Cubic has given me so much experience across a wide spectrum of our Automatic Fare
Collection industry. I started out in Customer Services and today operate in Hardware Engineering where
I’m at the forefront of designing innovative
solutions for our clients.
Matt Beadle - Hardware Engineering Manager
I’m responsible for Cubic Europe’s Hardware Engineering – on both
the Technical Support side and Design – reporting directly to
the Engineering Director.
Technical Support manages and supports all the Cubic kit that has
been installed and is live in the field. And as well as external clients,
this includes Cubic internal customers like Maintenance and
Production.
On the design side, the workload is project-driven. The Design team
works with our project management teams to design, prototype and
test the solutions required to meet our customers’ needs. Everything is
scheduled and progressed very closely, to make sure all the projects
move forward at the right pace.
On the Technical Support side, we work around four main pillars of responsibility -
- Integration.
- Reliability.
- Performance Assurance.
- Support.
Supporting Maintenance and Production, my Technical Support engineers are also responsible for
resolving all obsolescence issues and reacting to product end of life announcements. And for new
designs, Technical Support also provides any news test equipment or tools.
On an average day, I’ll have a cup of tea, and will then attend a project bid kick off meeting. This is a ‘heads up’ session that gives the development, installation and maintenance teams an overview of a client’s solution requirements. What is it they want to achieve, why, and by when? Then we scope and scale out development materials and manpower skills to be assigned to the project.
After that, I need to know what’s happening in the field. A review of our latest device performance report shows
me very quickly how everything is performing. I can easily cross-reference the device performance with the current
Technical Support initiatives, and discuss this further at my Technical Support progress meetings, if necessary. And at any time, a quick visit to our Service Centre will give me a real-time
snapshot of how our devices are operating across our client network.
It’s difficult to pick out a single best day at CUBIC over the past ten years. But in recent times, finally
bringing the two Hardware functions – Technical Support and Hardware Engineering – together into a team
was very satisfying. The Hardware team is now much stronger as a result, on both the Technical Support and
Design sides, as the engineers can draw on each other’s experience more readily – and switch between functions,
if required.