THE NEW MINI COOPER

This car was one of my first responsibilities while working at MINI. Joining at a busy time meant diving right in, with a buyoff event taking me to Germany very shortly after starting. From the very first weeks I could tell my job would lend itself to meeting lots of people from various disciplines. Never have I imagined how many people need to come together to make a project like this possible.

What I loved most about my role was being able to interact with every single part of the car, not just one specific area. This also meant I met leaders for every bit of the car and most of the suppliers. Early phase validation is crucial for a successful launch. While not plagued with problems, there were lots of details that only showed themselves during physical validation.

Factors such as certain plastic molds not performing as they should due to new tooling affected the, what I came to call, "assemblability" of the components. Seeing senior engineers work through problems taught me a lot about the processes used in validation, and being responsible for reporting issues into our problem management system was a very enriching task. I had to quickly familiarize myself with not only a lot of internal acronyms but German too.

Everyone I got to work with was hugely knowledgeable and a pleasure to work alongside. I cannot express how good it feels to see something I contributed to finally unveiled to the public.