Principal Engineer - Design Assurance

Responsibility for ensuring the quality, safety and performance of the current class of Royal Navy attack submarines is maintained during the complex build, test and commissioning programme. Working within multi-disciplinary teams, I ensure issues arising from manufacturing defects, obsolescence or poor engineering judgement during the design phase are resolved to the satisfaction of the customer and end-user. It is my responsibility to identify and embody improvements to the design, manufacture or testing process to ensure the customers’ expectations are exceeded wherever possible. My experience includes a wide variety of mechanical systems, including propulsion systems and equipment, fixed firefighting systems and submarine trim, compensation and bilge systems.Some responsibilities include:• Delivering a safe and technically compliant resolution to complex, emergent issues whilst taking cognisance of the wider business context such as project milestones and customer priorities.• Adjudicating supplier deviations to contractual standards, raising concession requests with the customer and ensuring correct configuration management is maintained.• Engineering authority on test groups, ensuring commissioning and trials activities on the Astute class main machinery equipment are carried out safely and deliver the evidence required to demonstrate fitness for purpose.• Writing requirements for suppliers and subsequently reviewing deliverables, including drawings, inspection and test plans, quality documentation and FAT reports.• Authoring calculations, trials specifications and holding design reviews with cross-functional stakeholders to ensure design decisions are conducted to the highest standards.• Delivery of a documentation set which demonstrates the systems for which I am responsible are safe and in accordance with requirements. This includes identifying hazards and thereafter demonstrating the risks which these present are as low as reasonably practicable.

As lead engineer for the Turbine Generators used on the next-generation Nuclear Submarine Programme (Dreadnought) I was responsible for the delivery of a multi-million pound design, qualification and manufacture contract to meet stringent technical requirements. I was involved in the project from its conceptual design phase through to early manufacture activities. Responsibilities included:• Successfully leading a project, ensuring that one of the most safety critical and spatially-constrained pieces of submarine equipment supports a continually evolving design whilst working to schedule and budget. • Working with the customer and a cross-functional group of stakeholders to develop technical needs and accordingly produce requirements specifications for a major supplier. Thereafter, responsibility for ensuring contracts are executed in agreement with requirements and responding to any deviations that occur.• Leading supplier discussions, defining and negotiating contract deliverables, being flexible to evolving requirements and resolving complex issues as they arise. • Review of documentation including calculations and design deliverables provided by internal/external stakeholders and suppliers.• Production of safety design documentation to support the overall submarine safety case.• Experience of the complexities of concurrent design as it relates to a highly influential system with multiple interfaces and competing demands.• Development of testing specifications to demonstrate qualification of functional, safety and contractual requirements during first of class trials. • The use of prototypes to validate novel design elements and reduce downstream risk. • Delivering presentations to high-level stakeholders at key design and manufacture milestones.

Completion of the BAE Systems Graduate Development Framework, with significant roles including working within the Office of the Chief Engineer for the Dreadnought programme where I was personally responsible for organising a project-wide engineering review, encountering many high-level key stakeholders and benefiting from their experience. Additional placements included gaining hands-on experience of operation of submarine propulsion machinery as a test engineer and working within the supply chain function preparing contractual documentation.