When I joined Delaware Bay Shipbuilding as the first engineering hire, there was no standardized process for how projects were handed off to engineering or how engineering was supposed to run. Unclear briefs led to avoidable rework, and rework meant lost time in a shipyard where production staff averaged 90% billable hours. My job was to make their time more impactful.

Within my first month I built a full engineering resource guide from scratch. It documented every step of the design workflow, the capabilities and file requirements of each manufacturing vendor, and material specifications for marine applications. More importantly I developed a project intake checklist that ensured I fully understood the scope, dependencies, and downstream implications of every project before jumping into CAD. That meant fewer surprises mid-design, parts that were compatible with vendor capabilities from the start, and a clearer picture of how each component fit into the larger build timeline.

The result was a roughly 50% reduction in revision time and a more predictable, consistent output from the engineering side of the operation.

The document below is the actual resource guide I built.