Every detail matters in the World Rally Championship – whether that’s ensuring the right driver is signed up to drive the car or the mechanics have the correct spanners in their toolbox.
That’s just at the rallies. Far more meticulous work happens back at base to prepare the cars for events or build them in the first place. If something is missed throughout these processes, it can have a catastrophic effect further down the line.
Mastering attention to detail is arguably more important to M-Sport than any other WRC team given how many cars it builds for customers throughout the calendar year.
To make sure there are no slip-ups, M-Sport has been relying on Safety Culture – a global technology company that provides software to improve efficiency and safety in any given workplace.
“M-Sport utilizes Safety Culture’s iAuditor platform, allowing us to create bespoke checklists tailored to fit around our build and preparation processes for WRC and Rally2 activities,” team principal Richard Millener explains.
“We will shortly be rolling out this to also assist our departments and 2022 hybrid rally elements.
“Safety and fault prevention are two fundamental factors that are significant contributors to our performance. We are constantly looking for opportunities to improve safety standards which, in turn, gives the entire team more confidence to push the performance boundaries of the car.
“Safety Culture helps us to underline this confidence by providing a transparent timeline of car builds that helps us to see where we can improve and hone in on error prevention but also be absolutely certain that crucial tasks have been completed to the high standards required to compete at a world championship level.
“When we are competing for tenths of seconds, increasing available development and testing time is key. iAuditor does this by streamlining our verification processes and reducing our lead times which provides more time to be committed to development work.”
Essentially, every single task that needs to be completed is logged and checked off via the online system so that no doubt can be raised whether the job has been done or not.
“The system is a cloud-based system, so anyone can access a checklist anywhere in the world,” Millener adds.
“So rather than waiting for an update from a member of a build team, when I need to check the progress of the cars being built, I can just check on iAuditor to see who is doing what and when.
“We can also communicate and query anything within the app which just gives us another edge over our competitors.”
The most obvious hints of performance in the WRC are linked to engine or chassis performance, but in utilizing Safety Culture’s product portfolio M-Sport can be sure that every single car that leaves its Dovenby Hall factory is fit to fight for stage and rally victories.
