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BARRIOS BEAR SILVER AWARD WINNERS –4th QUARTER 2008
HOUSTON, TX - The Barrios Employee Awards and Recognition (BEAR) Team recently awarded five employees the Silver Quality Award. The BEAR Silver Quality Award is presented to 1% of Barrios employees each quarter whose contributions are so significant as to merit special recognition by their peers. Sandy Johnson, President of Barrios Technology, made presentations to the following.
Thomas Walker/Principal Engineer/Orion Project Integration Contract (OPIC)
Nominated by Bill Cummins/Barrios and Don Pearson/NASA-ZD
Tom Walker has been an integral part of the development and implementation of both the quarter-scale Water Egress Survival Trainer (WEST) testing and the Postlanding Orion Requirements Test (PORT). Through the work that Tom has done with these tests, NASA and Constellation are able to get an early look at possible design changes due to the results of these tests. Tom has helped Constellation build a safer Orion and has helped NASA and Constellation optimize resources. Additionally, Tom provided his leadership and technical expertise to the NASA team taking on additional responsibility as acting Flight Operations Lead for approximately 5 months prior to NASA finding a suitable replacement. Angela Hart, NASA Operations Group Lead, said, “Tom’s support to the WEST and PORT activities was instrumental to the test’s success and ensured all areas of operations flight, ground and Extravehicular Activity (EVA) were taken into account as applicable.” Through Tom's expertise and leadership, these tests have been successfully implemented in highly aggressive schedules. Tom is instrumental in planning the activities and ensuring that all Crew Module (CM) post-landing requirements are being verified by the PORT testing which will take place in the Atlantic Ocean off Kennedy Space Center this year. These tests are important for identifying requirements for the safe recovery of the Crew and CM. John Curry, Vehicle Integration Office Manager, said, “Tom has been a critical team member for resolution of these very complex issues. We rely heavily on his tremendous expertise, technical skills, and dedication to make informed Orion critical path design and test decisions which ultimately result in a safer and more robust Orion design.”
Renee Clokey/Engineering Planner/Orion Project Integration Contract (OPIC)
Nominated by Nick Monteleone/Barrios
One of Renee’s major accomplishments has been to build a fully integrated schedule, including four major Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) Products for the Crew Module Office (CMO). This gave the CMO team a comprehensive tool to be able to plan and report their work, accomplishments, and schedule issues during the lifecycle of the Orion Project. She also developed a formal process to keep the product up-to-date for the CMO, integrating the efforts of many civil servants and subcontractors. Additionally, she developed an innovative Integrated Hardware Hand-off Matrix for the GFE Projects. A third vital product Renee has developed is a chart template that enables the CMO to show the deltas between revisions of annual Project direction and guidelines in a schedule format. A quote from Jim Scheib, Deputy Manager, CEV Crew Module Office, to Robert McAfoos, OPIC Project Manager, stated, “She is always ahead of the curve. Both her matrix and her example schedule will end up being used as examples during this Program Planning and Budget Execution process.” Renee has built strong relationships, within the NASA/OPIC customers and with major subcontractors that support NASA Orion products. Renee is a great team player, demonstrating her willingness and dedication to the success of the Planning Team and the Project as a whole.
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Pictured: Robbie McAfoos, Tom Walker, Renee Clokey, Sandy Johnson
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Anita Kaul/Data Management and Integration Lead/Program Integration & Control Contract (PI&C)
Nominated by Mary Lins/Barrios
Anita Kaul has been an important member of the Data Management and Integration team since shortly after the Program Data Integration Team (PDIT) was chartered under the Barrios ISAC Contract in 2000. She has been instrumental in forming the vision and carrying out the goals of the team. Anita is now an integral member of the Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) Migration Team. Anita has been crucial to requirements gathering and writing, to data cleansing, testing, and to important migration decisions She has helped define data Product Types; has aided in the nomenclature for object data and attributes fields; has mapped workflows and investigated lifecycle state requirements. She has studied the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and Proprietary issues to assure appropriate data access both pre- and post-migration. By serving successfully on a combined team such as the EDMS Migration Team, Anita demonstrates the Barrios reputation for excellence.
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Pictured: Mary Lins, Sandy Johnson, Anita Kaul, Kathy Holmes
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Nate Neal/Russian Flights Manifest Lead/Mission Integration Contract (MIC)
Nominated by Mary Winton/Barrios
Nate is an ISS Manifest Flight Lead for Russian flights. He is responsible for training new Manifest Flight Leads for Russian flights, for producing ISS Manifests for Progress and Soyuz vehicles, and for ensuring that manifests for Russian flights are delivered on schedule. When concern over increased errors in manifest products surfaced due to recent process changes, Nate explored the feasibility of developing a new tool to reduce the number of errors. The errors were in last-minute updates to Mission Integration and Operations Control Board (MIOCB) presentations. Nate used his computer programming skills to build an ACCESS tool to format data in a way that would insert data directly into MIOCB presentations. Then Nate worked with the MIC Mission Integration Database Application System (MIDAS) Team on the development of a MIDAS report that would produce the data to load into the ACCESS tool. The resulting tool is being used by the entire Manifest Team in building MIOCB presentations. The tool reduces the number of errors in MIOCB presentations, and it significantly decreases the amount of time required to build the presentations. Nate recently participated in a Lean Six Sigma project between the Manifest and Waste Teams. His experience in working with our Russian counterparts and his understanding of the issues that both teams have with Russian data were instrumental in the development of new tools and updated processes that contributed to the success of the project. The MIC Manifest Lead, Karen Garcille, has commented that she can always count on Nate to stay ahead of schedule and meet deadlines. He is always prepared and has never missed a milestone which is a considerable accomplishment as he handles such a large number of flights in numerous manifest stages.
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Pictured: Sandy Johnson, Nate Neal, Mary Winton
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Kathy Nordmann/Payload Operations Lead/Payload Operations Contract
Nominated by Ina Sen/Teledyne Brown
Kathy Nordmann is the Payload Operations Lead for the Combustion Integrated Rack (CIR). As an Ops Lead, she is the operations interface between NASA and the CIR payload team located at Glenn Research Center. She is responsible for leading, integrating, helping, guiding, and mentoring this team as they transition from a hardware development and launch preparation phase into on-orbit operations with the crew on the International Space Station (ISS). The tasks performed by an Ops Lead to prepare a payload team for on-orbit operations require significant leadership and ingenuity. Ms. Nordmann has demonstrated exceptional adaptability and ingenuity in learning about an extraordinarily complicated scientific rack, which in itself is equivalent to a combustion physics laboratory. Ms. Nordmann translated this knowledge of the experiment and combined it with her operational background to help guide the preparation of this scientific facility for on-orbit research. The CIR rack launched without most of its optics, computer, and photography components installed. The installation and assembly alone of the CIR rack constituted a major objective of the ISS program, and would not have been possible without Ms. Nordmann's logical and organized approach to getting hundreds of pages of procedures and planning models completed on time and accurately. Ms. Nordmann not only demonstrated exceptional wisdom and judgment during the multi-year preparation for all of these activities, she went above and beyond by sitting on console in the control center for many long and varied hours, sharing her expertise with the flight control team. As a direct result of her pre-flight work and on-orbit support, the rack integration was completed in only two-thirds of the planned crew time allocation. The complex CIR outfitting tasks were a tremendous success on-orbit and its success was in large part due to the dedication, perseverance, and outstanding performance of Ms. Nordmann. She is a tremendous asset to the payload operations team and the Marshall Space Flight Center.
Barrios Technology is an ISO 9001:2000 certified technology company with expertise in aerospace engineering, space operations, scientific research, and technology solutions. The company provides services to NASA, Department of Defense agencies, and the aerospace industry.
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For more Barrios Technology news and information contact Barbara Lewis at 281-280-1966
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