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John McQuilliam - Chief Designer
 
See also:
The car for 2002
The timescales
The design process
The regulation changes
The monocoque
Vehicle dynamics
The transmission
Front suspension
The uprights
Rear suspension
EJ12 - making it happen
As Jordan's chief designer, John McQuilliam's brief is to live in the real world and make sure that all the fanciful ideas emanating from his design team work in practice and to ensure that all the five thousand or so parts that go into the build of EJ12 will fit together.

"My job is to supervise the efforts of the senior designers, while my personal responsibility is to check on the interactivity of the different parts on the car," elaborates McQuilliam. "For example, I look at the interface between suspension and chassis design and make sure all the people are aware of the consequences of any actions or decisions others are making.

"When we start the design process, I ensure we introduce all the changes to the car that we want. We’ve been running EJ11 for a year and there are lots of parts we feel we can improve on, from listening to the observations of the mechanics. Or maybe we have had an occasional part failure and our component manufacturers might suggest different techniques we can use. These make us develop and evolve components. I collate this information and pass it on to the people who have been given that specific design task, as they might not be the same people who worked on the component the previous year. In many ways I act like a reservoir for all the niggles and problems."

Factory

Another of John's roles is to keep an eye on the regulation changes from year to year. "I have to see how best to interpret the rules to our advantage," says McQuilliam. "If you feel you might be going a little bit past a "reasonable" interpretation, then you ask the FIA for a clarification. Most people complain about the clarification system, but it is almost part of the fun! It is like cracking a code; maybe not coming up with the most obvious solution, but the most imaginative that is still legal.

"I also have to make sure the car works in practice. Can a mechanic actually get a spanner on a nut if it is placed somewhere in the tub for example. I am personally responsible for the safety of the car and for its legality and for its parts passing the FIA tests. In the case of a simple side penetration test, we can select a better choice of materials for those parts and end up with a lighter and stiffer chassis. It's nothing too clever."


Making sure EJ12 will be ready by launch date also comes under John's remit. "A schedule comes from the production office and that has the historical information from the previous car build which tells us how long it takes to make a component," he explains. "We assess the car schedule which lists every major part of the car bigger than a nut, bolt or washer and then allocate time for design, manufacture and getting it into stores and on the strength of that, I allocate work within the drawing office.  All the parts are interrelated and have to be ready in time to build the car."

The chassis work starts first as it has to be ready first. The gearbox takes a similar length of time to develop. Then comes suspension front and rear, anti-roll bar mechanisms and the torsion bars which have very involved machining requirements. All the titanium parts and items like suspension brackets are progressed around this time. The bodywork and wings have to be ready around six weeks before launch. Every year, the work of producing a grand prix car gets more complicated and demands more man-hours (or should that be people-hours, in these politically correct times?) Currently, Jordan has 20 people working full-time on the design of the car and a further 20 concentrating purely on the aerodynamic side of the project.