Brian Halliwell, product design engineer for McKEON.
Brian is primarily responsible for preparing shop drawings for approval from proposals. He also has the unique role of communicating with architects through the live chat feature on McKEON’s website, using his technical expertise to answer any questions they have.
Brian has worked at McKEON for 12 years. He started as a draftsman before transitioning to a product design engineer and taking on the role of a product specialist. “After a few years, [I was] directing architectural calls. The live chat thing is new, but obviously, I was a great fit because I was already helping out people on the phone,” Brian said. “It was kind of a natural transition.”
Because of Brian’s openness and expertise, he is the perfect person to direct the technical side of the live chat feature of McKEON’s website. Brian noted that he loves the problem-solving aspect of his job and offering guidance to architects seeking code-compliant solutions to their design problems or questions.
With the duality of Brian’s position, he must find a way to balance his work with CAD and his time providing technical assistance and support. Brian said that the live chat is always a priority. However, his work with CAD has helped him understand the intricacies of the McKEON product line. Thus, he can better assist the architects and designers.
Brian’s active role in providing technical assistance presents him with numerous challenges. “People will come with a whole bunch of different things, a whole bunch of different problems, some that we can’t solve yet, but we’re always looking to expand,” Brian said. “The most challenging thing is people coming in with crazy things… local codes that are totally out of left field, or they’re trying to do something really crazy like a huge 80-foot door.”
In his free time, Brian enjoys watching movies. “I’m always down for a good story,” Brian said. He loves all genres but particularly enjoys movies that deal with time travel. Brian said that he finds the interconnectedness of the past and present fascinating and how one event can have a ripple effect going into the future.
Brian said that if he could time travel, he would visit the distant future to see “how crazy things get.” He is interested to see if humans will eventually explore or settle on other planets.
Brian is also an avid music listener, who has one of the most diverse music tastes in the office. Brian said his favorite genres are classic rock and electronic, with his favorite artists being Jungle, Van Halen, and Steve Aoki.