Imagine your dream job. It might include being given all the thinking time that you need, with plenty of fired-up, like-minded people around to discuss new ideas and challenges, state-of-the-art software tools at your disposal when you need them, the chance to travel to clients and suppliers around the world, and opportunities to deliver papers at international conferences.

Not forgetting being paid to drive some of the best cars available today. For one lucky man, Damian Harty, chief engineer, dynamics, this is his job at Prodrive.
"The management team here at Prodrive is excellent, prioritising what people do according to their strengths, so allowing them to do what they enjoy and what they are good at - within reason, of course," says Harty. "This is one of the reasons why the company is so successful, I believe, together with the fact that the management team has found a business model that really works."
Prodrive is based in Banbury, UK, with another facility near Warwick that boasts a 100-hectare (250-acre) proving ground that includes a 4km (2.5mile) test track. The company really came to the public's attention from 1990 onwards through the creation of a series of world-beating rally cars for Subaru (Fig.1), and has also prepared rally cars for marques such as Porsche, BMW and MG. In addition, the company has been managing the Lucky Strike BAR Honda Formula 1 team since 2002, works in the field of touring cars with the likes of BMW, Alfa Romeo, Honda, Ford and Volvo, and has built and run Ferrari's 550 Maranellos in sports car racing - including at Le Mans.
Motorsport is one side of the business, with automotive technology consultancy being the other. Prodrive has particular expertise in design, calibration and testing of powertrains, vehicle dynamics, control and systems integration, vehicle engineering and manufacture, so it finds itself working with many of the world's leading automotive manufacturers.
In what appeared to be a break from its mainstream work, earlier in 2004 Prodrive announced that it had been designing a slimline four-wheeled vehicle that carries two people, yet it is no wider than a motorbike. This Naro car was Damian Harty's brainchild, and you can read more about it on page 17.
When Harty graduated from Loughborough University he went to work at Ford's UK research and development centre at Dunton, taking with him his twin passions for motorbikes and vehicle dynamics. "That was an amazing place, I really enjoyed my time there," he says. "I particularly liked the depth that vehicle manufacturers go into; somewhere within the company you could find out about every last nut and bolt of a car. I am still very proud of some of the work I did at Ford, but I found it very difficult - though not impossible - to get a sense of personal achievement."
Harty moved from Ford to nCode and then to SDRC, revelling in the variety of work that came with consultancies. While at SDRC, he studied part-time for a Master's degree at the University of Hertfordshire, writing his thesis about a process for motorcycle swingarm design. "It wasn't the design of a swingarm that interested me so much as the process you would go though if you had a clean sheet of paper." Because of the market conditions, SDRC was receiving less work in the field of vehicle dynamics; so when an opportunity arose at Prodrive, Harty jumped at the chance.

Thinking time

Seven years on, he is still enjoying the job. "I get to spend about 75 to 80percent of my time thinking about things, which might be formulating some equations to describe a system, performing computer simulations, driving cars, looking at cars on ramps, or examining broken components. The management team shields me from management tasks, so the remainder of my time is spent giving papers, attending conferences, helping to steer technical projects, and other activities - such as being interviewed!"
Although Harty is not currently a member of any professional institution and does not follow a formal programme of continuous professional development (CPD), he is very eager to broaden his knowledge. "My life is one long development. One of the things that came out of my MSC course was that I came up with my personal mission statement: To profitably use the knowledge I have while actively seeking the knowledge that I don't have. I am therefore always asking myself 'what do I know?', 'what don't I know?', and 'what do I need to know?', which is very helpful in checking my own priorities, and I am forever trying to find opportunities to develop myself in areas where I am weak."
As well as reading technical journals and papers, Harty finds that one of the best ways to stay up-to-date with current thinking and technologies is to network at conferences and give papers. "After giving a paper you soon find out in the question-and-answer session whether people agree with you. And the feedback can also spark new trains of thought. Simply talking to other people working in the same field is very profitable in helping to develop new ideas - so much so that it is often difficult to tell who came up with something first. Because vehicle dynamics is such a passion for me, this networking and mingling is very important. I think I would find it difficult to sit in a vacuum and come up with a new idea every day."

Regulatory compliance

When it comes to taking an idea through to fruition, Harty is not put off by the number of Regulations that have to be adhered to today. "Engineers have to work with Regulations in the same way as any other design input; it is just part of the job, not something separate. But quality assurance regimes are a different matter. Done properly, given people in the organisation with the right mindset establishing working protocols, the design and development process can be tracked without consuming any time."
In 2003 Prodrive experienced tough trading conditions in the same way as virtually every other company in the automotive sector. But Prodrive has emerged from that and now has a workforce of around 1000 worldwide, including operations in mainland Europe, North America, Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. Harty says: "When I joined the company there were about 300 people and some of them said 'it won't have the same small-company feel if it gets any bigger.' Now we are more than three times the size, some people are still saying the same. But the management team here is exceptionally good at growing Prodrive while retaining the feel of a small company, largely because of the way things are organised into small businesses within the company, with each having a strong identity that nurtures pride in the individuals. For example, there is the Aston-Martin group (working on the DBR9 race cars - Fig.2), the rally teams and the touring car teams."
Harty joined Prodrive as an experienced vehicle dynamics engineer, but the company recruits graduates as well. "There are advantages and disadvantages," explains Harty. "If you take on graduates you can mould them as you want, and you get them when they are still fired-up and before they have had it beaten out of them in soulless concrete buildings. But it takes time, and you don't always have that; sometimes you need someone who can hit the ground running." For positions in the UK Prodrive usually recruits from within the UK for purely pragmatic reasons. However, the rally team includes people from France, Germany, Belgium, Australia and Japan. Harty says: "If we find somebody with the right skills then we will take them on - and one of the right skills is them presenting themselves to us. But we can't rely on that, we also have to be proactive."
"Someone from one of our competitors once said that Prodrive always seems to get the interesting jobs. And it is probably true; not only do we enjoy the variety here, but we also get to work on some great projects."