is important to dedicate a good amount of time to scheduling, deadlines, and timelines.
Although a vast majority of engineering projects require group collaboration, individual work is just as important as group work. Being the lead mechanical engineer in this project made it very clear that group work is not always feasible, and being the expert in a field means that you will be doing a lot of individual work in that area. Collaboration is necessary to make everything come together, but individual work is necessary for the actual design and completion of the project. As cliche as it may sound, the group really only will be as successful as its weakest link.
Projects take time and several iterations. Unlike previously thought, it is highly unlikely that the first iteration will work or be good enough to be a final product. Each design should be carefully looked at and crafted in order to make it as best as possible however, it is inevitable that the design will have to be redesigned for improvements. As we learned in this project, a failure does not lead to no results. A failure is an opportunity to learn what not to do and how to improve the next iteration. Here, we learned that a vertical axis wind turbine would not be feasible as a turbine design. We found the importance of swept area, and were able to improve how the air would flow in a turbine.