Too many students in the build site

[avanboekel]

Originally Posted by Taylor

Thinking about various roles within the team:
Do Strategy/Scout students need constant access to the workshop?
Do Programmers/Control students need constant access to the workshop?
Do Awards/Media students need constant access to the workshop?
Do CAD students need constant access to the workshop?
Are there physical jobs that could be done outside the workshop? For example, pneumatic plumbing, control board layout & wiring, sensor testing & calibration?

At competition, we have a 6-team member max in the pit. Those six people constantly fluctuate, but it's a hard limit. (It also keeps those pesky adults away ) Perhaps you could institute a similar limitation in your shop.

Maybe create a schedule - fab team has access in the beginning of the season; assembly team toward the middle; controls intermittently throughout etc.

But be sure that students who are not in the shop have valuable and structured projects on which they may work. FRC is becoming more and more not about the robot; there are always jobs to be done that don't need to be done in the workshop. And also make sure all students have adult supervision and guidance.

What if a 2nd location isn't an option? Has anyone had success with rotating students in each day? I'd imagine there would be issues keeping continuity on one project from day to day, but I don't see many other options for teams with this issue.

[techhelpbb]

We used to have this issue. It is particularly an issue around machine tools.
My suggestion has been to train people and qualify them to operate specific tools and then they are the ones that should be near them. If there are enough rotate those groups into that work area.

Now the only thing the other students need is a room as most of them have laptops. Generally it is much easier to find a room than build more shops.

[Ernst]

We rotate and schedule students. Each technical subteam has multiple coleads who trade off days so that one is always present, and they work with their subteam mentors and members to schedule students. There is almost always a veteran student there two nights in a row to maintain continuity.

We try to have veterans attend 3 weeknights and half of Saturday and rookies attend 2 weeknights and half of Saturday. Those general guidelines change depending on the subteam and situation. Media, for example, doesn't meet every night and during less hectic times, Electrical gives some members more nights off.

We used to take a survey at the beginning of the season to figure out what nights work best for students and then set a weekly schedule that stayed the same throughout the main build season and cut back a bit leading up to the competitions. Our Media team put together on online scheduler that subteam leaders can log in to to set schedules. Members can then log in and notify leaders if they can't attend a meeting. It gets the job done well, assuming subteam leaders and members all do their part.

[Abhishek R]

Originally Posted by ZehP

We rotate and schedule students. Each technical subteam has multiple coleads who trade off days so that one is always present, and they work with their subteam mentors and members to schedule students. There is almost always a veteran student there two nights in a row to maintain continuity.

We're thinking about doing rotations, but we're definitely worried about continuity, like you said. Another thing is that we don't want to disallow the most involved members of the team who are there all day and all night normally, so that takes up about 10 slots already.

Originally Posted by gurellia53

We had this issue and ended up relocating our entire team from a classroom to a warehouse. I don't know how practical this is for your team, but it definitely fixed our overcrowding issue.

We're currently sitting in a 1,200 square feet area that we rent out of a strip mall. It's bigger than a classroom, but not as roomy as a warehouse. The toughest part is that we have to have most of our meetings for other subteams (awards and programming mainly) at the build site as well because of the huge amount of overlap between members of each subteam.

It's definitely a good problem to have, when compared with the converse...it's just we never expected it to grow this much. And it's only temporary, so I think if we can make it through this build season, it'll be fine. Thanks for the advice everyone!

[RockedShots]

We split our team into a number of sub-teams and give each sub-team a day or two a week. That sub-team has the right to the shop. If other people need to do work in the shop, they can, but the designated team has precidence

[philso]

[quote=Abhishek R;1412816]We're currently sitting in a 1,200 square feet area that we rent out of a strip mall. It's bigger than a classroom, but not as roomy as a warehouse. The toughest part is that we have to have most of our meetings for other subteams (awards and programming mainly) at the build site as well because of the huge amount of overlap between members of each subteam.QUOTE]

Can you temporarily set up some tents on the sidewalk (or out back where fewer people will see it) for holding the subteam meetings, weather permitting? I don't think many of the other businesses in that strip mall are open in the evenings.

Does your new STEM center have meeting rooms that can be shared?

[Abhishek R]

Originally Posted by philso

Can you temporarily set up some tents on the sidewalk (or out back where fewer people will see it) for holding the subteam meetings, weather permitting? I don't think many of the other businesses in that strip mall are open in the evenings.

Does your new STEM center have meeting rooms that can be shared?

Well, even once we separate the non-build subteams there are still a lot of students we would like to involve in the building process. We may just do the rotations idea.

Once we are in the STEAM center, any overcrowding problems should go away.

[pyroslev]

Originally Posted by avanboekel

Has anyone had success with rotating students in each day? I'd imagine there would be issues keeping continuity on one project from day to day, but I don't see many other options for teams with this issue.

We do it with our small team. There are some continuity issues initially but that's where you have to keep communication between groups.

And there are FAR worse problems to have. Just wondering, what are the numbers before and after?