Project Design Authority

Project Design Authority
Rail Sector
Burnaby, BC or Toronto, ON
Canada

Job Description:

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada OR Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

Architect solutions that support 85 million mainline and suburban passenger journeys, worldwide, every day.

The Project Design Authority (PDA) is responsible for Solution Compliance for a Bid or Project or for a Product Development phase (as a project). Your primary objective is to define the Solution to achieve full compliance within the budget and schedule constraints of the project proposing the best trade-off to the product line policy.

The PDA may be engaged in either or both Bidding and Delivery phases of the Project.

The PDA role can sometimes be endorsed simultaneously with the SEM (Solution Engineering Manager) role according to the size of the project.

Key Responsibilities:

The primary technical leader of the bid or project team

To act as lead technical interface with the Customer (or PLM for a Product) in regards to Solution architecture, design and performance

Anticipates and/or analyzes the customer needs/requirements and defines the initial needs baseline

Ensures the solution is in compliance with Product Policy, MTB/production/services strategies, contractual requirements (including offsets) and applicable legislation & regulations (i.e. export restrictions, Environmental/HSE, safety, security)

Defines the best trade-off between the solution and customer requirements that may vary during the project execution, to stay consistent with the budget; risk and opportunities; schedule and critical performance

Checks that the Engineering Environment (process, practices and tools) for the Solution is consistent with Country/Company requirements, and overall Solution cost, technical risks & schedule

Reviews together with the SEM all technical risks and opportunities and the related mitigation plans throughout the bid or project

Prepares and signs the Design Validation (DVa) document at each relevant validation step of the Bid and/or the Project, and ensures that the DVa is approved and signed by the DA

Approves the main bid/project engineering reviews and deliverables (SOR, SRR, SFR, PDR, CDR, TRR, TQR, FQR)

Approves the technical specification and source selection of subsystems/products to be outsourced taking into account Make Team Buy policy, export restrictions and offset requirements

Approves the Design & Justification File (D&JF) prepared by the Solution Architect (ARC)

Reviews and approves the completion of the integration, verification, validation and qualification results

Oversees the acceptance of the Solution by the customer

Organizes when appropriate technical meetings and peer reviews together with the Architect (ARC) and the SEM and other stakeholders (industry, services, Safety & HSE, specialties), in order to perform the solution technical assessment and validation

Checks the production, the deployment and the maintenance/service aspects of the Solution with the Production Process & Technology Manager (PPTM), the Project Deployment Manager (PDM) and the Service Engineering Manager (SvEM) respectively – resulting conclusions are taken into account by the PDA for the Solution design validation and reflected in the DVa

Takes into account the remarks from the DA in regards to the validity of the Solution and the risk assessment and mitigation

Reports regularly to the DA on the technical status and on technical risks

Required Skills and Experience:

University degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a closely related field
Minimum of 10 years relevant experience in the development of software-based System applications
Minimum of 5 years relevant experience leading multidisciplinary engineering teams
Fluent in English

Preferred Skills and Experience:
Involved in the delivery of more than 1 SelTrac project in some capacity including experience in System Design, System Integration, and System Acceptance
Proven customer communication / technical Management skills
Strong application (automated train control systems) domain knowledge and knowledge of modern software engineering practices, methods and tools
Ability to sell/defend product to customers with differing levels of knowledge about automated systems
System Engineering expertise having covered the full SW or HW development life cycle