Event Report

A report for this event will be published shortly after the event. On Thursday, 15th September 2005, David France the IT Director of BAR Honda Formula 1, gave a very stimulating and interesting talk about IT and Project Management in a Formula 1 team.

After an overview and history of BAR/Honda and the current drivers, Jensen Button and Takuma Sato, David went on to explain the role of the IT function in the Team. Great emphasis was put on the teamwork that is required in this type of environment, from everyone, and mention was made to the ‘weakest link in the chain’ can lose them races ….. the analogy was taken over to running of projects.

David discussed in detail the technology he has to provide to the various parts of the team at their base at Brackley, Northants, from wind tunnel measurements, finite element analysis, PC’s, CAD/CAM to fluid dynamics etc. Great interest was shown by the audience in the computing which has to be provided at the race tracks around the world, not only the garage systems but also the telemetry, trackside, pit-wall and back-ups. While a race is in progress the Team have to guarantee that they have a continuous power supply for all their equipment……….so they take their own!

David also talked about the whole team following a project management ethos, almost everything they do is based on PM principles. One area covered in more detail was the ‘lifing’ project which keeps track of ALL the components used on the cars. The parts are laser etched with a 1mm 2d data matrix and they are then tracked to check the number of times used, the re-useability, life of each component etc.

The presentation, which was peppered with shots of the cars and accompanying sound effects as the cars roared across the screen is available for download (571k).