Meet our team – Christine
As you know, employees are our greatest assets and the heart of our business. As part of our new ‘Meet the team’ series, we’re introducing the people behind the scenes, from the finance team who run the business side of things to our Digital Manufacturing Consultants and Analysts, who guide our clients through the RAISE™ process, to the technically skilled Software Developers and MES Engineers who develop innovative, business-focused digital solutions.
Introducing Christine, Project Manager. Christine joined Cimlogic as a Project Manager in 2018; managing the implementation of Cimlogic’s digital solutions to help manufacturing clients improve their business and operational performance. Prior to her role at Cimlogic, Christine gained many years’ experience and knowledge in Commercial Planning and Project Management for numerous technology and IT services organisations.
Tell us about your Cimlogic journey
My Cimlogic journey began in September 2018. Cimlogic had just been awarded a roll-out contract by a world-class technology manufacturing organisation consisting of the implementation of TrakSYS™ to a number of their European manufacturing operations. Within the project team, I was given the responsibility to manage the implementation covering the clients’ plants in France, Spain, Germany and Finland, this was a great way of picking up initial product knowledge, getting to know the teams, ways of working, as well as the opportunity to travel to clients’ sites and getting hands-on experience of different manufacturing operations and the challenges they face.
As time progressed I was given the opportunity to also project manage implementations for other global pharmaceutical and life sciences organisations, increase my technical product and software design and development process knowledge along the way.
How is working at Cimlogic different from other roles you’ve had previously?
What is different at Cimlogic is that the work feels and is more immediate – the role of project manager is an all-encompassing one, even though it sounds very cliché, no two days are the same. So including all the typical aspects of project management from conducting internal and client calls, planning schedules, having resourcing discussions, performing risk assessments, generally resolving issues to name but a few, I will typically provide visibility of the status of the project activities including financial performance to our management board internally, and progress updates externally. I liaise with our developers, the sales and other technical support teams all in aid of delivering a solution to our client. I enjoy feedback from our clients such as “… it feels as if Cimlogic are an extension of ourselves…” – that’s when it is all coming together.
What skills are fundamental to your role?
Apart from the project management technical skills of requirements capturing, schedules planning, risk management, tracking deliverables, cost and scope control and communication, the most fundamental skills are resilience, empathy, ability to communicate appropriately dependent on the audience, organisational skills, pace and adaptability to collaborate and to constantly solve new problems.
What has been the highlight of working at Cimlogic?
Over and on top of the opportunity (and funding) to study for and pass the project management industry-standard qualification (PMP), highlights include the daily contact and working with our prestigious, global manufacturing organisations, who in their fields are industry leaders and experts.
Being involved in a TrakSYS™ roll-out program, pre-pandemic having had the opportunity to travel to countries some of which I hadn’t been to before (e.g. Finland). Not just seeing for my own eyes where these companies were based and how they were set up, spending time in these organisations allowed me to pick up on the subtler aspects of how people work, communicate, solve problems and contribute to the environments they operate in.
Working with some fantastic colleagues at Cimlogic itself. I am also looking forward to returning to a new hybrid way of working, having been working from home for the past couple of years to be spending more days in Cimlogic’s offices in the beautiful environment of Salts Mill, a world heritage site in the North of England.