I was thinking about President Obama this morning and the awesome responsibility he holds. It seems that we are both flogging though the Christmas break to try and try and improve our organisations.
If we get it wrong then Bloodhound is in for one Hell of a fight for survival – if the President gets it wrong we are all in for a global recession! So no pressure there! Christmas is actually a good time for Bloodhound because the bank accounts have clear time to stabilise and give us accurate actuals. This is also a good time to revisit the planning: it’s also a chance to escape the vortex and get the clear thinking done.
Well you know what a vortex is – the bathwater flows clockwise down the plug hole in Europe but in South Africa in the Southern Hemisphere it flows counter clockwise. (I hope you’ll come to South Africa to experience all this and see BloodhoundSSC run!) But this is the point of the analogy - we are living and working in 24 hours a day vortex. It really doesn’t matter which way round it goes, the pace of Bloodhound is now very fast and the complexity is huge.
The project has to complete the car, commission it and get us to Hakskeen Pan in the autumn. We also have the no small matter of developing the Hybrid Rocket for 2014. The rocket peer review has made it clear that the hybrid rocket has a good chance of achieving its target of 27,500bs thrust and is the right choice of technology, but there is a great deal of development to be done. And the Bloodhound rocket team who put such an effort in support of Falcon at Westcott and Newquay are no longer available for rocket work – they have to build the car! So we have to build up a new rocket team to take the programme forward - and very quickly.
As the complexity and scale builds so does the vulnerability. It’s always the same when you are finishing a project. During the early stages of the project you can always set aside or reschedule work because you have to concentrate on more immediate actions. As you come up to the end of a project sector you can no longer do this - failure to complete everything in the sector can fail the entire project. A good example of this is the building of an aircraft. When the aircraft in build looks as though it’s nearly together with its wings and engines attached – you are probably only 60% through. We’ll be coming back to all this!!
Let me introduce you to Murphy’s law of Thermodyamics: Things get worse under pressure!
All this means a huge increase in workload and money, but that’s only the tip of the difficulty - the whole project has to change gear in its culture and thinking. Last year was tough but this year we have to grow another 300%. Our costs go up by a factor of three. Our planning and scheduling has to be downright smart. It’s not just the huge matter of upping the money, the more difficult part is upping the team confidence and thinking. We have had a very hard ride with this project and there is no blame for anyone doubting that we could ever complete the programme financed as we are by loan, sponsorship and public support. But now there is a real sense that it is really happening, and we have to change. Key to all this is thinking well ahead of the action so that the entire company doesn’t get stalled over unexpected hurdles. Take the Bristol building as an example. In the early days we thought it was big enough for the build – then serious doubt developed. We couldn’t make a move because there was no spare finance. Now a larger building is needed immediately and we have to be in there and operational by February. The old slow moving days of Bloodhound being an almost endless research project are over and we won’t be going back there again - ever! 2013 is the year we have to deliver!
And that’s very much what is happening in Bristol. President Obama may be concerned about the US economy falling off the cliff, but back in Bristol, Mark and the design team are about to release an enormous wall of drawings , from which Conor and our manufacturers have to get the parts made on time, so that kits of parts are ready for Chris Dee and the team to assemble. We are running very substantial monthly costs now, deliveries have to be smack on time or earlier. Late deliveries slow the project and are incredibly painful. Bloodhound is now on the tightrope and there is no relaxing until we have finished the build.
Decision making gets more and more complex and it has to be fast. Brian and Ron wanted to check the effect of the BH wheels on the Hakskeenpan desert. It meant losing Brian, our ace designer, for a week and a significant project to create a special two-wheeled trailer capable of carrying 4 tonnes of water as the disposable load. The Alimex show wheels had to be flown out. I was concerned that we were wasting time and resource – after all we had plenty of experience with wheels with Thrust SSC, the Bloodhound CFD programme had evaluated wheel aero drag and Andy had taken bearing strength readings over the entire Hakskeenpan desert. Surely we had enough data to define our wheels widths without having to resort to on site experiment? Surely we were over-engineering? As you can read in Mad Max at Hakskeen, Brian and Ron did go to the desert, and in Capetown, Skip, Rudi and the team created a brilliant and simple test solution. Have a look at the pictures – the desert is chocolate brown meaning that there has been rain – but look how shallow the very low speed wheel tracks are! The desert is harder than I imagined and we could go for narrower wheels, reducing weight aero drag and inertia. It was well worth doing and I was wrong!
Our friends at Engineering UK have just published their annual report on UK engineering activity. Usually it’s been pretty dire reading, but this time there is a positive note. UK Engineering companies’ turnovers are steady at £1.06 trillion- 23% of all UK enterprises, three times the size of the retail sector and they employ 5.4 million people. Entrants to the individual GCSE Science subjects while still very much in the minority have trebled between 2003 and present. Between 2010 and 2020, engineering companies are forecasting 2.74m job opportunities. Over 2010/2011, 85% of engineering graduates went into paid work or went into further study within six months of graduation - the average starting salary being in excess of £27,000. The message is still that we need large numbers studying maths and physics. While physics uptake increased just 5% last year it still only accounts for just 3% of all GCSE’s taken in 2012! But 2.74 million job opportunities over ten years – that’s solid and immediate quality employment!
We got almost all the Bloodhound Manual books away before Christmas - please accept our apologies if yours was a little late in arriving. The Manual was planned as an introduction to the Bloodhound technologies and presented in smart coffee table format. It's been a huge team effort in terms of writing and graphic design with copy by David Tremayne and the Bloodhound Team. If you want to wind up Richard Knight, tell him you have just had a bright idea for the next manual! We trialled the first 200 early prototype books at the October rocket firing and they have long gone, hopefully as collector's items. Ian Glover and Inge Park run the merchandise operation from their homes and this reached a predictable crisis when arrangements were being made for the first production book deliveries. British printers Butler Tanner and Dennis rang Inge : We have 15 pallets of books to deliver – have you got a forklift?
The beautiful Autodromo 1/64 models are selling well and I am hugely impressed with their work. As we come up to the first 1000 delivery, I was looking at the latest batch. The quality is first class and they are setting a very high standard.
Demand is getting strong now and it’s time for warehouse space – and another forklift!
Back to the Vortex – key to all this is the sponsorship battle. We have 56 people working now and the target funding has to cover the completion of the car and the operation at Hakskeenpan. We have been able to achieve loan finance which enables us to complete the car build – but all this has to be paid for. As we get into 2013 – the sponsorship battle which has been so difficult has suddenly come alive big time. The sponsorship activity is very close to the old circus plate spinning act –you have to keep moving fast and respinning the deals that have started to wobble. Last year Al Watkins , Jimmy Campbell-Smith from the Influence agency and I were struggling to find plates to spin – and the ones that were spinning seemed to require constant attention. It really began to look like ThrustSSC and the old British disease all over again - with promotional money being spent on safe risk free traditional/historical activities and not on forward innovation activity. You have only to listen to the British media with its huge emphasis on safe historical retrospectives to get the message. It’s a truly wonderful time for historians and revisionists – but then you know what Henry Ford had to say about all that back in 1916 (check Chicago Tribune May 25)!
But suddenly all that has changed for us, Al looks stressed and Jimmy has a broad smile; there are an awful lot of plates in play, the deals are running and we now have to put the energy into closing the deals. What is also good is that the new deals are appearing from aggressive determined younger companies – and the buzz just has to be experienced. There is one that I am particularly pleased with. The Main Board having turned us down last year suddenly send me a mail : Richard , are you still looking for sponsorship from our sector?
But then it has to be that way-Bloodhound has to expand a further 300% in 2013.
Now to South Africa. With all this frantic activity going on, have we lost sight of the run site and our friends who have risked so much? Thanks to Virgin Atlantic, I was able to grab a December flight and I wrote this section from Johannesburg. The Northern Cape Team are working wonders with huge machinery on site including bulldozers, dumper trucks, laser driven graders and of course the teams from the five local Hakskeenpan towns. Nico Fourie who runs the programme for the Northern Cape was keen that we all spent Saturday together. So we spent some 6 hours presenting the project updates to 300 people in 5 different locations. Over 500 people had been involved in the stone clearance so far and they had shifted 6,000 tonnes of stones in backbreaking conditions. While I was there the local temperature reached 47C and the teams under Aubrey’s smart leadership were starting at 5am in order to maintain pace before it got too hot. But now it is mid December and that’s when South Africa winds down for Christmas. The desert team’s enthusiasm for the project is just fabulous and that one question was being asked all the time: When is our car coming? (Note that its always our car)
We’ll be with you in the autumn….
There had been some rain, the desert was a milk chocolate colour- and it was then that I realised that rain on the desert at Hakskeenpan doesn’t bring the awful finality to the run programme that it does in the US. In the US when rain comes to Black Rock or Bonneville it signals the start of winter – the place floods and the temperature falls to freezing. There is no heat to evaporate the surface water and there is no option but for the record team to head home. But at Hakskeenpan the climate is different – the rain is convective and comes in mid summer. There is plenty of heat to flash off the rain - not only does it evaporate the rain, but Andy is convinced that it hardens the surface as well. Maybe we can run very much later in 2013 and possibly into early 2014.
Back on the Pan, Nico is battling with huge rocks and shale just under the surface at the South end of the course and this is turning out to be a massive task as the holes have to be filled in layers to ensure a load bearing surface. He is sure he is going to be through by February.
The half day Pan trip is over and its back to Upington and then the long drive to Kimberley for the meeting with the Northern Cape Government - I was concerned over progress on the development of the event planning. Then it was a short flight to Johannesburg for two days of back to back meetings including an important one with our friends at MTN who are putting up the 5x transmission masts to take video and data from car to the internet. We worked our way through the agenda and then Lambo passed on the good news – the MTN foundation had decided to help Dave Rowley with the South African education. This is very important for us because Dave has been financing his and Wendy’s education activity in South Africa and its time he got help with the 147 schools already signed. Bloodhound will be in South Africa in around 9-10 months and the local education machine needs to build strongly now that the demand is proven. On this front we have also learned that the British High Commission are to award two Bloodhound scholarships for Masters degrees in UK.
Two more absolutely brilliant Johannesburg meetings (hopefully I can write about these in the near future) and I should be on the Virgin plane home in time for the Bloodhound Christmas party, which I had to miss last year. It had been a good trip and I was really looking forward to celebrating – after all the cynics had expected Bloodhound to die in September. But it was not be – the Head of Economics and Tourism at the Northern Cape Government had called a snap meeting for 13 people in Kimberley: Mr Seboko laid it on the line : I want you to understand that this event is of great importance to the Northern Cape and we’ll do all that is necessary to make it a major success for Northern Cape and for South Africa.
It was a great meeting and I learned something very new – they are planning to ensure that the benefit from all this would accrue to the local Hakskeenpan community where there is very high unemployment. The local people will be trained to support the visitors coming to the pan and this could include local souvenir manufacture, provision of food accommodation etc. As if to prove this at the recent Kalahari Speedweek event, a beautifully made wire car model sold for R2000 (£140).
I explained that we had no idea how many people might travel to see supersonic runs on the pan, but the Northern Cape team had taken soundings and they believe a large number of South Africans will come. Bloodhound is now being followed in 218 countries and while we can’t speak for 217, we know that large numbers of Britons are planning their holidays around Bloodhound. This explains the Northern Cape’s dilemma - how to plan for all this? We’ll learn more in January but there isn’t much time – we are going to be there in the autumn.
South Africa at Christmas becomes a holiday resort – the entire nation shuts down and flights are very difficult to come by. Fortunately there is one last seat on the Virgin flight from Cape Town and that gave me a chance to meet up with Skip, who is busy shooting yet another outdoor commercial in Cape Town where the light is dependable and costs favourable. Skip and I down ice cold beers on the roof of his Cape Town office looking over the bay, marvelling at how far the project had developed and wondering how the hell we are going to get through 2013.
In the meantime great things are happening with Bloodhound education in the UK. Under Chris Kirby’s steady leadership the team is developing very strongly and the Nottinghamshire County programme involving over 3,000 school kids has been a considerable success. This is an interesting development because the team had changed almost entirely - the event was run largely by Nick Naylor who shared delivery with our two new presenters Jo Beswick and Simon Haydn. In the meantime Jonathan Ellis is racking up the miles as he puts the next big county deals together – a huge responsibility as the revenue from these events funds the Bloodhound Education Team. A recent classic was the big Enfield event run by Jo Finch which was the first to incorporate an IT focus and work closely with our friends from Metaswitch. We were nearly scuppered on the first day because at the major kick off presentation a connector on my new laptop burned through and landed us with a massive restructuring crisis. We sent the audience out for drinks, rebuilt the entire presentation with embedded videos onto another computer and restarted 40 minutes later. The audience took it in good humour and turned out to be a really great evening.
January 26th is an important day. Seema Quraishi is getting all the Bloodhound ambassadors together. We tried to do this before Christmas but we simply were never going to be ready in time. The Ambassadors are crucial to our ability to service the schools and we are going about it in a very different way – this is going to be quite something. We are looking for the solid core of committed ambassadors who will help us take all this forward.
In parallel with all this we are working to create the new Digital Channel with our friends at YouTube, Microsoft and Cisco and also the all-important Social Learning Environment being planned up by Jo Finch, which is to be positioned alongside the data presentation. The project has to move fast to get all this accomplished in time and we have to be very careful to make the right decisions as these have legacy implications. It’s like pouring concrete – once it’s in the foundations there is no going back.
So this is what record breaking is really about. It is too easy to think that it’s just about paying bills and developing the wonderful car. Simply put, no infrastructure means no record. As you will see when we are on the desert we will be working long hours simultaneously on multiple fronts and not everything will go smoothly. The unexpected can catch us out big time – like when I drove over my laptop during ThrustSSC in 1997!
So we have to develop an organisation which anticipates trouble and sorts it quickly, quietly, confidently and without fuss. And when we eventually get that sorted, then quite suddenly and quite unexpectedly the last problem will be behind us: we will have climbed the mountain together and with a bit of luck we might have a new World Record.
As of today we have a very very long way to go – but Base Camp is in sight!
So here’s to 2013 - it's going to be an extraordinary year !
Richard Noble December 2012.
