Giovanni's Story: Collaboration and Growth in Land Systems
At Textron Systems, helping our employees develop their skillset and discover new opportunities, both professionally and personally, is one of our many missions. For Giovanni, he’s recently broken into new spaces within our Land Systems team, gaining exposure to a whole other side of production development.
Giovanni first started with Textron Systems in 2019 as a mechanical engineer for our Advanced Reconnaissance Vehicle (ARV) program. Fast-forward to current day, he’s still doing incredible work to push this program forward, focusing on the vehicle structure and supporting the protection systems development.
But now, in addition to that role, Giovanni has been given a new opportunity as acting Program Engineer for the Mobile Strike Force Vehicle (MSFV) program. “My responsibilities as Program Engineer for this contract require me to review all new engineer drawings and changes while juggling procurement and production scheduling to meet our delivery date,” Giovanni says. “This has brought some new challenges and some new awareness on the business side of our programs.”
Now experiencing multiple sides, Giovanni says his days primarily start with more team check-ins before diving into his daily tasks. “I start my morning by syncing up on my two primary roles,” he says. “Once I’ve handled the immediate collaborative tasks, I'll dive into more focused design work.”
Lately, his design work includes Finite Element Analysis (FEA) where he sets up simulations on a new bracket design to test the vehicle’s durability under expected load conditions. Based on those results, he’ll make any necessary design modifications, optimizing the vehicle’s weight ability while maintaining structural integrity.
In the afternoon, Giovanni switches his focus to his new Program Engineer role. “This involves a different set of responsibilities. I might have a block of time dedicated to reviewing and approving engineering drawings for release, ensuring every detail is correct before it goes to manufacturing,” he says.
Reflecting, Looking Ahead and Advice to Others
With the Land Systems team split between two sites in Louisiana and one site in Maryland, Giovanni says he’s been able to gain hands-on experience, leading to more effective designs and teamwork. “The proximity between the production site and the automotive design team in Louisiana has led to collaboration for designing for manufacturing and lessons learned through the prototypes we've built over the last few years. It has also allowed me to get hands-on experience by being on the production floor and guiding the building process of the prototype vehicles.”
For those interested in following in his footsteps, Giovanni says his main piece of advice is to do as much research as you can when presented with a new challenge. If you’re still unable to solve the problem, he recommends connecting with your boss or colleague. Be sure to bring what you found to the discussion rather than just the problem at hand.
“This will show them your work ethic, and they may provide the answer or identify something in your process that could have been done differently and solved the issue,” he says. “It’s better to ask questions and learn on the job.”
After six years with the Land Systems team, Giovanni says his work isn’t done yet with even more opportunities on the horizon. “I have always wanted to work on new and different design challenges that you may not get to experience in other mass-production manufacturing industries.”
To learn more about current opportunities at Textron Systems, visit our careers page and see how you can help us keep Pushing Past Possible.