Lionel Fèvre

Engineering Processes, Technical Innovation and Business Efficiency

Engineering hours are finite, and most of the recoverable waste sits between departments rather than inside them — in un-monitored hand-offs, incompatible data and duplicated effort whose impact is silent because no single function owns it.

I focus on the end-to-end design-to-manufacturing process and data architecture that spans departments: CAD and PLM governance, engineering standards and methodology, the automation portfolio, materials and mass data continuity, configuration management and regulatory data.

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Where the record stands

Engineering process and data architecture, in motorsport and aerospace.

22
Years engineering
11
Years Formula 1
350+
Engineers supported
6
Expatriations across
North America and Europe

The problem

An observation about how engineering organisations are structured, not about any one of them.

Every engineering organisation of any scale employs a Head of PLM, a CAD manager, a systems owner. Those roles are real, they are competently filled, and they do not fix this — because each of them owns one tool stack inside one department.

The cost is paid at every hand-off. The same data is rebuilt rather than reused, because the receiving function cannot consume the format it arrives in. Information is re-keyed across a system boundary because no interface was ever specified. A decision waits on data that already exists somewhere else, in a form nobody downstream can open. None of it appears as a line item, because no line item exists for effort spent a second time.

The impact is silent by construction. Waste inside a department shows up against that department's budget and someone answers for it. Waste between departments belongs to no cost centre, appears in no report, and is absorbed as the normal cost of doing engineering. It is not tolerated because anyone decided to tolerate it — it is tolerated because nothing measures it.

The structural cause is ownership, not competence. A cross-department improvement carries its cost in one budget and delivers its benefit in another, so the function paying has no case to fund it and the function benefiting has no authority to demand it. The flow between departments goes unowned because no conventional role is scoped across it — every conventional role is scoped inside one.

Where engineering capacity is capped, hours recovered from re-work and hand-off friction are development capacity gained at no additional cost. It is the cheapest capacity an engineering organisation can obtain, because it already owns it.

The Remit

Stated as responsibility, not as achievement.

Process architecture and governance

End-to-end design engineering process architecture and governance across multiple design offices — standards, methodology, data continuity and the interfaces between departments.

Cross-functional continuity

Cross-functional process and data continuity across stakeholder functions, holding no line authority over any of them: span of process rather than span of control.

Automation portfolio and budget

The engineering automation portfolio, an annual hardware, software and development budget, and the vendor and licence estate behind them.

Regulatory engineering data

Regulatory engineering data declarations to external authorities, delivered across successive product cycles with no major findings.

Sectors

The same capability, stated in each sector's vocabulary.

Motorsport

Formula 1 design offices run short cycles, continuous change and a regulatory data obligation that never pauses. The work is to govern CAD and PLM so design output is conformant at release, keep mass and materials data continuous from design through manufacturing, and record product configuration per build cycle so downstream functions can establish which parts were used, where and when.

Aerospace

Aerospace pays for hand-off friction in inspection effort and re-work. Built from zero the automated design-quality system that replaced manual inspection, scaled to 350+ engineers across six international sites, with the engineering methodology, documentation and training built alongside the tool and adoption audits run to sustain methodology compliance.

Advanced manufacturing

Outside motorsport and aerospace the constraint is identical: design intent has to survive the journey to the shop floor without being rebuilt. Qualified materials consolidated into a single authoritative dataset, mass methodology aligned across manufacturing, quality and supply, configuration recorded per build cycle, and the interfaces between departments specified rather than assumed.

Professional experience

Complete record, most recent first.

Head of Engineering Processes and Tools

Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team | Maranello, Italy

Internal title: Head of Design Processes, Tools and Engineering Services.

  • Resolved a long-standing PLM architecture conflict with a peer design function operating in a separate branch, eliminating circular references in the integrated product assembly; the agreed solution is now binding methodology for both organisations, reached with no line authority over either.
  • Govern consolidation of qualified materials from multiple legacy sources into a single authoritative dataset, giving cost engineering a basis on which to price material substitution and designers the ability to compute assembly mass before drawing release.
  • Aligned mass-reporting methodology across composite manufacturing, quality and supply, standardising component definition against drawing call-out and introducing minimum batch sampling on supplier parts.
  • Own the annual hardware, software and development budget; rationalised recurring licence and vendor spend, and allocate development spend by ranked return on investment.
  • Restructured support delivery through agile prioritisation, redeploying support capacity into tool and method development, and replaced ad-hoc onboarding with structured induction and self-directed training.
  • Coordinate design process and data continuity across design offices, PMO, quality, composite and metal manufacturing, logistics and supply, with an external certifying authority as regulatory stakeholder.
09/2023 – Present

Design Tools and Methodologies Lead

Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team | Maranello, Italy

Internal title: Responsible for Design Tools and Methodologies.

  • Established the Design Efficiency Improvement Program to plan the development and optimization of CAD & PLM tools.
  • Automated composite design-to-manufacturing preparation across the composite structures programme, replacing manual plybook creation and mould assembly definition with generated output.
  • Built and led the design organisation's tooling, methodology, engineering standards and user support function; established self-directed training built from user knowledge assessment.
01/2021 – 09/2023

Senior CATIA Automation and Support Engineer

Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team | Maranello, Italy

  • Specified and built the automated quality-check system that replaced manual inspection of design output, establishing the conformance-checking platform now applied at every drawing release.
01/2020 – 01/2021

Senior Eng. Design Automation Team Lead (Consultant)

Bombardier Aerospace | Montréal, Canada

  • Designed and built from zero the automated design-quality system replacing a manual inspection process: defined the roadmap, wrote the tool specification and the accompanying engineering methodology, authored the documentation and trained the full user base.
  • Scaled it to 350+ engineers across six international sites, automating 450 points of a 1,400-point 3D and 2D quality checklist applied at every release; led the CAD engineering team and ran adoption audits to sustain methodology compliance.
  • Reduced releases containing at least one non-conformance from 98% to 12%; six dedicated drawing-checker roles eliminated within three years. Implemented web API and service-request architecture across the tool estate.
04/2015 – 10/2019

CAD and PLM Support Administrator

Lotus F1 Team | Enstone, United Kingdom

  • Ran the design office's efficiency improvement programme and owned the full VBA, scripting and batch automation estate through development, test and deployment.
  • Doubled as lead aerodynamic surface designer on complex chassis surfaces and as composite designer generating the car's bodywork — process ownership held alongside on-car design responsibility.
06/2012 – 03/2015

Senior Aerodynamic Concept Surface Designer

Nous-Consulting (Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team) | Maranello, Italy

  • Development of complex Master Model Surfaces (FW, FBD, Floor…).
  • Optimised rapid-prototyping part modularity to minimise wind tunnel downtime.
  • Owned the FIA Aero Bodywork Compliance Tools as CATIA V5 Automation specialist.
01/2011 – 03/2012

Customer CAD Developments & Customizations Manager

Innovation Virtuael | Montréal, Canada

  • Delivered custom engineering applications from requirements through to release, reporting programme status directly to the Director of Operations.
10/2008 – 10/2010

CATIA Automation and Design Engineer

Mecachrome | Montréal, Canada

  • Designed and automated airframe structures, building the CAD and scripting practice later applied at programme scale.
  • Delivered the mass properties reports as mass properties engineer — where the mass discipline now applied to design-to-manufacturing data continuity was learnt.
11/2004 – 10/2008

Junior Design Engineer

CDI Engineering Solutions | Montréal, Canada

  • Designed airframe structures and assisted mass properties engineering — first exposure to the mass discipline.
03/2004 – 11/2004

Research and Teaching Assistant

Florida Institute of Technology | Melbourne, Florida, USA

  • Taught “Introduction to Mechanical Engineering.”.
07/2002 – 12/2003

Skills

Six competency clusters.

Process Architecture & Governance

  • End-to-end process design
  • Engineering systems architecture
  • Engineering transformation programmes
  • Cross-functional governance
  • Standards definition and enforcement
  • Engineering operations
  • Continuous improvement (Kaizen)
  • Agile prioritisation
  • Change management
  • KPI definition and measurement
  • Business case development

PLM, CAD & Data Continuity

  • CATIA V5
  • CATIA V6 / 3DEXPERIENCE
  • ENOVIA
  • Windchill
  • CAD administration
  • BOM management
  • Configuration management
  • Master data management
  • Design-to-manufacturing data continuity
  • Digital engineering
  • Digital thread

Engineering Automation & Tooling

  • Design automation
  • Knowledge-based engineering
  • Automated drawing and model quality checking
  • Composite plybook and mould automation
  • VBA
  • SQL
  • REST APIs
  • Visual Studio
  • Git
  • AWS infrastructure
  • Requirements specification
  • Tool portfolio management

Regulatory & Compliance Data

  • Regulatory data declarations to external authorities
  • Homologation data management
  • Audit readiness
  • Traceability
  • Data governance

Change Management & Team Leadership

  • Team leadership
  • Multi-site rollout
  • Training and knowledge transfer
  • Stakeholder management
  • Vendor and licence management
  • Budget ownership
  • ROI-based portfolio allocation
  • Consultant and supplier management

AI-Enabled Engineering

  • AI-assisted software development
  • Machine-learning-supported engineering workflows
  • Agentic workflow development

Education

MSc Mechanical Engineering

Florida Institute of Technology | Melbourne, Florida, USA | 12/2003

GPA 4.00/4.00. Thesis: design and construction of a six degree-of-freedom positioning system.

BSc Mechanical Engineering

Florida Institute of Technology | Melbourne, Florida, USA | 06/2002

GPA 3.87/4.00. Final project: designed and built a Formula SAE race car.


Euro-American Institute of Technology (E.A.I. Tech) | Sophia Antipolis, France | 06/2000

Started the BSc of Mechanical Engineering before transferring to Florida Institute of Technology.

Baccalauréat Scientifique

France | 06/1998

Contact

One route in.

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Location
Maranello, Italy
Languages
French (native) · English (bilingual) · Italian (fluent)
Citizenship and work authorisation
French and Canadian citizen · EU: full right to work · US: TN-1 eligible · UK: employer sponsorship required