HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. – Hanscom’s winners at the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center engineering annual awards ceremony, April 19, helped build their programs on agile frameworks, giving them the edge in competition with other program executive offices.
The junior civilian engineer of the year, Ian Hogan from PEO Digital, stood out for bringing new capabilities to the high altitude air intelligence community, as well as providing critical communications capabilities to users like tactical air control parties. He also implemented agile methods, leading to software updates to major systems every six months.
“We did a lot of our work fast, for government,” said Hogan. “Testing is important, but can take a long time. By testing with operators, we really handled bigger workloads in shorter time periods. Using agile processes in a waterfall framework helped us meet needs.”
Adam Furtado, lab director for Project Kessel Run, also earned recognition for delivering software capabilities to the warfighter in a purely agile manner. His office stood up over the last year-and-a-half to work with Air Operations Centers and custom-build software applications that help manage air wars. The effort won him a technical management award.
Don Bell, PEO Digital’s senior airframe engineer for the E-8C Joint Stars at Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, used government resources to field more JSTARS aircraft, meeting a Secretary of Defense initiative to increase aircraft availability fleet-wide. He picked up a senior civilian engineer award.
PEO Digital’s Capt. Oba Vincent also won a reservist/individual mobilization augmentee award for contributing to aerospace enablement programs and preserving heritage systems.
The ceremony was broadcasted to four AFLCMC bases from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Approximately 20 engineers attended Hanscom’s event at the Hanscom Conference Center.
“You deliver combat airpower through technical excellence,” said Tom Fischer, director of Engineering and Technical Management for AFLCMC at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. “We need you to tell your story and continue to engage with the technical community. Working with industry today and in academic settings like high school and youth programs is what will make the Air Force better tomorrow.”