The team had dissolved twice before. Restarted from zero with 10 engineers, a 12-month Robosub deadline, and a budget of under 20% of typical competing teams. The constraint wasn't a limitation; it forced cleaner design decisions.
Took mechanical team lead at inception, responsible for the hull design and 4 electromechanical subsystems. Every design decision filtered through cost-constraint first: function before aesthetics, off-the-shelf where possible, custom only when necessary.
Managing a 10-person mechanical team on a student timeline meant tight scope control, clear ownership of subsystems, and regular integration syncs with electrical and software leads to catch interface issues early.
All four subsystems reached prototype stage before the program ended. School funding and industry partnerships fell through, and without the resources to continue, the team stepped back. I shifted focus to coursework and capstone. Not the outcome we planned for, but a genuinely valuable experience: standing up a 10-person engineering team from nothing, scoping an ambitious hardware project under severe budget constraints, and learning what it actually takes to keep a cross-disciplinary team coordinated and moving.