Meet our team

Charlene White

Project Engineer at TÜV SÜD Canada - Ottawa (Kanata) Lab

Can you describe your role at TÜV SÜD?
I am a project engineer/project manager for a key customer account.  I manage projects end-to-end: scope projects, send quotes, create test plans, manage the scheduling and execution of the test plans, write reports and do the invoicing. I am also the main interface with the customer.

What is your favorite thing about working at TÜV SÜD?
I enjoy the teamwork aspect of it all. My customers are on-site most of the time, so we are able to ask questions or come up with ideas about how best to test their ever-evolving products. Our team works well together.

What are you most excited about for the future of TÜV SÜD?
I’m looking forward to the growth and development of the facilities and our capabilities, and being able to offer more to our customers.

What are 3 words that you’d use to describe TÜV SÜD?
Value, Teamwork, and Commitment.

Tell us about a project that you’ve worked on that you’re proud of.
I often have several projects that I am managing at any one time for my customer. So for me, it isn’t completing any one project in particular that has been a highlight moment. The thing that made me most proud was one of my customer senior managers was on site for a lab tour and he personally thanked me for all that I and our team do for them. It feels good to be appreciated that way.

Describe your relationship with customers.
I'm the key contact with the customer. They come to me when they need something or have questions, and are in contact with me daily. This applies to those customers who are on-site with the product and help support it while we're doing our testing, as well as those who deal with RFQs, scheduling and planning. We all work well together.

What is your history/industry experience?
I started as a component engineer at Nortel. I worked closely with supply management, writing specifications for components, qualifying components and performing quality audits on suppliers. From there, I moved into product integrity and became a product manager. The product integrity group was in this same building, and eventually, after the Nortel break up and a couple of transitions, this site became the TÜV SÜD Ottawa (Kanata) lab.

Name something that makes what you do at TÜV SÜD unique or valued to the customer.
So for that, I would have to say being a one-stop shop for the customer. Whatever questions or needs they have, they come to me first.

Let’s get to know you a little more:

• Tell us something about yourself that might surprise us.
  I am a pysanky artist, which is the art of making Ukrainian Easter eggs.
• Which historical figure would you like to meet and why?
  It would be Leonardo da Vinci.  He was a mathematician, an engineer, a scientist, but he also had the artsy side of being a painter and architect. Those are all things that interest me.