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Expert has hands-on experience in the Defense sector, regulatory oversight and direct engineering and manufacturing/ production. He is an experienced executive leader with proven success in leading complex aviation organizations. He is a dynamic, experienced leader with proven success in leading complex aviation organizations. Background in civil/military certification, flight test, materials and properties laboratories, extensive foreign aviation authority experience, engineering operations, Safety Management Systems and quality. Strategic thinker with excellent awareness of the market as well as political and technical issues. Published author and public speaker. Former FAA Designated Engineering Representative and Expert Witness.

Relevant Manufacturing Experience:
• Chaired the Bell Helicopter Product Safety Board – ensuring complete life cycle safety and oversight of Bell product safety. Insured complete investigation of safety issues and corrective action initiation and completion. Result: over 2% reduction in corporation insurance premiums.
• Responsible for Aviation Safety at six sites including production, experimental, demonstration, Bell Training Academy and customer delivery. Started “Near Miss” tracking metric. Result: active oversight in the past year reduced incidents from 168 to 110, a 35% reduction; all while flight operations were increasing.
• Reduced Total Recordable Injury Rate from over 2.8 to 1.0 in 24 months by active oversight of every incident and supervisory accountability.
• Executive regulatory oversight of Civil Certification to include the [FAA] Organization Delegation Authorization; the [TCCA] Design Organization Authorization, to include Type Certificates held in Canada and US and after-market modifications; three FAA part 145 Repair Stations. Result: five ACSEP and 3 ODA audits with no Safety/major findings.
• Developed Accident Emergency Plans for six sites and instituted site audit program.
• Rewrite of all Engineering Operations policy converting from paper to electronic format resulting in 450+ documents reduced to less than 250 (45% reduction).
• Reduced capital cost of Bell Training Academy relocation by $5M. Relevant Regulatory Experience: FAA – Manager Rotorcraft Directorate
• Responsible for rotorcraft/ tilt-rotor policy/ certification and FAA oversight of 250 companies in a five state area for Production and Manufacturing.
• Responsible for all FAA Experimental Flight Test policy, training and administration. Result: no fatal accidents. Successfully sought funds to establish, in conjunction with NASA, a web portal to identify and mitigate risks: thus providing industry Senior Management insight and effective strategies to accomplish flight testing in a cost-effective and accident/ incident free manner.
• Collaborated with industry to lower the number of fatal accidents from a five-year average of 30 to 14 per/ year. This was accomplished by culture change and industry outreach. FAA – Assistant Manager Engine & Propeller Directorate
• Team Leader for FAA Safer Skies Global Safety Initiative: 76% reduction in fatal accidents
• Responsible for engine, propeller and APU policy/ certification and FAA oversight of 325 companies in a 12 state area, Canada, and Europe for Production and Manufacturing.
• Revamped Directorate business plan to establish deliverables, milestones and accountability.
• Instituted FAA-Industry partnerships to reduce program times and costs.
• Led Safer Skies cross-functional team to research, analyze and report to FAA Administrator and Secretary of Transportation on leading fatal accident causes.

Relevant Aviation Experience:
FAA - Experimental Test Pilot
United States Army Pilot
• Planned, executed, and reported on all Army aviation engineering flight tests. Duties as Chief Engineering Test Pilot and Chief, Flight Test.
• Exchange test pilot with United Kingdom. Performed duties as liaison for US government with host nation. Duties as Senior Test Pilot.
• Extensive international experience in Europe (UK, France, Germany, Norway, Italy), India and Far East (Korea).

He provided unique insight to a major airplane company and their JV partner on a novel approach to certification. He provided insight and factual conclusions to a major DoD component that will facilitate the appropriate distribution of fiscal and personnel resources. He provided to an un-informed client insight into the processes behind supply chain qualification and engineering acceptance of third-party data.