(27) Working as a contract engineer (1/8).

I left General Motors in 1984, planning to offer my electrical engineering services to car manufacturers. Apart from my abilities in the field of automotive electrical systems I advertised myself as (then newish in the field) „computerised operator“, brandishing sample drawings produced on my recently acquired Apple Macintosh, and printed on the Apple "dot-matrix" printer.

First few weeks of my freedom were devoted to playing with my computer. The programs I was planning to use were MacWrite, MacDraw and MacFile. Cute names, but the performance offered by them was serious and far superior to the General Motors‘ „mainframe“ Applicon computer; superior in their ability, and especially in their speed.

    I contacted several companies, but, to my surprise, my first contract came from a non-automotive company called Fred Small & Sons Pty Ltd. The company was preparing an automated line for testing of automotive engines for – General Motors, and they were looking for someone able to connect their computers with the engine's electrical system. The engine was one for the vehicle called JB Camira, for which I recently designed the entire electrical system while still working at General Motors.

    For design and production of drawings I was planning to use my computer, but they did not want to hear about it. Computers at the time were not being used by anybody as yet, and Fred Small insisted on the traditional methods of drafting using pencils, protractors, compasses and such. Money being money, I dug up my old drafting tools with no small dose of disgust and spend a nice few months in the Fred Smalls office. In the process I had to visit several times my old General Motors where I bumped into some of my old colleagues who expressed their envy at my courage to leave the secure employment in favour of contracting at my „advanced“ age of nearly 50.

When I was close to finish, I received a call from Nissan Automotive, a car manufacturer. The company was preparing for production a passenger vehicle under the name of Nissan Pulsar/Holden Astra, and would I be able to come and design the electrical system for the car. On answering in the positive I was asked to come and show them some material to demonstrate my ability, and also tell them about the time needed, and remuneration required.

For the demonstration I prepared a few sketches produced on my computer. Sketches were in the form of drawings (produced on my new „dot-matrix“ printer), showing the proposed electrical system (in the form of my electrical circuit, perfected while I was still at the GM), location of cables in the car, and rough calculations of battery/alternator performance.

    Nissan management, led by their Chief Engineer Peter Barber (an ex-GM engineer, with whom I had a few disagreements back at the GM, where he worked as a testing engineer and resented my "innovative" approach to his testing) and Chief of Design Ian Stanley, were looking incredulously at my sketches; the computer drafting being something that was only being debated by car companies at the time.

This is my first presentation drawing. This type of presentation of electrical system has not been used in the automotive industry of the time:

    Nissan answer came after few days – my offer was accepted in preference to a Yazaki*** proposal; system, timing, cost, all accepted, and when would I be able to start. I was beside myself with joy: My First Real Contract!

Much later I realised that I made my first – and greatest – mistake in my new carrier: prior to handing my proposal to the Customer I failed to perform the „due diligence“ - I failed to quietly inquire about the reasons for being asked to provide my services...

After Nissan made the decision to design and build the new car its management asked its own design department for quote – how long, how many operators, how much would the electrical design cost. The answer was about eleven months and up to ten operators. So, the management began casting around for a cheaper, and more importantly faster, option, and found me, with my answer: three months, and two operators! With that last number I cheated a bit, for I was planning to do the job entirely by myself. It annoys me to this day, for I could have quoted, say, six months and five operators, with money to match, and still could have won the contract.

The difference in time and number of operators required for the same job is a nice example of difference between classical manual and the new-fangled computerised design and drafting. In reality, the contract lasted a couple of months longer that my two months quoted initially, due to various changes requested by the customer. Still, I earned about 50% more than I would have earned at General Motors for a similar job and time. This contract helped me to establish a name which was of good use to me in hunting for future work.

Incidentally, a year after its release for production, the vehicle was branded as the "vehicle with the best electrical system" by the Royal Automotive Club of Victoria's survey.

The following is a typical drawing of the electric door locks system:

Next is the drawing of Main Wiring Harness for the same car:

*** Yazaki at the time was the largest automotive electrical components manufacturer in the world.