Hello,
In the past my FRC team has spent 300+ hours building our robot, but many of us feel that is draining and inefficient. It has been mentioned that clubs in our school technically have an annual 180 hour limit. I am curious of what amount of time other teams spend, both annually and during the build season.
I count build season as 8 weeks since we usually still work on our normal schedule 2 weeks after stop build day.
We spend 20 hours a week building. 2 of the build season weeks we spend 25 hours since we have a day of school off. 206 = 120 252 = 50 120+50= 170 Total build hours
During the off-build season, we generally meet 3 hours a week not including demos and fundraisers. 52- 8 = 44 44*3= 132 hours of meeting + 40ish more of other off build activities = about 175 off-build hours
Annually it seems that we spend ~ 350 hours doing team-related activities.
Most people are thoroughly drained after our build season. I have no clue how ya’ll manage to do anything more than 200 hours.
I can’t find it, but I remember reading a thread awhile ago talking about this. The general consensus there was that too much meet time can quickly burn most teams out. It’s more important to work more efficiently than more hours.
If you and your team feel that the 300+ hour build season is too much and cutting into productivity, I’d highly recommend cutting down the hours. I believe that off-build season training in CAD and the use of power tools and machines help teams work efficiently. This allows for the brainstorming, prototyping and building processes to go incredibly smoothly.
Good luck!
There was a poll on here a while back on this exact topic, it might be worth a bit of searching to find.
If I had to guess I would say the average team puts in around 160 hours during the 6-week build season (assuming ~3 hour meetings every night during the week and ~12 hours split between Saturdays and Sundays).
Keep in mind however that this is just a guess at the average, there are many successful teams that put FAR more time in than that during the build season, and if you include pre and post build season and competition season those numbers get higher still. Additionally, teams who build a practice bot will often end up building and practicing continuously from kickoff all the way through the end of competition season.
As to whether or not spending 300 hours building a robot is inefficient, that all depends on what your team does during that 300 hours. If all 300 hours is being put to good use making productive improvements to the robot and/or team, then I’d say keep it up. However if you’re spending the time on unnecessary extras and it’s draining your teams energy, then perhaps it would be a good idea to “trim the fat” out of the schedule.
We’ll schedule around 160 hours of shop time in the ten weeks or so between kickoff and Bayou (week 3), and will likely extend another 20 or 30 on various days. Design, ordering, programming, and even some light-duty building are not always confined to shop hours.
1540 doesn’t have true “team meetings” that everyone has to come to: the lab is open school nights until 6:30 and non-school nights until 10 during build season, and people can come and go as they wish or as needed. Last season we had a pretty wide spread of hours, some people spending 50-60 and some people spending 250. It averaged out to about 160 hours per person. This is just during build season–during the offseason, it’s probably another 100 hours/person as people are working on BunnyBots and other offseason things that we do.
Something around 250 hours every build season as a team most likely – however, most people will take off a day or two every now and then and a decent portion of those 250 hours are spent just hanging out eating/talking. The gained productivity is worth way more than the lost time.
Thank you everyone, it sounds like our team should probably aim for about 160 build season hours. We are trying to put an emphasis as a team on doing things outside of school and on being more efficient. In the past we’ve spent a lot of time brainstorming and prototyping, and not as much time building.
The core design and fabrication group of the team spent upwards of 400 hours per person on the robot last build season. We typically carry the same schedule throughout the competition season working on replacement parts and fine-tuning systems.
During build season and competition season we spend about 30 hours * 12 weeks is 360 hours.
During the summer we don’t meet, but for the 14 weeks in the fall we meet 10 hours a week (on average). That totals to 140 hours.
Our total is about 500 hours.
I would say only 3-4 members are there for 400+.
For coordinating stuff outside of official meeting hours, I highly recommend a team management platform such as Basecamp. We’ve found it absolutely invaluable.
In build season, there’s usually 5 or 6 meetings per week. 12-22 hours (depending on how we are for the schedule) on the weekend, then 3-4 3-hour meetings during the week. So, roughly 190 hours in build season. The off season has 1.5 hour “business” meetings every week and 6-hour worksessions on Saturday, totaling roughly 150 hours in the fall and spring. Leadership meets for about 1.5 hours a week (a meeting at lunch and before the business meeting).
In total, there’s about 340 hours for most students, and maybe 380 for students on the leadership team.
My team uses a time clock. You got me curious…Last season I logged 256 hours and 20 minutes. My most dedicated kids are putting in around 150-200 hours. Typical students are getting around 70-100 hours. They have to get 40 hours minimum to travel.
The entire team total (total man-hours) was 5420 hours and 38 minutes. That’s build season and competition season hours typically.
Anecdote:
I used to run a 6-days-a-week team. We went to 4 days, with definite start and stop times, and found the members were much more productive and the quality was much better going on a shortened schedule.
The team went from watching Elim matches to captaining them.
During the build season. We are in the shop AT LEAST 20 hours each week. So, a dedicated team member might log a solid 200 hours between kickoff and our first competition. We have a busy outreach schedule and if you include competitions, a student might be with us 350+ hours during the entire year. Especially if they assist with summer camps. Somebody else has mentioned this, but we have also found that less is more (better?). Any meeting scheduled for 2 hours has the tendency to stretch to 2.5. We actually shortened meeting times. 6:30-8 weeknights. 9-1 on Saturday and 1-5 on Sunday. We have a few die-hards who stay a little longer, but the shorter meetings have really paid off in improved focus and productivity. We have a large team, so we also split up the group to reduce chaos in the shop. Lead members are with us every meeting. Junior members are split into shifts with only ½ of the team in the shop except for weekends.
My own logged hours, outside of the contracted work day. These are hours the lab here at 696 was open and people were working. These totals do not include hours at events.
2012-13: 850
2013-14: 729
2014-15: 502
2015-16: 607
2016-17: Stopped counting, but it was fewer.
2017-18: Likely will be back up to more hours. We’re looking at doing about 28 hours per week of scheduled meetings in build season for 2018. The week leading up to bag day has generally averaged about 70 hours during that week each year.
Productivity does not always come from more time. We make it a point to have definite meeting times and days. This allows the students to plan for homework, projects, tests, and family during the build season. We do 4 meetings a week during build season with one additional meeting day during the first week. For the three meetings during the work week, we will complete 5 hours per meeting and on Saturday, we will do 8 hours. That is 28 during the first week and 23 during the next 5 weeks and 10 hours the last week. Each student will put in around 160 hours during build season. Programmers will do one meeting a week (4-5 hours) up to the regional event and drivers will do two meetings a week (Total of 4-5 hours) up to the regional event. I preach quality not quantity. We have very well planned meetings and definite roles and responsibilities for each day. I think we tend to have pretty competitive bots each year without the students losing track of their academic or family lives. I feel anymore will become detrimental to our team. Each team is different and each have to function in their circumstances and within their rules and expectations.
Just in build season up to bag day we meet Wed+Thurs 6:30-9:00pm and Sat+Sun+(Mon holidays of which there are usually 3) 9-5. This comes to 150 hours. Sometime we will meet on other days as needed or for longer as needed, stretching it out to maybe 170 hours for some of the team.
We continue that meeting schedule through competition season working on our practice robots and developing mechanism upgrades to implement with our withholding. So by the time we are done with champs that bumps the grand total up to around 300 hours.
EDIT: this works out to about 20-22 hours per week.
We were pretty happy with the following last year.
9-1/1-5/9-5 Occassional Holiday Mondays
5-9 Tues, Thurs
9-5 Sat
1-5 Sun
This schedule was following through champs.
I’ve pretty much done the extreme ends of the scale. With my current team we put in about 100hrs during build season and did similar amount during the competition season last year with qualifying for DCMP and CMP.
With my original team we did more than 100hrs in less than a week immediately before bag day when the school’s break aligned with bag day. The shop “opened” at 3p on Fri and did not close until 1a on Wed.
Lowering your team’s build season hours is honestly some sort of cheat code to FRC success. No, really.
The biggest turnaround year in 2791 was in 2013, the same year that the team switched to a much more tightly managed build season schedule. That year, the team switched to meeting MTW 3-8, Thursdays 3-5 (usually to order stuff for the next week). If programming / drive practice was meeting, they could get to the practice field on the weekends late in build, but otherwise that was it. As the season went on, maybe a Saturday or two in the shop would be added for big work days.
This reduction in hours sort of forced the team’s hand in building a simple robot. Shorter meetings less often forced them to be more focused and productive. The weekend off gave the team time to reflect and plan out the next week of progress (and it gave the CAD team time to design the next things on the robot…).
Since then, I’ve been totally convinced that “throwing time at the robot” is absolutely the wrong approach. Every hour of build season is another hour of burnout. Use the time wisely, or you’re hurting yourself AND the team.