The Field Engineer

Caroline Gregory Community Manager of The Field Engineer community meets community member Nicole Ruffin. Nicole worked in a variety of business fields before discovering the world of Biomedical Engineering and Healthcare Technology Management. Which in her words was an ecstatic moment for her to discover such a wonderful and fulfilling career.

Transfer of skills into HTM

Which skills do you feel you took with you from past roles? I'm thinking hard and soft skills?

'Absolutely. Definitely customer satisfaction, customer service, and customer care. That's a big one. I feel like you have to have as a biomed, but easily I was able to transition that having those soft skills from all of the roles you had mentioned that I'd had before. And also my attention to detail. I've also, I've always been one to be able to analyze things, break them down, and also see the big picture kind of all at the same time. And my ability to stay teachable, and I learn very quickly. I am a quick studier, and I find that that is a skill that's absolutely essential to working in HTM'.  

Guy Eid and Caroline Gregory tackle an important topic today for field engineers which is about communication.

As we know field engineers are people who go on site to service customers, and it is important for them to be ready before they go and to be presentable and show up professionally.

In particular where the field engineers might be outside their normal territory. They might be replacing someone. They might be arriving in a country that they are visiting. How should they communicate to handle those situations appropriately.

Caroline Gregory is the Community Manager of The Field Engineer community, where she is working with members from over 110 countries.

Caroline has been teaching expats, and inpats, cultural business skills for over thirty years. She has worked with major businesses including Unilever, the UK MoD, BP, Total Energy, and Siemens, through her business Intercultural Success.

Feel free to contact Caroline if your business has intercultural challenges.

Guy Eid is a highly experienced Field Service Leader originally from Lebanon, who has been living in Canada for many years and has many years of working with many cultures.

You’ve wrapped up initial interviews and narrowed down your applicant pool—now what? In this episode, we dive into the critical next steps of the hiring process for field service engineers and leaders. Learn how to design an effective second round, spot the green flags that signal true operational excellence, and confidently make the final hiring decision. Tune in to discover the ultimate strategies for securing the best field service talent after the first cut.

With Guy Eid, Bruce Breeden, and Charlie Apps.

This is the third part of a series of round table discussions. So do watch the other videos in the series.

Seven Field Service leaders, Guy Eid, Vikram Bhasker, Arnaud BILLARD, Paul Camidge, Maurizio De Poli, Jerome Varvaro, and Charlie Apps, discuss 'How to get interviewed'.

The seven field service leaders share what they look for when they are shortlisting job applications.

Watch their discussion to learn the traits, tactics, and methods you can use to get your name on the interview shortlist.

Putting People First in Field Service A Conversation with Arnaud Billard is our first interview in French. Our French title is 'Placer l'humain au cœur du service sur le terrain, une conversation avec Arnaud Billard'.

With over 17 years leading large-scale service organizations across Europe and EMEA, Arnaud Billard specializes in service transformation, customer experience (CX) and the design of operating models that turn service functions into genuine value creators.His career spans medical devices, diagnostics, pharmaceutical and broader life sciences with roots in the automotive sector where he built his foundation in operational excellence and lean methodologies. Rigorous process discipline in service of human outcomes not as an end in itself.Arnaud has led post-acquisition integrations, digitalization programmes, field service optimization and the evolution of multicultural service organizations across Europe, with P/L accountability and a focus on sustainable growth.One conviction has sharpened over time: how people feel, customer, patients, frontline teams, directly shapes business outcomes: patient experience, listening and psychological safety are performance levers. Attention, presence and trust within a team are among the most underestimated drivers of operational excellence and resilience. This is not peripheral to leadership, it is central to it.Arnaud explores these dimensions at the intersection of healthcare, wellbeing and leadership effectiveness across generations: professionals feeling overwhelmed, children with fragmented attention and elderly people losing connection.What he has built and led:- Service strategy & operating model design, Europe and EMEA- CX and patient experience transformation- Post-merger integration and change management- P/L management, growth and scaling service organizations- Human-centred leadership and psychological safetyHis leadership style is grounded in clarity, empathy and rigour. Sustainable excellence emerges when people are supported, trusted and heard, not only measured.Outside of work: philosophy, pastels, classical flute, rollerblading, snowboarding.Excellence through balance, the right movement at the right moment.Keywords: Service Leadership / Medical Devices / Diagnostics / Life Sciences / Pharmaceutical / EMEA / Europe / CX / Patient Experience / Service Transformation / Operating Model / Operational Excellence / P/L / Post-Acquisition Integration / Change Management / Digitalization / Field Service / Scaling Up / Human-Centred Leadership / Psychological Safety / Professional Resilience.

Supply Chain Management is critical for field serviceengineers.

Global politics, trade wars, real wars, and conflicts, allimpact the ability of service and installation operations to function successfully.

 We recently interviewed Matthew GuyGallardo who is a Global Spare Parts Planner at CooperSurgical on The Field EngineerPodcast.

In 2024 Charlie Apps interviewed RosemaryCoates for The Field Engineer Podcast to discuss global supply chains, SCM, reshoring, and the aftermath of the Covid pandemic.

Two years on global supply chains are being challenged even more than they were in 2024. So, The Field Engineer asked Rosemary Coates to meet with us again and share her insights on the current state of the Global Supply Chain for field services, installations, and after-market management.

Caroline Gregory of The Field Engineer speaks to Rosemary Coates about Global Supply Chains and Field Service Excellence. Rosemary Coates has an MBA and started her career in logistics for HP. She then built an extensive career in global supply chain. Rosemary is an author and has written books about manufacturing, including 42 rules for superior field service. She is an experienced speaker and serves as an expert witness globally. Rosemary was named as one of the hundred most influential women in Silicon Valley in 2024. Reshoring Institute. In 2014 we started the Reshoring Institute which is a research institute but we also help companies think through their global manufacturing strategy and help them determine if they can can re-establish any kind of manufacturing in the US or to rethink their global strategy. And that's really important these days because of the geopolitics. So you have to I mean companies have to be nimble and able to sort of turn on a dime when there's some geopolitical situation that forces them to make different sourcing decisions and you know different operational decisions. The importance of field service I always start with the context that field service doesn't get enough attention in most organizations. you know it can be a fairly significant amount of revenue that's generated through field service and yet the field service organizations do not normally report into the very senior levels in an organization. They're usually a level or two down and and even though they're representing not only a significant revenue stream but they're really the voice of the customer. I mean the field service people are out there talking to customers every day and we should be listening to what they're saying, what feedback they're getting and so forth that would help drive you know the product development marketing you know there's all sorts of parts of the organization that would benefit from the information that’s gathered through field service. So I always start with that context that field service is really important to most organizations and is not getting enough attention and we need to drive the awareness of field service organizations to a more senior level.So the field service engineers are speaking directly to the people who are feeling the pain I suppose.Seniority of Supply Chain within an organisationAlso you know what we're seeing now is a lot of reorganization creating and elevating supply chain management to more senior levels in organizations so it's no longer just a back office function a lot of a lot of promotion I mean today it's not unusual to see chief supply chain officers that are sitting in the C Suite and run an organization from a supply chain perspective.

How to Hire the Best Field Engineers - Interview Tips for managers, was the first part of a series of roundtable discussions with advice for field service managers on how to hire and interview successfully. Featuring veteran field service leaders Guy Eid, Arnaud BILLARD, Bruce Breeden, and Kevin Mace.

Today we released the second part of the roundtable discussing,

'Questions That Actually Work', with the same veteran field service leaders Guy Eid, Arnaud Billard, Bruce Breeden, and Kevin Mace.

The panel discuss the questions that should be asked from both the hiring manager's point of view and the candidate's point of view.

'The kind of questions you are being asked will tell you what is important to the company.'

'Is there any ambiguous area where you would like me to tell you more?'

As an interviewer how would you answer the question 'Why should I work here?'

Whether you are an interviewer or candidate,

'Did they make you feel they can deliver what you are looking for?'

If you want to connect with our panel in The Field Engineer community, you can join the community here,

You can also follow The Field Engineer LinkedIn page

The Field Engineer meets Lisa Hellqvist the Managing Director of Copperberg and a member of The Field Engineer community.

Copperberg create business platforms bringing together the manufacturing community in order to grow and build relationships globally.

Lisa discusses the future of field service engineering with Caroline Gregory of The Field Engineer.

Women in Field Service Engineering

We're constantly hearing from field service leaders that they would like more women in their team.

I know that you think that making the workplace more attractive could be part of the solution as it would attract more people overall to field service engineering. So, how can companies do this? What's your advice Lisa?

That is of course the million-dollar question and if I have the true answer, I will bottle it and sell it very expensively. But on the other hand, it is to me and you're saying something there that I really believe is true is that we say and I actually like that you asked if we want more women sometimes they even bump into the expression need which I think is who needs more women and why that's even another part of the discussion. But when we say want it's a terminology thing as well where I think okay but what can we do to make them want to choose us right or you know we have to ask ourselves that question but the question essentially is a broader question because if we don't have women applying for the job but we also see we have too few candidates overall applying for the job as a field service technician or an engineer. It either starts with the educational system not actually you know having enough people graduating with the right type of titles or we are not attractive enough as employers and then we have to ask ourselves okay what are we communicating when we're going into these recruitment processes'.

Copperberg recently published a white paper on the topic, 'Service at the core'.https://www.copperberg.com/white-paper-service-at-the-core/

How to Hire the Best Field Engineers - Interview Tips for managers, is the first part of a series of roundtable discussions with advice for field service managers on how to hire and interview successfully.

Guy Eid of The Field Engineer talks with Rich Meredith. Rich has been a member of the Field Engineer Community since May 2025.He is an HSE or SHE as some people might know it. This is Health, Safety, and Environment. And this is a critical area of our industry as we all know. Rich has a long history in quality management, in health and safety, and in mental health also. He is a writer. His genre is fiction books and his most recent book is titled Valhalla.Quality and Health and SafetyThere's a lot of parallels between quality and health and safety. They're similar management systems, you know, and you know, safe systems of work and procedures are very very similar. The Value of People“If you want an organization to be really, really successful, you know, everyone's important and you need to make them feel important.”HSE and SHE for Field Service EngineersFrom your perspective, how do you see the link between health, safety and environment and field service? And what has been your experience? I think one of the hard things a lot of what I've noticed a lot of health and safety managers don't really want to necessarily go to - or SHE managers - don't really want to go near field service. I think the reason for that is you know, sort of a lot of health and safety or SHE managers maybe work at a facility. They have full control over the environment, the building, the equipment, everything whereas in field service it's very different. It's the customer's building and the customer's equipment. I mean, even if you're working on, you know, the equipment which your company has sold, it's still the customer's equipment and you know, where they've put it. They might have put your equipment right up against the wall when actually you need access behind the system and stuff like that. So, the egress isn't there and it makes it really difficult. So, actually the only thing you've really got control of, well, not control of, but the ability to influence is the behaviour of the field service engineers. Because they're generally not always, well, actually we didn't encourage people to work alone, but if you're talking about a field service model where it's just someone goes out to different site every day, the people are working alone. In fact, for our group because of the the different hazards, people didn't work alone. They worked in pairs cuz you needed a buddy just in case. But, you know, it's teams of two working on their own. And you know, I understand human beings are hardwired to be - sounds like I'm insulting the whole human race here - are hardwired to be lazy. We're designed to conserve energy, find the fastest way to doing things, and as we all know, sometimes implementing controls for health and safety isn't the fastest way to doing something. It's the safest way to do something. So, I could understand the kind of desire to take shortcuts. Unfortunately, those shortcuts can be dangerous, and you might get away with it maybe 99 times out of 100, but that hundredth time might be the time you get seriously hurt. So, really I think the main thing I kind of understood from that was making sure if we could try and influence behaviours, then you've kind of got yourself in a good place then cuz I can't from my perspective, I couldn't see all the hazards all our field service engineers were seeing. What I wanted to do is have a culture where if a field service engineer found something new they'd not seen before, maybe a I don't know - equipment that wasn't maybe - a nearby piece of equipment which looked dangerous, that I wanted them to feel comfortable to stick their hand up and say, "Oh, I'm not comfortable working here. That's not right. I know that's not right. That machine's not being run right and I'm worried I'm going to be affected by that. It might leak gas. Maybe there's going to be explosion." And that was really the one of the things we really wanted to underline.