Williams Blog: Week 39

Posted on Friday 13 Nov 2009 and tagged with blog, team.

Design Engineer, Steven Hubbard, takes over our blog this week. Steve has worked in our Design Office for the past eight years and is responsible for the car’s radiator layout and rad duct packaging…

Now that we’re into the busiest time of the year for the DO, I was in the office at quarter to 8 on Monday morning. At the moment, we are working on the finalisation of lots of different projects in order to get our designs into production so the guys on the factory floor can start production. So, on Monday, my first job was to work on the positioning of the engine’s hydraulic pipes and the hydraulic cooler installation. To help minimise weight, but maintain reliability on these parts, I’ve been working a lot with the stress department recently. I’ve also been working with the CFD department on electronics cooling solutions to improve thermal capabilities for the rad duct packaging, all of which seems to be going well.

On Tuesday, some new seat belts arrived from our supplier so that we could look at what Rubens ran in the Brawn and compare them to what we prefer to use. Fortunately, Rubens is happy to go with our preferred option so that was a fairly easy win! The afternoon was a long one as we had our design review meeting which is where everyone in the engine systems group gets together to see where we are with our workload. It’s all looking really positive at the moment; we’re achieving all of our weight targets and our design release schedule is on track, it helps that we are building on a good foundation of reliability from the FW31 though! We didn’t get out of that meeting until half 8, but this week’s been full of late nights - that’s what we’re used to around this time of year.

On Wednesday, there were more phone calls liaising with suppliers to confirm the pre-Christmas delivery dates for our oil and water radiators. We are seemingly on-track which is pleasing as it’s absolutely critical that our suppliers get everything to us on time. Because of the reduction in testing, the car has to be ready to go for the first outing in February so we get the full testing time available. If anything arrives late or is incorrect that can have a knock-on effect to our track time which we avoid at all possible costs.

For the past couple of days and going into the weekend, I’ve been finishing off various design schemes and releasing the drawings for some hydraulic and cooler-related installations, while also working with the programming office to improve production processes and reduce production time.

Over the past few months, I think I’ve produced about 400 drawings for next year’s car, and this just grows throughout the design period. I work with ten other people in the engine systems department but the whole installation process is like doing a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. Add into the mix a new engine supplier this year (although we still have lots of friends from our previous partnership with Cosworth in 2006 so the transition has been relatively easy), it only comes together when the last piece fits and that’s still a way off so I’m expecting lots more late nights!