Aviation Week's Program Excellence Awards
Aviation Week's Program Excellence was created in response to repeated concerns about the complexity and difficulty associated with managing and leading the aerospace and defense programs that make up the industry's work. An integral part of the A&D Programs conference, Program Excellence finalists provide first-hand insight into best practices, benchmarking and what it took to make their programs a success.
The 2013 Aviation Week Program Excellence Awards bring together program executives, their customer counterparts, and leaders from across the industry in a gala event designed to recognize the best in performance and leadership. Finalists and winners will be identified in six categories that reflect system and sub-system level programs at all phases of the lifecycle.
Aviation Week’s 2013 Program Excellence Awards process attracted 79 nominations in January. By February we had narrowed the nominations to 41 — these 41 programs were invited to submit a narrative describing why excellent. We have now selected 28 programs to move forward to Phase 2 when the programs will be evaluated on the basis of value creation for customer and organization alike, adapting and managing complexity, organizational process excellence, and metrics. At this stage we also ask customers to provide their second to the nomination.
The Program Excellence Evaluation Team — comprised of experts in program leadership and performance from industry, government and academia — will meet in late August to score the entries and name our 2013 Finalists. Best practices from this evaluation will then be highlighted at the conference.
Note that this year we see numerous examples of space, commercial aerospace and defense programs working to reduce cost, increase speed, improve efficiency and deliver quality to customers. Among the areas we see particular effort is supply chain alignment, creating and executing on opportunity, and innovation.
Phase 2 Nominees are:
- Avis Anderson and the Northrop Grumman Global Hawk Sustainment Support Program
- Hank Cole and the Boeing AV-8B Contractor Augmented Maintenance and Training Program
- Patti Dare and the Lockheed Martin Targets and Countermeasures Program
- Jay Dryer and the NASA Fundamental Aeronautics Program
- Chris Flynn and Pratt & Whitney’s F135 Engine Program
- Chris Frei and the Northrop Grumman Counter Rocket Artillery and Mortar Command and Control Program
- Rick Heerdt and the Boeing P-8 Poseidon Production Program
- Steve Keane and the Rockwell Collins Embraer KC-390 Avionics Program
- Tim Kesecker and the Northrop Grumman Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstration Program
- Craig Ladenberger of Raytheon and Betty Jester, US Navy, and the Raytheon MK54 Airborne Lightweight Torpedo Program
- David Lehman and NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory Project
- Thomas Lepe and the Boeing QF-16 Full-Scale Aerial Target Program
- Stuart Linsky and the Northrop Grumman AEHF SV1-3 Payload Program
- Allan Little and the NASA Mars Science Laboratory Entry, Descent and Landing Instrumentation Program
- Ralph Mayer and MITRE's Equivalent Lateral Spacing Operation Concept Project
- Marian Metivier and the Lockheed Martin High Mobility Rocketry Program
- Brad Mulder and the Northrop Grumman Global Hawk Production Program
- Scott Norr and the Lockheed Martin Integrated Space Command and Control Program
- Trevor Overton and the Rockwell Collins MicroGRAM Design and Development Program
- Jean Pollari and the Rockwell Collins Synthetic Vision System for Head-Up Display
- Gary Rodenberg and the Boeing Laser Small Diameter Bomb Program
- Michael Seck and the Boeing F-15 Radar contractor Logistics Support Program
- Brad Stapley and the Rockwell Collins Adaptive Flight Display Cost and Weight Reduction Program
- Fred Swisher and the Lockheed Martin Modernized Day Sensor Assembly Program
- Tricia Unger and the Honeywell Navy total Logistics Support Performance Based Logistics Program
- Joe Veile, Murray Brabrook and the Boeing Australian Hornet/Super Hornet Sustainment Program
- Joe Williams and the Honeywell Ground Systems and Mission Operations Program
- Rob Zmarzlak and the Northrop Grumman Space Tracking and Surveillance System Demonstration Program
