Technical and strategic leader
Technical and strategic leader
Embedded Files
Departmental Strategy
Departmental Strategy
In my most recent role as Director of Mechanical Engineering, I generated short-term and long-term goals for the department, performed SWOT analyses of the department and company, and collaborated with the rest of the senior leadership team to coordinate interdepartmental efforts. As the largest department in the company by far, the ME group was often the guinea pig for adopting new structures and practices. I was often at the forefront of that effort, creating how-to and other documentation to capture that information and disseminate it to the relevant audiences.
Skills Analysis and Training
Skills Analysis and Training
Before the company hired an HR manager, I was responsible for coordinating and managing both technical and non-technical trainings for the entire company. I brought in tens of thousands of dollars of grant money to pay for training courses. I led a cross-functional training group that helped identify specific needs for various departments. In addition to formal training courses, I also developed numerous training documents. Since people learn in different ways (auditory, visual, participatory), deployment was typically a mix of written materials and live presentations which were recorded for future viewing. I built up a vast repository of reference and training materials that became the core of our company's intranet. I also developed a system to track hours spent on professional development across the company and reported on quarterly progress in order to stay within an internal budget.
As a company, we habitually had problems answering the question "who's an expert at _____?" in order to connect engineers with internal resources or to support business development and resourcing needs. To address that problem for my department, I developed a list of skills that everyone would rate themselves on line-by-line. Frustrated with AI tools' failure to provide consistent and reliable answers, I developed an Excel and PowerBI-based tool to aggregate the data from dozens of individual spreadsheets live and present them in a dashboard for easy searching and analytics.
Technical Oversight
Technical Oversight
I regularly met with the technical leads of all projects that fell under my purview to review progress toward deliverables and technical approach, provide design guidance, discuss the performance of other mechanical engineers on the team, assess risks and resource loading, and support them in any way I could. That could entail explaining how other project teams tackled a similar problem, finding additional temporary resources, elevating concerns to project management, or working with managers to address underperforming engineers.
Personnel Management
Personnel Management
I worked with other leaders within the department to generate extensive descriptions of characteristics and expectations for each level of engineer (I, II, Senior, Principal) in order to get employees, managers, project managers, and senior leadership on the same page about performance evaluations, career development, hiring, and promotions. I approved promotions and other compensation changes based on evidence-based cases made by the employees' direct managers.
I worked with Resource Management and key program managers to assign appropriate individuals to projects based on skills, personality, prior experience, and employee preferences.
Sales and Marketing Support
Sales and Marketing Support
I regularly participated in quoting and proposal-writing activities. I would meet with potential clients, assess the scope, follow up with technical questions, and then generate a plan for how to address their needs on the mechanical side. Effort estimation and Gantt chart development were an integral part of this work, although risk assessment is perhaps a more subtle skill I've also developed over the years that has just as much impact on a quote. I've been through the process enough times to know that there are always unforeseen challenges and new scope that arise.
I also supported marketing and lead generation efforts by attending trade shows and manning the company's booth and robotic arm demo. Seeing what kind of traffic we got helped me form strategic plans for addressing departmental skills gaps and influencing sales strategy.
"As a technical leader, he provided organizational guidance to ensure project success. Bill is great to work with and I’d recommend him for any mechanical engineering or management/leadership roles without hesitation." – Senior Mechanical Engineer, Goddard
"He has driven improved design, collaboration and community everywhere that he has tread." – Senior Mechanical Engineer, Goddard
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse