This week has seen me in the US again, Dallas this time for a couple of days. While there was lots of work to do on the flights, and in Dallas, I did get some time to finish the project plan and review the line drawings I’d previously started.
Project Plan
Because I’m a Mac user and project management tools are limited for Mac, I do my project plans with Omni-plan. It’s similar to Microsoft Project but probably not quite as polished.
So, I took the Caterham recommended build sequence and threw it into Omni-plan. I then went through each item and added an estimate of how long it will take to complete each task. I used my common sense and tried to apply what I’d gleaned from the many build blogs I’ve read already. Hopefully we’re about right at 77 hours and 35 minutes ;-). I’m actually rather amazed that after just one pass through the plan I got the effort estimate to be so in line with what Caterham say, I suspect that’s too good to be true.
Here’s the high-level gantt chart of the plan which for the moment assumes we build during the first week of July:
A general point on timings: while the plan is showing just less than 80 hours and Caterham say that 80 hours is do-able, we’re under no illusion that it will work out that way!
For completeness I’ve also included the detailed plan below, and I apologise if it’s not particularly readable. This and the original files will get added to the downloads page once I can get that set up.
As we progress through the build I’ll be updating and posting status on the plan.
Line Drawings Updated
More on line drawings…. I promise this is the last update on line drawings. Here’s the latest front drawing. It looks much better with some detail in the tyres.
Bristol Motor Show 2017
Williams had a display of three Morgans, a Lotus Elise and a Caterham Seven at the Bristol 2017 Motor Show this weekend. The event was held in the car park of The Mall, Cribbs Causeway. We took the opportunity to allow the finance committee to view a car in the flesh. It was an S3 without lowered floors but did have a quick-release steering wheel. It was, of course, great fun getting in and out and hypothesising about how big our car is going to feel.
While at their display we talked to a couple of sales guys and also with Williams Sales Director, Paul Tovey.
One interesting point from Paul was that the last three self-builds they’d supplied to customers had gone very smoothly, at least in terms of the correct components being supplied. While that bodes well I’m still not counting any chickens until they’ve been delivered… and believe me we’ll be counting all the chickens as soon as we can get our hands on them and not just that we have the right number but also whether they’re the right chickens or not.
The finance committee was also very impressed with Paul’s telling of an incident from a race last year where he was T-boned by another car at 100mph and walked away from it.
Next Time…
I’m not sure what’s on the list for next week, it’ll be a surprise for all of us!
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