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Engineer finds safety solution, earns cash

10 Nov 2003 | Darren D. Heusel

When safety concerns surrounding NATO’s fleet of E-3 Sentry airborne early warning and control systems aircraft mounted, an engineer here knew time was of the essence.

Certain electrical components in some of the NATO aircraft were overheating and there was evidence that the overheating could lead to a fire in the cabin, an official here said.

So, rather than accept the required three-month lead time for a contracted tear down analysis of the components, Khoa Nguyen came up with his own plan to have the testing performed locally. He is a lead electronics engineer with the E-3 system support management division of the international support branch.

The idea eventually saved the U.S. government nearly $100,000 and earned him $10,000 through the Innovative Development through Employee Awareness program.

“We made some suggestions to the original equipment manufacturer to modify their design, which they did,” he said. “We haven’t had any more problems with the relay or the … control system, and we’ll be conducting further tests in the future to make it more safe and efficient.”

A contractor was originally scheduled to perform the analysis, but the estimate was more than $236,000 and would have taken up to three months to complete.

Nguyen thought the three-month lead time was unacceptable and checked with the avionics and electronics engineering division at the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center here to see if the testing could be done in-house.

Engineering laboratory officials here allowed Nguyen to use their facilities, and he provided NATO’s Force Command the results about a week later, saving the U.S. government $96,785 from the original proposal.

“What was critical was the time issue we were facing,” Nguyen said. “I wanted to see if we could do it organically and cut the time considerably.”

He said his idea to have the relay tested locally instead of externally will also help the U.S. E-3 fleet because both platforms are very similar.

Nguyen said he feels a great sense of accomplishment in coming up with the idea to perform the tests locally, but more than anything he wanted to set an example for other engineering departments within the logistics center to follow.

“I think it’s important for us to utilize the resources we have here in our own backyard,” he said. “Why contract the work out externally if it’s something we can perform internally?”

The IDEA program rewards people up to $10,000 if they can verify a tangible savings in a product or service.