Background
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Purpose of Role
Reporting to the Chassis Director, as the Technical Project Manager - Chassis you'll lead and deliver Vehicle Line Projects for the Chassis Department, covering a wide range of systems and components that include: Suspension layout, wishbones, uprights, bearings, wheels, brakes, steering, active aero, springs, suspension systems and associated software.
You'll work within a matrix organization to help plan and deliver world leading products, defining scenarios that support business planning, concept generation and robustly delivering parallel projects via the McLaren Development Process ensuring the team remain on time, on budget.
Principal Accountabilities
- Define and deliver all Chassis project targets and deliverables, ensuring they are cascaded, communicated, and reported against effectively at every stage of the vehicle programme to management.
- Generate and support key technology and system decisions with business cases and a clear lifecycle approach. Ensure consequences of decisions are understood and fed back into targets, budgets and plans.
- Create and maintain a Chassis High Level Plan (HLP). Work with Chassis Managers, Principals and cross-functional teams to ensure the CVT HLP is consistent with development plan, gateways, sign-off timing deliverables are met when required.
- Deliver projects on time, on budget and to the quality and engineering robustness targets.
- Be the primary point of contact for the Programme. Define and embrace the functional and departmental goals and be the voice of the Chassis Function Group.
- Responsible for managing the full budget for the Vehicle Line across the Chassis department, including internal and external resources, tooling investment, D&D and BOM cost with support from Vehicle Programme Manager.
- Prepare and Present Chassis MDP slides to project gateways communicating the contents delivered by CVT Managers
- Together with Chassis Managers and Principals, represent the Chassis team for the Finance, Project and Attribute meetings and report back to the Chassis department.
- Support decision meetings with concise, accurate technical and project information. Ensure consequences of decisions are understood and fed back into targets, budgets and plans.
- Manage design release process through ETRS for the whole Chassis Engineering group for the vehicle programme.
- Deliver all systems in line with targets, KPI’s and milestones as set by the McLaren Development Process (MDP) and Project management leaders.
- Generate and maintain the Risk Assessment Tool (RAT) for Chassis and ensure DFMEA’s and DVP’s are completed as per MDP requirements.
- Promote, implement and support a Simultaneous Engineering approach where early engagement from all stakeholders is maximized in order to ensure maximum efficiency and performance and avoid late changes and delays in the overall process.
- With the department managers work closely with support functions like purchasing, project and supply chain team to monitor current supplier performance and develop future supply strategies.
Knowledge, Skills and Experience
- Engineering degree 2:1 or above.
- Significant experience working within automotive programmes, covering project management, and system delivery (preferably Chassis systems).
- Experience both High volume and niche volume programs in an OEM or Tier 1 supplier.
- Knowledge of DFMEA and its application in automotive environment.
- Proven project leadership and delivery within an APQP or similar framework.
- Knowledge of Automotive technologies, systems and manufacturing techniques.
- Experience in problem solving.
- Demonstrable commercial acumen.
Personal Attributes
- We are looking for an individual with an outstanding passion for high performance sports cars, engineering excellence and creative thinking.
- Articulate ideas to internal customers and team members of all levels
- Ability to tactfully challenge without alienating.
- Ability to use own initiative when working under pressure.
- A team player able to work closely with internal and external network of engineers.
- Flexibility and Adaptability are key.
- Strong verbal and written communication skills.
- Ambitious and self-reliant.
- Intrinsically self-motivated.
- An excellent communicator with the ability to lead and motivate team.