Hours spent during build season

[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]

Originally Posted by Libby K

& 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]

Originally Posted by JesseK

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

[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]

Originally Posted by EOC

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]

Originally Posted by marccenter

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.