Providing solutions for clients – 2023 1st Quarter Silver BEAR Awards recipients excel

Barrios Technology places high importance on the ability of our employees to seek out process improvements and efficiencies, while providing our clients with solutions. This quarter, our Silver BEAR (Barrios Employee Award and Recognition) Awards recognize six individuals who embody these values – David Bretz, Lauren Buchanan, Lisa Ewing, Jenny Johnson, Mark Magno and Mark Zuteck.

As Senior Imaging Scientist on the Johnson Space Center (JSC) Engineering Technology and Sciences (JETS II) contract, David Bretz has directly impacted the Artemis and commercial spaceflight missions with this work in imagery analysis. He is already using lessons learned from Artemis I to create new ways of doing analysis for Artemis II. According to his Section Manager, “David’s photogrammetric analysis of the Artemis I Service Module SAJ Fairing Panels to obtain 3D coordinates during the jettison was one of the key tasks in ISAG’s support of the mission”. He has also created a new lens calibration board for analyzing lens distortions that can be used with the Matlab Computer Vision Toolbox. For Commercial Crew, David has investigated parachute deployment anomalies that have further increased crew safety during descent and landing.

David also gives back to the community by providing his imagery analysis skills to law enforcement. This work gives back to the Barrios family and the greater community by helping to keep the community safer.

Lauren Buchanan, EHP Export Control Analyst on the Human Space Flight Technical Integration Contract, is an early career individual who joined HSFTIC and established herself as the Export Control Lead in the EVA and Human Surface Mobility Program (EHP). Lauren made it a priority to learn how other HSF programs operated with respect to export control and developed a plan to build upon those lessons learned to establish EHP’s export foundation. In addition, she led the planning, integration, and coordination of the EHP Export tool (EXPR) with minimal NASA or HSFTIC oversight. She stepped up to take on the additional task of IT security support while maintaining the daily export control workload. Her organization skills have been noted by NASA and she has also been asked to take on surge support for the ISS export team and the EHP IT security team. She has effectively juggled all her responsibilities without allowing anything to drop.

As Meeting Support Specialist on HSFTIC, Lisa Ewing is effectively running the Crew and Service Module office, and is also the GEMCB Secretariat, and according to her NASA customer is “absolutely irreplaceable in that role”. She has markedly improved GEMCB productivity by improving the WIKI, improving processes, and handling the day-to-day crush of GFE Project requests. She is further recognized by management for her proactive approach to training new colleagues and creating backup/surge support depth for her position, which allows her to accept more complex tasks for herself. She is recognized as a critical part of both the Orion CSM and HSFTIC Orion teams.

Jenny Johnson, CoFR Integrator on HSFTIC, receives her award for establishing a CoFR framework for CLDP and establishing an initial CoFR process to support Axiom-1, the first private astronaut mission (PAM) to the ISS, while the office was building program infrastructure under extreme schedule pressures. Jenny modified those processes for Ax-2, evolving the CoFR infrastructure and process as the program grew and matured. She also revised how program offices submit/review CoFR evidence, enabling a more agile and streamlined approach for programmatic reviews. Jenny’s leadership and patience was publicly acknowledged during the CLDP FRR for Axiom-2 by the customer. Her work is of the highest level, and she is recognized in the ISS, Gateway, and CLD Programs as the ‘go to’ expert for process guidance and leadership.

As Systems Engineer on HSFTIC, Mark Magno, has been recognized for his excellence in leadership and teamwork as the iCAMMP team task lead and by serving as deputy for the HSFTIC Integrated Modeling supervisor. He demonstrates his superior performance through his insightful high-level inputs to team planning, by guiding and mentoring team members, and creating strong working relationships with NASA customers. Mark has taken the lead on developing the ISS Video Survey process that was coordinated with the OE/Safety office and the SMACB; while continuing to support team software tool development improvement efforts to deliver the Internal Configuration Plan (ICP) web application update.

Mark Zuteck, Systems Analyst at Barrios corporate, has been instrumental in fixing and driving changes in the Costpoint enterprise system used for all financial processing for the company. His diligence and desire to improve operations resulted in fixes for financial reports that would not provide consistent information depending on where data was pulled from. Mark self-learned pieces of the SQL code to find the errors in the PSR reports and was able to make a fix with his own intuition and resolve an error that has been present for over a year.  Mark continues to work on Costpoint capabilities and improve the tool, and he carries on genuinely wanting to fix things for the benefit of the company and more specifically, for the end users.

The BEAR Awards Program recognizes superior performance and outstanding support of customer and company goals. Each quarter, outstanding employees are selected to receive the Silver Award. Silver award winners automatically qualify for the annual Gold award, which is presented at an annual awards and recognition event.