Employee Spotlight - Alex Fernandes

What does your job entail? And how long have you been with the company?

I’m a Product Architecture Manager and have been in this role for five years.

My background is in Change Management and have 30 years of experience working in the automotive industry. My role at Dennis Eagle looks at change control and data control, and what this means is that every change that is requested by an engineer is controlled by my team who are then responsible for informing the business about any changes. For example, if there has been a change to a vehicle part, we need to ensure it gets updated correctly without causing any impact.

Personally, the reason why I get great satisfaction from my job is because I love change and thinking about how to improve a process without manual input by using technology to be more efficient and accurate and easier for everyone in the business.

How do you Motivate the team?

To help keep the team motivated we have a set of values that we try and follow. These are:

• Humour: We strive to make things enjoyable and lighten the mood for everyone.

• Teamwork/Synergy: We believe that everyone has unique strengths to be explored and that we can achieve more by working together.

• Respect: We aim to build good relationships with all levels of our business while respecting differences.

• Progress: We embrace change and encourage continuous improvement.

In terms of success, which accomplishments are you most proud of?

I would say that I enjoy making things better and quicker, to try and improve processes and remove those that don’t serve their purpose anymore. For example, I created an online Change Management System to track an all-processing tool that can be used by all users working on a project, which was previously carried out on Excel documents. The tool enables reporting on the whole status of the project which can benefit various teams across the business.

For the future I have plans to improve Team Centre a software used by engineers for their drawings, to make their process more seamless.

What has been some of the most important lessons you’ve learned throughout your career?

I believe it’s important to find ways to grow, through learning new skills and having an interest in progressing. Focus on achieving your goals.