Kevin Kwaramba

5.30 AM

I am up early to exercise in some morning exercise for 15 – 20 minutes, shower, and a bit of grooming.

6.20 AM

I leave for work early because l like to get to work with plenty of time before my supervisor arrives and prepare for the day. Plus l also like to leave early so l can go get some exercise before the end of the day.

7.05 AM

I arrive at work and the 1st thing l do is check for emails that relate to me – sometimes my supervisor leaves me tasks to do the day before to get my day going early

8.00 AM

I have to check in with the Systems Engineering project lead – l am assisting him and a systems engineering cohort put together a new systems engineering pilot initiative to our project steering committee comprising some of Austal’s senior business heads and executive team.

It’s a multi-disciplinary activity meaning it covers the whole organization and it aims to bring together integrated engineered systems that help meet customer needs and requirements enabling an understanding of a products life cycle from “birth to death”.

My role is to interview relevant stakeholders on their roles, record actions, follow up on said actions and offer any other service to get their tasks completed. I get to sit in meetings with the team as they discuss ideas that could be possible solutions for SE implementation.

This information helps flesh out the challenges we face and how we hope to solve them especially if we are to win more defense related contracts. The project lead gives me direction as to his/my priorities as well as guidance when l run into challenges.

8.30 AM

After my catchup with the project lead my next source to check is Systems Engineering SharePoint page. In here there is usually new content added in by the cohort, a list of actions, action status, and responsible person for action. I draw out priorities and then check in with the responsible tasked team members and create plans or tasks that fulfil action requirements. It’s also an opportunity to discuss other activities that the cohort is up to and learn about the business which is outside my normal scope of work.

9.00 AM

Break time – good time to grab a cup and meet up with some colleagues in the kitchen and hear some of the things going on in their work, or just banter.

9.15 AM

Now that l have a clear understanding of my priorities, l start completing my tasks which involves helping to update files, searching for standards and supporting documentation from various projects, taking notes from team members during ad hock meetings, creating dashboards via SharePoint to visualize data and completing queries raised during the day.

12.30 PM

Lunch time – If l can I go sit at our jetty for lunch and enjoy the ocean view. Sometimes we get lucky and get to see dolphins so we are always on the lookout for them.

1.15 PM

Time for our weekly procurement team meeting.  The team meets to catch up and receive updates relating to the previous weeks activities, general team performance, share ideas to improve and hear updates from meetings team members attended that are relevant to Procurement. This is also a good time to share some of the team’s struggles in completing tasks, for example a team member being sick may cause challenges in getting orders through to suppliers or resolving queries. Situations like this are great opportunities to jump in and assist where possible and learn.

2.15 PM

I have some data to process and analyze.

We have to manage our suppliers who we engage for goods and services, to do so we have to find within our data base suppliers that we buy from the most ($), the ones who supply us a variety of other products in different categories, low spend suppliers so we can find alternatives etc.

The overarching reason for doing this is to find suppliers we can create relationships with via supplier agreements for pricing which creates savings for the business.

Second reason it reduces the number of suppliers we consider for goods and services streamlining our supply chain 

Task number 2 is for every vessel we build we have to track the amount aluminum that we use. I am currently working on creating an alternative tracking tool using Power BI that will work with our current tracker. The current tracker tool requires a huge amount of maintenance which makes it unreliable.

This requires engaging with material planners and understanding how they make purchasing decisions, engaging procurement team to understand the price and delivery of material, and financial data from purchase orders and doing further research where necessary. This is my favorite part of the day as it give me the opportunity to be creative in my thinking.

4.30 PM

My work day is done – it’s time to go home and enjoy the rest of the day out doors, l am learning a few new things such as swimming and photography so having a few hours of daylight to do things like this is good.

Before l leave l update my supervisor on my day’s progress and the plan for the following day.

4.45 PM

Gym time – if l am not outdoors l am in the gym for exercise, having a gym close to work helps with getting in a reasonable amount of time to exercise vigorously.