NSWC Dahlgren Employees win NAVSEA Excellence Awards

...for impact on Aircraft Carriers, Acquisition and "Real World" CBR Defense

By John J. Joyce, NSWC Dahlgren Division Corporate Communications

WASHINGTON—Vice Adm. Kevin McCoy, commander, Naval Sea Systems Command, presented the 2011 NAVSEA excellence award to Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division employees for their outstanding achievements at an award ceremony held at the Navy Yard in Washington D.C. Dec. 7.

NSWCDD employees specializing in chemical biological and radiological (CBR) defense, human systems integration (HSI) and acquisition were among individuals and teams from across the NAVSEA organization who received awards for their excellent contributions to the United States Navy and the employees' commands.


The NSWCDD CBR Defense Division Operation Tomodachi Support Team was honored for mitigating initial fleet concerns and ensuring military personnel could operate safely in a radiological contaminated environment in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami that disabled the Fukushima nuclear power plant's reactor cooling systems, leading to massive leaks of nuclear radiation.

"The team quickly developed various specialized procedures for dealing with this specific type of contamination, then worked with NAVSEA and Pacific Fleet to deliver the procedures via naval message for the ships to use," said Michael Pompeii, NSWCDD CBR Defense Chief Engineer. "At the request of the Military Sealift Command, some of our CBR team members deployed to Yokosuka to implement and perform these procedures on a contaminated MSC ship. This was another real-world confirmation that our CBR procedures and equipment worked when the ships really needed them."

This high performing team—John Garmon, Tracy Delascasas, David Morad, Jeanne Fravel-Meyers, Jeff Smith, Richard "Chip" Warder, William Clark, Brian Liska, Charles Lansing, Ronald Roller, Jeffrey Renner, Paul Swayze and Pompeii—demonstrated NAVSEA's commitment to providing rapid, fully coordinated, technically sound support to the Fleet.

"This was a great real-world showing by our CBR defense systems on our ships," said Pompeii. "The countermeasure wash down system quickly removed the bulk of the contamination, just as it was designed to do. Our CBR Collective Protection System (CPS) performed flawlessly, as there was not one instance of any radiological contamination reported at any time in any CPS zone for the 13 ships equipped with CPS. But the ships without CPS or areas outside the CPS zones did not fare nearly as well."

CPS—originally designed by NSWC Dahlgren CBR Defense engineers to protect personnel and equipment inside ships from CBR attacks—works by using special filters to remove any contaminants from intake ventilation air and then providing a slight overpressure inside the CPS zone to prevent entry of contaminants through any leak paths.


NSWCDD HSI engineers Robyn Ryan, Alex Salunga, Isabel Anderson, Ajoy Muralidhar, Robert Hamburger, Jon Dachos, Dawn Chandler, Karen Holness and Christi Adams were honored for their superior support to the CVN 78 (Gerald R. Ford next generation carrier) Program as key players in the Warfare System Engineering Technical Team.

"We initially focused on determining manpower requirements for the new Ford Class Warfare System configuration," said Robyn Ryan, NSWCDD HSI Program Director. "Our team established a rigorous process to identify candidate manpower changes based on the anticipated warfare system elements and worked with the technical and active fleet subject matter experts to identify tasking and workload changes. This included documenting analysis and assumptions and reconciling proposed changes through all program and fleet stakeholders."

The team transitioned from focusing only on manpower requirements to include process improvements, according to the nomination letter.

"The process and resulting artifacts allow for changes in the Ford class warfare system definition to be assessed for manpower impacts," said Ryan. "This analysis on the new class was also leveraged to realize savings where these changes were applied to in-service carriers."

Capitalizing on the investment made while assessing the Ford class of nuclear aircraft carriers, the team applied findings to the USS Nimitz (CVN-68) class of nuclear aircraft carriers - achieving manpower reductions of 25 percent, resulting in a savings of $17.7 million.


"Since all human systems integration domains are interrelated, the manpower requirements analysis work demonstrated the need for other domain analysis, said Ryan. "The team's HSI and human factors engineering efforts impacted both engineering integrated product teams' activities as well as warfare system related ship space designs. For example, we defined the concept of operations for a new centralized combat systems management center. The team also impacted ship space and equipment layout based on human factors analysis and fleet cognitive walkthroughs for the Command Decision Center and Surface Undersea Support Center spaces."

The team constructed three inexpensive full scale mock-ups replicating the USS Abraham Lincoln, CVN 72 Combat Direction Center (CDC), CVN 78 CDC, and CVN 78 Surface and Undersea Coordination Center. The mock-ups achieved efficiencies through identification of common practices and configurations for the CVN 72 and 78 CDC spaces.

Through the combination of Fleet feedback and human factors engineering analysis, the mock-ups identified several improvements including remote location of common display system (CDS) common electronics modules; a modified space design achieving all three-display CDS consoles; the location of critical equipment in closer proximity to the appropriate watch standers; the validation of existing manpower requirements; and identification of new manpower and equipment requirements. The team submitted their findings in coordination with shipyard and stakeholder milestones to achieve greatest savings.

Individual award recipients were recognized for their personal contributions and outstanding accomplishments—displaying a "do it right the first time" attitude—with outstanding customer satisfaction and in support of the NAVSEA mission, vision and goals.


Robert Ashley, NSWCDD Contracting Office Acquisition Policy Lead, was honored for his accomplishments to include the establishment of several best practices which have been implemented across the Contracting Competency.

Ashley used knowledge management tools to vastly improve acquisition service by disseminating a variety of searchable, user friendly products to the contracting and program management communities, according to the nomination letter. He ensures policies are openly shared with NSWCDD customers through the web based contract homepage.

In addition to his impact on acquisition training, process improvement, and the command's Product Data Reporting and Evaluation Program instruction, Ashley established the Dahlgren Policy Cliff Notes—a monthly acquisition product which supplements policy directives from NAVSEA headquarters. These notes, supplement policy implementation with easy to read disposition instructions permitting the quick identification of relevant areas of new policies and directives applicable to the work accomplished by the NSWC Dahlgren contracting office.