Hours spent during build season

[Drew_trak]

Hello,
This year was a big transition year for team 599 as our main coach moved up North. Due to this shift, our build season schedule was different and moved around so we struggled as a team to finish on time. I was wondering if any team has an approximation of how many hours or any other reference as to how much time they put in this build season. We would love to see how much time other teams are putting in. Thank you - see you at the competitions!

[MaGiC_PiKaChU]

Our shop was open every single day, often until 10-11PM with some days past midnight during the last days

[bookworm0422]

I did the math last night before we bagged the robot. I as a mentor with our build schedule for Team 313 put in almost 230 hours of time. Several other high level Mentors and 7 of my Students put in the same amount of time. That time does not include the 40 hours of work each week. It was crazy.

[GeeTwo]

We had nominal shop hours of 15.5 hours per week. We did work a bit of overtime, but probably not more than about 20 per week average, so probably 120-140 shop hours. Number crunching, purchases, and such away from the shop about doubled that for me.

[Mr. Ackroyd]

We put up an aggressive schedule this year and wanted to have the programmers given enough time on the robot as possible. It worked out as they had a full week of program testing while mechanical would work at the same time. This resulted in the programmers and drivers having three days of drive time and refining code.

This in hours for me as a mentor was around 250 hours. I had to be there at any point a student was in the shop. The kids averaged 150-200 hours. We also met pre season and put in another 112 hours. This was spent mentoring FTC and FLL teams. Hosting an FLL tournament and Robot Rumble (FRC) off season event.

We begin again tonight until our first competition at week four.

[Type]

I know the team stayed atleast from 4pm to 8pm every night so we atleast put in a total of 120 hours. We we put in a decent amount of overtime, and work on the weekends so I believe we worked atleast a total of 160 hours.

[RAGTOPSTANG]

This entire build Season was insane for our team. Keeping a log, I found that I spent approximately 415 hours working on the robot this year. There were only three days where I put in less than four hours, and I averaged 9.9 hours per day. However, there were some on my team who were able (somehow) to put in much more time.

[mastachyra]

I don't know how you guys do it. The highest hours on my team was 111 hours (aside from my 191 hours). I had parents complaining left and right that their daughters were spending too much time at robotics!

The total on our robot was 1250 hours. (we have a very small team)

400 hours is insane!

[maxnz]

My team spent about 89 hours working on the robot (including planning) + 6 hours at a week zero event + about 20 hours of me working during my study hall hour

[JesseK]

The kids were there most days after school when the mentors weren't, from 2-5pm at least.

Mentors & kids were there 2pm-10pm Thursday, 7am-7pm Saturday and 8am-6pm Sunday. In a typical year, there is also President's day, which is 12 hours of time. CAD happened with myself and a couple of students during the week as well, but from home. CAD was usually 4 extra hours a night Saturday-Wednesday. We took Fridays off.

Week 6 had 16 hours on Saturday and 16 hours on Sunday.

Subtract out 2 Thursdays, 1 Saturday, 1 Sunday and President's day due to snow.

[vhcook]

I think we had around 150 hours of official open shop time.

[EOC]

From kickoff to bag and tag our students logged 2550 hours,
Mentors 400 hours.

[marccenter]

Dear CD,

Kickoff (4 hours) and Kettering Day after Kickoff (10 hours) plus 88 hours of shop time at school == 102 total possible hours per student by bag day.

We have two coaches that split weekdays Mon- Tues from 6 to 9 and Wed -Thurs 6 to 9 pm. Saturdays are 9 am to 3 pm. No meetings on Friday (date night) and Sunday (church and family day).

During the first few weeks of the season we typically meet only 2 hours for week days and 3 hours on Saturdays until parts arrive and the design is mature enough to keep working on.

This year we took four weeks to complete the running chassis, a full two weeks longer than past years which required small changes to KOP chassis.

We began using a computer log on system this year for the students. The system was not perfect but we logged 773 hours for 20 students or about 40 hours average shop time per student. Adding the MEZ kickoff and Kettering Day After Kickoff we log nearly 1000 student hours for two teams of 10 students for two robots.

This year Royal RoboRavens1 (1188) and RoboRavens2 (3548) completed both robots and a third practice robot that is incomplete.

Due to our lower time quantity (via typical student commitment) we target building a robust, minimum competitive robot (no shooter, no hanging mechanism) and find that we can usually meet that objective (One of my sayings in the workshop is that time is our enemy and we need to finish early to allow programming time and drive team practice).

One of our mentors spent nearly 100% of his time with a few students building all the wooden game field pieces.

My hat is off to all students and mentors who can commit to having more hours in the build period to work on your robot.

Personally my wife finds my commitment very disruptive to our relationship so using more time for the robot team is not practical. I am very happy that the RoboRavens#1 (1188) coach and I build together allowing us to make both of our work and personal issues more manageable.

[Libby K]

Team meeting hours:
6-10pm Monday-Friday (Monday has a break for our all-hands team meeting)
9am-7pm Saturday - or later if we need it, last 3 weeks we went to 10pm
10am-6pm Sunday.

Our student leaders & the locally-based mentors are there every day. "Regular" students are usually on alternating days, and in shifts on weekends - we break up work far beyond just subteams, so everyone knows when 'their day' is ahead of time - and some of the 'distance mentors', myself included, are only around for Fri-Sun.

& that's just build season...

[kmodos]

I'm not sure on team totals, but several of our individual students and mentors hit over 200hrs. I know I personally spent 115hrs just during break (2/13-2/21), with anywhere from 20-30hrs a week for other weeks. As a team, we probably hit 2500+ total man hours.

[PayneTrain]

We try to hit about 25-35 hours in a week, which does not feel like enough time in Week 2 of build season but definitely feels like enough time by Week 3 of competition season.

[MrForbes]

3 hrs x 5 days per week, plus 5 hrs x 1 Saturdays. Minus school holidays.

[GreyingJay]

We meet at the local community center/pool/gym, so we could only meet when the building was open to the public.

We met on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays from 6:30 to 9:00, Saturdays 9-5. We had a special strategy meeting on the Sunday after kickoff from 10-2 and of course Tuesday Bag Day was another 6:30-9:00 for many students, with some staying till midnight to finsh the robot and bag.

Not counting kickoff Saturday, that works out to 102 official hours of team meeting time which included students in a classroom/desk/lab configuration "upstairs" and students working in a shop/fabrication area "downstairs".

That does not include some of the extra hours that the design/CAD team spent offsite at a mentor's workplace to focus on CAD, nor some of the extra hours put in by the fabrication team to get the robot built. Fab was meeting every day for the past two weeks. There were a few nights of transporting the robot plus essential tools offsite to work later, e.g. until midnight on Bag and Tag day and well after midnight the evening before.

[hardcopi]

Well our team keeps track of punch ins and punch outs. Only maybe 1/2 the kids actually did it regularily so I expect the actual number to be double, but this season we logged a grand total of 109 days, 10 hours, 7 minutes and 23 seconds thus far.

[JesseK]

& that's just build season...

Ha! Yea... I got a package last night with robot parts in it and my wife emphatically asked "wasn't that robot put away?". I facetiously replied "yea, but then there's the practice robot, and your genius husband can do a lot with 30 pounds".

Build season ends May 1st. I think it's time we faced that head on.

[roboryan]

Personally I spent about 200 hours at the shop collectively my team put in just over 4000 man hours

[Karthik]

Build season ends May 1st. I think it's time we faced that head on.

This is the often unspoken reality of the situation.

[Dalas]

So far we've been spending about 6 hours on weekdays and 12 hours on Saturdays and school holidays. Total we've spent about 280 hours each, which sounds crazy looking back. Just think if we were all getting paid!

[evanperryg]

6-9pm Monday's through Friday, 10-4 on Saturdays. Students are assigned specific days, based on what days they tell us they're open at the beginning of the season.

[abigailthefox]

This year we spent less time than last year, and I personally had 170+ hours, which was at the upper end of hour totals.
We keep hour counts with sign-in/sign-out sheets because 60+ hours equals team-member level commitment (for team members: travel expenses are paid to events, team shirt is free, eligible to be on drive team), and 120+ hours equals varsity level commitment (all benefits of team member commitment, plus FRC is recognized as a varsity sport at our school, so the school will grant you a varsity letter).

[DaneeR]

Our team is pretty small and the kids have other after school activities as well. We build 6:30- 9pm M-F (we bumped up to starting at 6 the last two weeks but many could not make it there that early.) And 9am- 4pm on Saturday. The last Sunday we did 1:00- 5ish. We missed some days for snow. I don't think anyone did more then 120 hours of shop time.
We have 3 'real' mentors and me and a dad (I train horses, he does taxes).

If build season and high school musical were not the exact same time of year, that would be great :eek:

[MechEng83]

Our build season schedule is M-F 6:30-10pm, Sat 9am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm.

This totals up to 165 scheduled hours.

On MLK & Presidents' Day, we meet all day long, plus extended hours on weekends. We don't let any kids stay past 10pm on a school night.

Our logged hours (which are incomplete due to a myriad of reasons) show 6729.19 student hours and 2196.26 mentor hours.

The highest hour student logged 242 hours and the highest hour mentor logged 278.19 hours.

These totals don't count any work done outside the shop.

[maxnz]

From kickoff to bag and tag our students logged 2550 hours,
Mentors 400 hours.

You must have added each student's total together, because there are just over 1000 hours between kickoff and the end of bag and tag day

[2544HCRC]

Personally my wife finds my commitment very disruptive to our relationship so using more time for the robot team is not practical. I am very happy that the RoboRavens#1 (1188) coach and I build together allowing us to make both of our work and personal issues more manageable.

I would like to hear more mentor's opinions experience with this. I have had the same problem for years.

We spend Tues, Wed, Friday 6-9 and Saturday 9-1 plus the Sunday 9-2 after kickoff. Generally as the lead mentor/coach I get done about an hour after the kids leave. I am here EVERY day. This gives me just enough time to do planning and correcting during build season (I teach). I've long ago given up trying to correct and robot at the same time. I always seem to be trying and failing to achieve the work, robot, home balance. How do you other mentors do it?

Many of our students are in AP classes and can't commit to more time than this. We also have students in winter activities and sports. How do your students do it? Would love to hear more.

[sanddrag]

Team 696 2016 Build Season Stats

Total People-Hours: 6957
Total Student-Hours (30-student team): 5585
Average Hours Per Student Per Week (outside of school hours): 34.1
Average Total Hours Per Student: 186
Highest Single Student Hours: 323
Highest Single Mentor Hours: 382
Total Mentor-Hours (9 mentors): 1371
Average Total Hours Per Mentor: 152

All stats are from Kickoff through today.

[Mike Marandola]

Team 696 2016 Build Season Stats

Total People-Hours: 6957
Total Student-Hours (30-student team): 5585
Average Hours Per Student Per Week (outside of school hours): 34.1
Average Total Hours Per Student: 186
Highest Single Student Hours: 323
Highest Single Mentor Hours: 382
Total Mentor-Hours (9 mentors): 1371
Average Total Hours Per Mentor: 152

All stats are from Kickoff through today.

How do you guys log this?

[frcguy]

Every weekday from 4:30-9pm and Saturdays and some sundays from 10am-4pm.

[Anthony Galea]

I myself as the student with the most time logged with about 166 hours on the robot during build season, and the team of 20 students in total i think logged around 2000 as a guesstimate, meeting Mon-Wed-Fri-Sat with a bulk of our hours coming on weekends.

[indieFan]

Hello,
This year was a big transition year for team 599 as our main coach moved up North. Due to this shift, our build season schedule was different and moved around so we struggled as a team to finish on time. I was wondering if any team has an approximation of how many hours or any other reference as to how much time they put in this build season. We would love to see how much time other teams are putting in. Thank you - see you at the competitions!

Sorry to hear about you losing Mr. Van. Definitely a big loss for the team.

I'm curious why the team schedule was so different and moved around rather than trying to keep it the same.

Having mentored 599 and 1070 for 10 years, I worked with my new team to follow 599's original (from year 2 and on) work schedule to prevent burn out for myself, the teacher, the other mentor, and the students.

We worked 3 days a week for 2 hours and on Saturday from 10 - 4. The only days we went late were Mon and Tues of Bag and Tag. Those were 5 - 10pm and 3 - 11:30pm, I believe. There were a few days where the students had the day off from school and went in for about 6 hours that the mentors were unable to show up. Otherwise, the mentors were there almost the entire time.

Adjustments to the time of day were also made during Finals Week to allow students to have time to study after robotics.

[Jon Stratis]

For us, 15 hours of meetings per week. That doesn't include other time for the design team or captain, or anything done outside of the regular meetings.

Myself, I hit 225 hours on stop build day. By I do other regional stuff as well.

[elil]

My team met on the following schedule during the build season:

Monday 4-8
Friday 4-9
Saturday 9-6
Sunday 9-6
MLK: 9-9
School's professional day: 12-9

Additionally, we added a weekend working to 9, and I worked during lunch, my free block, and after school every day during the last two weeks.
We missed one weekend and presidents day due to snow, and did not start at 9 one weekends until week three (we started at 10). So 255 hours of shop time for me, plus time CADing (Maybe another 20 hours?).

[robotmom2471]

We had open shop every day starting with kick off, we have about 40 kids on the team with several students putting in over 300 hours. We have a finger print scanner a programming alumni devised for us which students use to log in and out and which posts the hours log on a private web site - totaling the hours we have over 5,000 not including mentor hours :ahh: admittedly it gets pretty competitive and we are working on ways to bring better balance next year. :)

[SoulianPride]

Week 1:
-Sunday: 12-4
-Monday thru Friday: 7-9
-Saturday 10-4

Week 2, 3, 4, 5
-Monday, Wednesday, Friday: 7-9
-Saturday: 10-4

Week 6:
-Sunday: 12-5
-Monday thru Friday: 7-9
-Saturday 10-5
-Monday: 7-10
-Tuesday: 7-10

This does not include time frames spent with students out at a local shop working to fabricate parts ^^

[Beaker]

We met around 30 hours a week during build season.

If I sum up the hours for each student team member during build season,the total comes out to a bit more than 6400 hours.

As for me, I have put in over 250 hours this build season, not counting the unofficial hours I spent at home and at school working on the code for the robot. Many of the other members of the team, such as project leads and leadership have similar amounts of time spent at build and uncounted time.

[Greg Woelki]

Well over 400 hours for me. It got to the point that whenever a core member left at 10 or 11 we joked that they were taking a "half day."

[budzilla]

Boy am I glad to see some of these numbers. A school holiday was a day we could work all day like Saturday and Sunday. Based on local team's info, I was wondering what we were doing wrong. We are working harder, not smarter. However, this thread shows that there are teams as bad or worse than us. Yay!

Our kids totaled 5,248. 1161.3 for the top 4 dedicated/foolish souls. Mentor hours are unknown because we don't want to know. Way too scary!! :eek:

Good luck to all! Tally ho!!

[Cothron Theiss]

So this year our team had a few issues with scheduling in the beginning of the season; the students and mentors were really limited on when we could get access to our shop. Starting out it was 6-8 on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays and then 10-3, which totals to 11 hours a week. Then we sat some people down and got the shop opened up to much longer hours, to about 26 hours of scheduled shop time per week. As for my own total, I logged 173 shop hours and 210 personal hours during build season, totaling 383 hours. I did all of the CAD modeling for my team this year, and I coordinated much of the parts orders, so I ended up having more late nights with my laptop than actual hours with the robot. The team captain and lead programmer on our team put in about 300 hours in a similar fashion, but past that everyone's individual totals were much lower for our team. We're both seniors, so our GPA's aren't near as sensitive this semester.

[mdiradoorian]

How do you guys log this?

If it has not changed since I left, they use a sign in/sign out system where they scan their student/mentor ID bar codes into a computer that logs the amount of time they each spent an excel spreadsheet.

[twadem]

During the build season, Team 1706 meets almost every day of the week. On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, we meet from 3 to 8. Wednesdays and Fridays we are there from 3 to 6. Saturdays are our busy days, meeting from 8am to 5pm. All of these meetings add up to a minimum of about 30 hours a week. But, these are only the scheduled meetings, the most dedicated members are there longer and more than that. I, as well as some others, are often found on Wednesdays and Fridays meeting there until 8 rather than 6. Also, many of us meet on Sundays and, including a few dedicated members, we have had a meeting every day for the past 36 days. Those are the truly dedicated members, and those members shine when it comes to the last week of build season. Last week, some members of my team, myself included, met every day to build our robot, totaling to about 55 hours over the course of that week with nearly 24 of those hours being on the last 3 days. We have a truly dedicated team and, though it takes a lot of time and effort, that effort is what makes it all worth it after we achieve our goal.

[indieFan]

Our kids totaled 5,248. 1161.3 for the top 4 dedicated/foolish soles. Mentor hours are unknown because we don't want to know. Way too scary!! :eek:
!

You may want to know the mentor hours if any work for a company like Boeing which will donate money based on those hours.

[Landonh12]

We work Monday, Tuesday, and Thursdays from 4:30 to 8:30.

Wednesdays are MIT InvenTeam days, but during the season we worked on FRC these days as well. 4-6pm usually.

Saturdays are 12-5pm.

Towards the last week of the season, we stayed until 10pm most days and worked on Sunday almost all day.

We also have Engineering class time that the students use for FRC/FTC as well.

I'd say each student logged around 200 hours.

[Chris Endres]

My freshman year (2013), when we still had our field and build space at Motorola, I logged ~550 hours. Monday through Thursday, we met from 5:30-10:00+ every night, plus CAD. Saturday and Sunday we went from 9:00 to 10:00+.

Sophomore year (2014), we lost our field, but still had a build space at Motorola (smaller than before, but still something). I logged ~500 hours, roughly the same time for each meeting, but I think we ended at 8:30 on Tuesday and Thursday.

Junior and Senior year (2015/2016) I logged roughly 350 hours each year. Monday through Friday, 5:30-8:30, clean-up everyday (put EVERYTHING away into a small closet), with all of our major tools and materials in a small orange shipping crate outside our build space (a shared school wood shop), it was more like 6:00 to 8:00. CAD was usually an added 4-7 hours each day during the first two to three weeks. Saturday and Sunday went from 10:00 to 6:00 (10:30-5:30).

So over my time on the team, we have become EXTREMELY time efficient by losing over 150 from years previous. This has helped in rapid building, as well as working in the pit. It kind of sucks losing all of the space and time to build and practice, but great teamwork and persistence can really make a difference.

[TechnoD11]

So this year our team had a few issues with scheduling in the beginning of the season; the students and mentors were really limited on when we could get access to our shop. Starting out it was 6-8 on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays and then 10-3, which totals to 11 hours a week. Then we sat some people down and got the shop opened up to much longer hours, to about 26 hours of scheduled shop time per week. As for my own total, I logged 173 shop hours and 210 personal hours during build season, totaling 383 hours. I did all of the CAD modeling for my team this year, and I coordinated much of the parts orders, so I ended up having more late nights with my laptop than actual hours with the robot. The team captain and lead programmer on our team put in about 300 hours in a similar fashion, but past that everyone's individual totals were much lower for our team. We're both seniors, so our GPA's aren't near as sensitive this semester.

Pretty much the same situation for me. Put in around 400 hours this season, working pretty much as soon as I got home till 9-11PM at night on weekdays. Also spent more class time than I probably should have working on the CAD. Weekends were 24+ hours each.

It was worth it though. At least I hope... :ahh:

[staplemonx]

6 days a week
6 hours a meeting
6 weeks
33 students
2 mentors

7,560 total hours possible.

We lost 25% of our access time due to snow so 5,670 hours spent this build season.