Suggestion to Limit FSAE Worker Rentals

[Sean Fenstermacher]

Would it be possible to impose a limit on the number of worker rentals per heat for future events?
As the popularity of worker rentals grows, we often find ourselves short of SCCA members for key work positions.
The result is that typically someone needs to volunteer to fill these key positions, thus negating the real "convenience" of worker rentals.
Needless to say, worker rentals make Worker Chief's job even more difficult, as trying to scrap together a worker group with insufficient number of SCCA members isn't fun...

Also, the quality of course work I've personally seen has been pretty subpar and typical of the most novice workers.
Maybe is it due to a lack of understanding about the rules of the sport? Lack of caring? Exhaustion (if some workers are doing course work all day, perhaps)?

Maybe limiting only 5 rental workers per heat would be a good start?

I certainly think it needs to be discussed....

[Jeff Wong]

Also, the quality of course work I've personally seen has been pretty subpar and typical of the most novice workers.
Maybe is it due to a lack of understanding about the rules of the sport? Lack of caring? Exhaustion (if some workers are doing course work all day, perhaps)?

FWIW, I have noticed the course working has been subpar at Fontana and not El Toro... IIRC, Kyle's schoolmates are also autocrossers, so maybe they have more experience and understand the importance of the cones being set properly?

I'm a little biased. Hiring course workers so I can tune more on our new car has helped tremendously, but only for a practice event. On a champ event, I will work my assignment. As I think it should be since course placement is crucial.

[Bill Martin]

Perhaps supervision? I'm not called on much for worker chief up here, but they seem to like how I do it in San Diego. I spend much of each heat on the course with the workers. I typically ride my scooter or drive the set-up truck around the outside of the perimeter and watch from several angles. Then walk thru and separate or re-position people, discuss the important things with the newbi's and answer their questions etc. That seems to be well received down there.

If this is for FSAE benefit, perhaps they could supply some supervision to upgrade their rep as it seems to be hurting.

[Kyle O'Rourke]

Hey All,

I can probably help out with this as I typically manage the workers at El Toro from Cal State Long Beach SAE teams. Since I know how the events run, I make sure that my workers know what they need to do before they go out, give them tips for spotting and retrieving cones, make sure they attend the drivers meetings, and also when they are supposed to report for work. Also, a handful of my workers are SCCA members and are able to fulfill certain roles such as gate, starter, grid, radio, etc. I try to check-in my workers with the worker chief too so if there are any special positions, these particular members can cover those positions.

When I was worker chief for one of the events earlier in the year, I had to check in workers for Cal Poly Pomona. At that time, they were a little unsure of how the different roles and their importance and also reported late to work. I spoke with their main representative at that time about what he should be looking for and I think they did improve for the next event. However, I think they might have someone new managing their workers and they may not be training their new workers.

Another good point is exhaustion. For my workers, I limit the number of shifts they work per day and also make sure they never work two shifts back to back. I don't know if Cal Poly still does, but I know they would make workers work more shifts than any single person should.

As for the benefits, fundraising at these events helps out the SAE teams greatly as most of the vehicle costs, travel expense, and competition fees are put onto the students. Most teams only receive a small amount of funding from their school and the remainder must of the project is funded by fundraising and sponsors.

If anyone has questions, advice, or comments, I am all ears.

[Anthony P.]

Perhaps also limit people wanting to buy a worker to signing up for course work only? We had an entire group of fsae workers manning the radios without the proper training, which added to the stress for master radio, timing, computer and with the red flag issues could have resulted in safety problems as well.

[Craig Naylor]

As Worker Chief this last weekend I'm more inclined to agree with Sean's comments than some of the others. We had a perfect storm of confluences that made this last weekend challenging.
We had a very low turnout... which reduced workers over all.
We had a higher percentage of hired workers than most events...
We had people sign up for key positions, then hire workers. People who signed up for: radio, gate, starter, grid, and even a mortorhome position.
we had a wonderfully looooong course which spread the course few workers very thin.

Of course I learned who my FSAE replacements were typically once everyone else has checked in.... so now I have to run & pull people back & to move them around. This created several run groups between the two days were every position at more than one station in the run group was entirely staffed by either newbies, or FSAE volunteers.

In my 17yrs Axing, I've been the Safety Steward of record a dozen times or so, Sole Chair about the same, and even chaired & designed the course a time or two for the same event.... I've never worked as long or hard as I did this last weekend.

I definitely failed the volunteers in providing direction in working the course.... as I scrambled to move people around just to cover all necessary positions. IMHO I wouldn't point fingers at the FSAE guys, rather they should be thanked for their hard work filling many positions they don't normally with very little direction.

Fingers should point instead to ourselves, to implement parameters for all to succeed.

[Sean Fenstermacher]

Perhaps also limit people wanting to buy a worker to signing up for course work only? We had an entire group of fsae workers manning the radios without the proper training, which added to the stress for master radio, timing, computer and with the red flag issues could have resulted in safety problems as well.

^This would be ideal. Limit worker rentals to replace non-radio course positions only.

How would we get this done though? It seems that members rent workers just after AFTER registration and PRIOR to worker chief looking over the list of available workers for the heat.
Even if members do not sign up for the key positions, worker chief may need to re-allocate based off need.

As initial work assignment is handled at registration, would it be best to have the FSAE rep work with Registration to determine which position/members could be rented for?
As Registration is typically handled by more experienced members, it might help if some priority is placed to fill the key positions first (if not preassigned).

I know the couple times I was worker chief, I would find many of the course radio spots and some timing trailer sports blank and would need to re-allocate as needed. If I was short of members due to worker rentals, I would even need to recruit volunteers to get the job done.

[KJ Christopher]

How would we get this done though? It seems that members rent workers just after AFTER registration and PRIOR to worker chief looking over the list of available workers for the heat.
Even if members do not sign up for the key positions, worker chief may need to re-allocate based off need.

I feel confident that if I told Kyle he was only allowed to provide workers for "these" positions, that would happen.

[Bill Martin]

Come on. These are engineering students. They don't need to be excluded, they just need to be trained.

[Bobby Beyer]

Wouldn't it just be better to have whoever is doing worker reg to collect money for FSAE and coordinate with them? That way no one is playing telephone, and rental workers are immediately put in non important positions.

[KJ Christopher]

Come on. These are engineering students. They don't need to be excluded, they just need to be trained.

That solution ignores the fact that we don't have anyone permanently assigned as worker chief to the job of training, nor do we have anyone permanently assigned to the job of training the transient worker chief.

Your statement is fine in isolation, and has even been recommended and adopted by the club. It just doesn't work in our fact pattern.

[Q V]

As initial work assignment is handled at registration, would it be best to have the FSAE rep work with Registration to determine which position/members could be rented for?
As Registration is typically handled by more experienced members, it might help if some priority is placed to fill the key positions first (if not preassigned).

I really like this idea. If we make this part of the deal w/ FSAE (CPP, CSULB, whichever other schools do it) have their guy @ reg, this can help improve replacement worker quality.

As a note, the president/rep of FSAE & its members change fairly often. I trained a bunch of them last year specifically over 2 events and it was better for the rest of the year. They do have the proper pdf's printed out on coursework, etc. - this just needs to be reinforced.

I know for lots of our events, someone spends the time to train them in the morning after driver's meeting (I've seen Bill S. train a bunch of workers on several occasions throughout the year).

On our end, I would just recommend announcing at driver's meeting (and now @ reg when they sign up) that it is also the driver's responsibility to make sure their course worker knows what to do. This puts accountability on the driver hiring the worker - I mentioned this to the FSAE rep on Saturday to do on Sunday, but maybe he forgot or wasn't comfortable telling the drivers they needed to make sure their replacement is properly trained.

As for positions like grid & starter - we have a hard enough time getting regular participants to do these jobs well consistently...

[Lauren Kane Porta]

We will definitely have a section in the communications plan about this

[Jonathan Hartendorp]

Perhaps also limit people wanting to buy a worker to signing up for course work only? We had an entire group of fsae workers manning the radios without the proper training, which added to the stress for master radio, timing, computer and with the red flag issues could have resulted in safety problems as well.

Since I work at Registration at pretty much every event, I will say to go one step further and make it known to drivers that are signing up for work that if they do plan to hire a Cal poly or CSULB worker, that they are for "Course Work" ONLY meaning that the Cal Poly/CSULB worker CANNOT be hired for a radio position, gate, starter, grid, computer, timing, etc. PERIOD- They basically will be shagging/picking up cones and that's it.

The key/uber important positions are pretty much filled first with experienced veteran autocrossers BUT I guess we at reg have to be more proactive in letting those guys & gals know that they cannot hire a cal poly worker to cover for them if the position they signed up for is important.

I will plan to definitely implement this at our next event in November to make sure we don't run into the worker problems we did this past weekend ;)

Furthermore, I think we will need to re-train the Cal Poly workers because I saw a LOT of new faces in their group that I did not see last year.

[Bill Martin]

[On our end, I would just recommend announcing at driver's meeting (and now @ reg when they sign up) that it is also the driver's responsibility to make sure their course worker knows what to do. This puts accountability on the driver hiring the worker - I mentioned this to the FSAE rep on Saturday to do on Sunday, but maybe he forgot or wasn't comfortable telling the drivers they needed to make sure their replacement is properly trained.

I don't think it's likely this approach will work consistently. IMO, FSAE should only supply "trained" workers as part of the agreement. If they're to be restricted to cone shagging, that shouldn't be very difficult.

[Stephen Yeoh]

Sorry Bill, even cone shagging didn't end up being simple at the event. One course FSAE worker didn't have a red flag and needed to flag somebody. Fortunately there wasn't an incident.

Given that the FSAE group is transient, we should plan for it. Do we have any course working training videos? If we do, this can be made available to them for training while off site. I'd love to see a succession communication plan for the FSAE rep so that both the new rep and we are aware of the transition and can make sure it happens. We could also have a section on the web site dedicated to FSAE paid workers, what they need to know and when / who to communicate with. Since they are coming to make money, I feel it's not unreasonable that they have skin in the game as well. This means they need to have been trained or have experience in order to work - failure to do so is an unnecessary safety exposure for the club. If they aren't prepared to provide 'qualified' workers, then they shouldn't be allowed to work and create an unnecessary risk for us. That being said, I'm not in any way trying to imply that they wouldn't do so.

Kyle, since you have had experience with them, would you be willing to step up and be our permanent liaison to FSAE?

Since they are engineering students, this would serve as another opportunity for them to practice being organized and responsible

[Anthony P.]

Steven,
I really like the idea of basic training videos. We all have smart phones and it would be possible to play them on larger devices as well and novices could also watch them. If someone is too shy to ask for help perhaps it will be a basic intro and lead to them feeling more comfortable. And maybe later to stepping up to other positions if the autoxer more accurately understands the responsibilities and execution of the duties.

[Kyle O'Rourke]

I am fairly flexible with this matter. If you need me to provide special workers for radio, gate, etc. I can do so as I encourage my formula members to participate in the autox events themselves so they are trained well for such positions or have held them in the past.

Also, if you need someone to watch over SAE workers in general and/or maintain contact with them, I could also do that. That might not be a bad idea as FSAE members typically last anywhere from half a year to around 4 years. So it would likely to get see new faces often.

For Sunday events, I do think it might not be a bad idea to have the person managing the FSAE workers to set at registration as workers are assigned a position right then and there. That way a person can decide if they are alright with a particular job or if they would like to hire a course worker (if well trained/experienced of course).

[Craig Naylor]

... the FSAE workers to set at registration as workers are assigned a position right then and there. That way a person can decide if they are alright with a particular job or if they would like to hire a course worker (if well trained/experienced of course).

On the positive side for FSAE... they might sell more slots being convenient, and or even proactive pitching their offer at the point of signup... vs. having to track down the signup guy.

"Only course positions left, and you can't run... I've got a guy who can do that for you"

[Stephen Yeoh]

Any ideas on who could prepare the video? (It should be approved before it's put out for public consumption)

[Q V]

Any ideas on who could prepare the video? (It should be approved before it's put out for public consumption)

I actually created a video (similar to the safety/new worker talks after driver's meeting) last year when this was brought up last time, but I didn't like the result. What I'd really like to do is to be able to film some workers while they are working to add to whatever safety talk video we come up with. On a practical note, the pdf on our site covers everything we need, we just have to make sure the CPP workers take it more seriously and understand what is expected of them.

In the mean time, Jon Hart & I have set up an appointment w/ the CPP FSAE team to meet up and relay our concerns and discuss FSAE's worker procedure/process this coming Saturday. I think having this meeting outside of an autox weekend will help better prepare them since there are less distractions on both sides.