Kit Team

Purpose

The Kit Team is a Services team tasked with developing and maintaining the SR Kit, and to provide a Kit Service to enable the SR Competition Programme.

The Kit is defined as the hardware and software (including software services) that are provided to school teams to enable them to take part in the annual robotics competition.

The Kit Service includes, but is not limited to:

• Provision of sufficient working kit to meet the needs of the Competition Team

  • Delivery of kit to Kickstart location(s) as agreed with Competiton Team

  • Checking kit out to teams at Kickstart events

  • Shipping kits to teams that cannot attend a Kickstart event

  • Collecting and holding disclaimer forms for kit issued

  • Dealing with any kit problems and issuing replacement parts as needed throughout the competition cycle

  • Providing technical documentation for competitors and for volunteers

  • Providing technical support to competitors and volunteers (both remote and in-person at events)

  • Recovering and checking kit following a competition cycle

  • Dealing with requests for late return of kit

  • Chasing any missing kit including kit not returned

  • Storing the kit safely

  • Maintaining an inventory of the kit

• Developing kit for future competitions

Structure and Operation

The Kit Team is a group of volunteers that work together to provide a Kit Service. The team is lead by a committee that is responsible for fulfilling the aims of the team.

The Kit Team is separate from the Competition Team. However, it is expected that Kit Team volunteers will have previously volunteered with the Competition Team and that volunteers from both teams will be available to help run the annual competition.

Volunteers apply through the Kit Team Committee to join the team. The committee will ensure the team has an appropriate balance of relevant skills. The committee should not unreasonably restrict membership of the team.

The Kit Team Committee

The Kit Team Committee is a group of 3 people who develop and clearly communicate a strategic vision, coherent with the values of Student Robotics, for the Kit. The committee ensures that resources are always used in the best interests of the charity and is accountable to the Trustees, The committee delegates responsibilities and resources to the rest of the team.

Roles and Responsibilities

In addition to the common responsibilities, the kit team has the following responsibilities:

Collective responsibilities

• Communicating a strategic vision for the kit.

• Ensuring that resources are deployed only for the purposes of delivering the Student Robotics Competition Programme or as directed by the Trustees.

• Maintaining a record of team members, with their abilities and desired workload.

• The management, tracking and distribution of assets within the team.

• The management of the workload of members of the team.

• Ensuring projects are open source, open to contribution from external parties, and inviting to work on by volunteers.

• Assigning and managing projects/maintenance to team members, this may be assigned to self organising subgroups of individuals.

• Maintain documentation of processes and anything else that they feel relevant relating to their responsibilities to help both current and future volunteers This documentation should be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Accountability

The Kit Team is accountable to the Trustees. A report will be delivered by the committee member responsible for reporting to the Trustees, every 4 months, to update them on the work of the team and the state of the kit.

Minutes of meetings should be made available to the general public, although access to any sensitive commercial data may be restricted to the Trustees.

Budget

A budget will be made available to allow the kit to be stored safely and maintained in good working order.

Specific budgeting for development projects will be managed on a case by case basis, applying for budget from the Trustees in each of these cases.

A "Development Pot" line should be requested, and will be made available to cover low-cost resources used in the development process.