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I discovered engineering in a university prospectus when I was 17. Throughout my childhood I’d always wanted to be an ‘inventor’, but it wasn’t until much later that I found out this dream could actually be a career path.
When I joined the University of Bath I was armed with nothing more than a handful of A-levels, a few months experience in production engineering and a truly terribly book about bridges my mother had given me hoping it would help.
After two years at Bath I spent a year working at Williams Advanced Engineering, the consultancy and engineering services business of Williams Formula 1 team. This was my first taste of cars. Before Williams I was ambivalent about cars. After a year a Williams, I could barely talk about anything else. Electric cars in particular. Racing if possible.
See also: Team Bath Racing Electric primed to represent the UK in China
TBRe
On returning to University, I got involved with the team of students building an electric racing car right there on campus – Team Bath Racing Electric (TBRe). Now, in all honesty, I wasn’t very good at this. It was miles removed from what I’d seen at Williams and I had no other reference points from my education. The only thing I did right at this point was stick around. I just didn’t leave the team alone. And slowly the knowledge began to accumulate. By Formula Student 2017 that July I’d become an expert on our car, the competition itself and had big ideas for the future of the team.
In 2018, I took over as Team Leader after being elected by my peers. At Bath, the Formula Student teams are completely run by students which is one of the best things about them. Our amazing project supervisors, Dr Ben Metcalfe and Professor Peter Wilson, were always on hand if we asked for help, but in general were happy to let the project grow organically.
First principles
It was a great experience to go back to the first principles of engineering design on our very own car, employing techniques and principles we’d learnt in our degrees so far to build a reliable machine. Formula Student also encouraged us to push the boundaries of what we’d learnt in lectures: the technologies we were playing with were at the forefront of research, unusual, unproven and sometimes dangerous! Things that definitely hadn’t made it into the syllabus yet.
Practical projects like Formula Student encourage students to be creative and innovate as well as helping to educate them about what jobs are available in industry.
As the Team Leader, I really enjoyed seeing younger students get inspired by working on the integration of our electric powertrain, designing and building circuit boards for our electrical safety systems and programming car behaviour purely through software, amongst many other problem-solving tasks.
During the blur that was the 2018 competition year I learnt more, laughed more and pulled out more of my hair than I ever could have anticipated. The experience was incredible, and I loved every minute. We ended the year having achieved all our objectives: as the top electric team in the UK and finishing 17th out of over 80 teams at the competition. Up 22 places from the year before.
Life changing
Looking back on it, it’s true to say that Formula Student changed my life. The experience teaches you more than just how to build fast cars; you learn to manage people, money and time, you learn teamwork and communication, you learn practical skills and problem solving, business acumen and commercial awareness, and more than you ever wanted to know about batteries.
It has opened doors to jobs and opportunities I would never have been able to access otherwise. I now work as a Project Manager for McMurtry Automotive who highly value Formula Student experience in their graduates. Another example is the opportunity we were offered to compete at Formula Student Electric China, taking place in Zhuhai next week.
This will be TBRe’s first international competition and we will arrive as the top ranked UK electric team and only British team to be competing, and we owe a great deal to the generous support of SAIC Motor UK Technical Centre who have sponsored the trip, as well as the University’s Faculty of Engineering & Design and Alumni Fund which have provided much needed financial and in kind support as part of this trip.
Leadership
As a woman in a male-dominated environment, participating in Formula Student gave me a platform to explore leadership, teamwork and public relations in engineering before entering the world of work.
It also gave me the opportunity to grow my confidence and find my feet in a place where women are a still rare sight. It is vitally important that the gender balance of engineering is improved, and I would love to see voluntary, competitive events such as Formula Student leading the way in this through targeted outreach to schoolchildren and fun publicity events that will increase the exposure of engineering to young women as an exciting and fulfilling career.
The University of Bath is particularly strong in this aspect through its Women in Engineering initiative which provides a range of information, resources and numerous funding opportunities and industry scholarships for female students. Bath also a Student Women’s Engineering society (WESBATH), which aims to support current female students within the Faculty of Engineering & Design and to encourage the next generation of future female engineers.
So, if you’re still reading this article looking for a ‘recipe for success’ then I’m sorry, I don’t have one. What worked for me was a large dose of focus and determination, whipped up with plenty of optimism, topped with some ruthless organisation, a decent sprinkling of luck and served with a seriously high caffeine beverage!
Elizabeth Maclennan, Project Manager for McMurtry Automotive, graduated from the University of Bath in July 2018 with an MEng in Integrated Mechanical and Electrical Engineering from the University’s Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering in which she was awarded first-class honours and the IET Prize for Outstanding Achievement in the Final Year. Alongside her final year of studies, she was the Team Leader of the University’s electric Formula Student team, Team Bath Racing Electric, the top-ranking electric team in the UK.
Formula Student is an engineering and motorsport competition held annually in the UK and organised by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE). Teams of students from universities all over the world design, build and test single-seater formula style cars before gathering at Silverstone to race their vehicles.
