The Race to Triple the Engineering of Ventilators
There is no doubt that the need to adapt in the climate of the Covid-19 crisis is an essential step for any organisation. It is also a step that we recently discovered has already been so successfully and inspiringly achieved by fellow Woman in Automotive, Jessica Dane, and her team at QLD’s Triple Eight Race Engineering.
If you’re following Women in Automotive on Instagram, you may have recently seen Jess – the first guest in our #WomenInAutomotiveAtHome campaign last week – show a quick snapshot of a ventilator while giving a tour of the Triple Eight workshop. That ventilator was the first design in Triple Eight’s effort to engineer a ventilator that could be both economically and quickly produced for Australians, if needed.
Poetically, exactly a month ago this week, Jess and the Triple Eight team were solemnly packing their bags and driving out of the grounds at the Melbourne Grand Prix after it was cancelled in arguably the first major Covid-19 cancellation in Australia. Faced with the unprecedented shut down of the motorsport industry, Triple Eight MD, Roland Dane, instructed the team to adapt their skills as race engineers to that of engineering air ventilators, following the news of the worldwide ventilator shortages. In a team effort, Jess then reached out to a few contacts working in the QLD government, and before the team knew, the initiative had both State and Federal Government support.
When discussing the motivation to adapt the team’s efforts, Jess commented “Triple Eight won’t receive any financial benefit from the project, which was our decision. We’re doing this to help, simple as that. It’s Roland’s belief that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail, and that is a belief that is held through the Triple Eight team as well.”
Now just over a month later, Triple Eight Race Engineering has successfully designed two prototype ventilators ready for mass production – a move that thankfully, hasn’t yet been needed in Australia. Triple Eight Race Engineering will be presenting the final two designs to the Governments next week, following further coverage on the initiative on 60 Minutes on Sunday 19/04.
