Taking BCS to the Racetrack: Projektron Supports e-gnition Hamburg

This partnership continues a long-standing tradition: For many years now, Projektron has been working with universities to familiarize students with professional project management early on.

University cooperation has a long tradition at Projektron

You cannot learn project management from textbooks alone. Practical work shows how work packages depend on one another, how teams deal with limited resources and how schedule changes can affect an entire project. That is why we at Projektron have been working with universities for many years. We do not follow a rigid model. Depending on the university and project, we provide BCS for courses and student projects, support the transfer of knowledge into practice or exchange ideas with lecturers and students about project management methods and requirements.

Our university partners include Emden/Leer University of Applied Sciences, Stralsund University of Applied Sciences, Wildau University of Applied Sciences and the Berlin School of Economics and Law. The form of cooperation varies from one institution to another. Students use BCS in courses, case studies and their own projects, giving them the opportunity to apply project management methods with professional software.

Student development projects illustrate this approach particularly well. At Emden/Leer University of Applied Sciences, for example, projects involving the university's solar boat team provided one of the starting points for using BCS. With e-gnition Hamburg, we now support another student team that combines technical development and project management in a particularly tangible way.

e-gnition Hamburg e. V. is a non-profit student association at Hamburg University of Technology. Since 2011, the team has developed its own electric race cars and competed against university teams from different countries in Formula Student competitions.

The challenge involves much more than speed on the racetrack. Formula Student requires teams to present a complete vehicle concept. In addition to technical performance, the competition assesses areas such as design, engineering and economic aspects. The students therefore need to do more than develop a competitive vehicle. They also need to organize a complex project.

A season at e-gnition involves many tasks running in parallel. The team develops the vehicle concept, designs components, programs software, builds electronic systems, manufactures parts, tests the car and prepares for competitions. At the same time, team members take care of organization, financing, partners and public relations. 

Many disciplines work toward the same goal. Mechanics, electronics, software and organizational teams handle different tasks, but they need to coordinate their work closely. Delays in one area can quickly affect other parts of the project. Student teams also face another particular challenge: their composition changes regularly. Experienced members finish their studies, while new students join the team and take over tasks and responsibilities. The team therefore needs to develop not only a race car, but also structures for transferring knowledge and continually reorganizing its collaboration. As a result, e-gnition faces many of the same challenges that we know from professional development projects.

Since autumn 2025, we have provided e-gnition with BCS free of charge as part of our university cooperation. Our software allows the team to organize its project work centrally, structure tasks, assign responsibilities, coordinate deadlines and track the current status of its work. A shared data basis creates important conditions for collaboration, especially in an interdisciplinary development project. The individual disciplines work on different tasks, but they all pursue the same objective: the new race car needs to be ready on time and perform reliably on the track.

BCS helps the team structure tasks and dependencies transparently and organize collaboration across the various disciplines. Our cooperation goes beyond the software itself. Two members of e-gnition also took part in our project manager training course. There, they deepened both their knowledge of BCS and their understanding of the methodological foundations of professional project planning and project control.

This combination of software and project management expertise plays an important role for us. A good tool makes project work easier. Successful teams also need a shared understanding of goals, responsibilities, processes and priorities.

What begins at the start of a season as requirements, ideas, tasks and project plans stands on four wheels just a few months later. For the 2025/2026 season, e-gnition developed the egn26 race car. In May 2026, the team presented its new vehicle at the rollout at Hamburg University of Technology. The students had reached one of the most visible milestones in their project. The finished race car represents many months of development work and collaboration between numerous team members from different disciplines.

Projektron also has a visible presence this season. Our logo appears on the egn26 and accompanies the team at its events and competitions. After the rollout, the project entered its next crucial phase. The team now had to demonstrate how reliably the vehicle, technology and team could perform together under real competition conditions. For us, this transition makes the cooperation particularly exciting. Project management at e-gnition never remains abstract. The students plan and coordinate a complex development project over many months and can ultimately take the result of their joint work onto the racetrack.

We do not see university cooperation as a one-way street.

Students gain access to professional project management software and practical expertise. They can apply methods from their studies and academic courses to real challenges and become familiar with tools they may encounter later in their professional careers.

At the same time, we benefit from our exchange with universities and student teams.

Student users bring different perspectives and work under different conditions than established companies. Their experience with BCS gives us additional insight into how young project teams use the software, which functions help them and where they face specific requirements.

Contact with future professionals also plays an important role in this type of cooperation. As part of our partnership with e-gnition, for example, we can share suitable vacancies for internships, working student positions or entry-level jobs directly with the association's members.

We also know from other university partnerships that these contacts can create long-term relationships. The exchange between universities, students and Projektron can generate professional ideas, joint projects and, not least, connections with future colleagues.

Whether students develop a solar boat, design a race car or work on a project management case study, theoretical knowledge becomes particularly valuable when they apply it to concrete challenges.

That is exactly why we have been engaging with universities for many years. We do not simply want to show students which methods and tools professional project management offers. We want to give them the opportunity to apply these methods themselves and gain experience in demanding projects.

Our cooperation with e-gnition illustrates this approach particularly well. Numerous students work toward a shared goal over many months. They coordinate disciplines, deadlines and tasks, solve technical problems, respond to changes and ultimately bring their work together in a single product. BCS helps them structure their project work and maintain an overview.

In the end, planning, development work and teamwork come together in the egn26. Through our university cooperation, we bring BCS and our project management expertise to the places where tomorrow's project managers, developers and specialists are already implementing demanding projects today.