NAVSEA Engineers Recognized for Excellence, USA

Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) engineers were honored by the American Society of Naval Engineers (ASNE), Feb. 21-22. ASNE’s annual awards celebrate excellence in naval engineering by recognizing individuals who have demonstrated exceptional achievement in one or more facets of the industry.

Rear Adm. Thomas J. Eccles, NAVSEA chief engineer and deputy commander for Naval Systems Engineering, was presented the Gold Medal Award for significant naval engineering contributions over the past five years. Eccles was recognized for his leadership accomplishments including; serving as the technical authority for all U.S. Navy ships, submarines, and associated weapons systems; leading the Navy’s organic ship design and engineering workforce into new roles; his contributions to the Navy’s submarine force through the disciplined application of naval engineering; and an international leader for the analysis of malfunctions and failures of large, complex marine systems, and quickly getting to the root causes.

Scott Ramalho, Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock’s Ship Systems Engineering Station engineer, received the Claud A. Jones Award which recognizes a fleet or field engineer who made significant contributions to improving operational engineering or material readiness of maritime forces in the three-year period leading up to the award. As the team leader for aircraft carrier steering and navigation, Ramalho led the development of a standardized steering system for all U.S. Navy aircraft carriers, which previously utilized 11 different commercially built steering configurations.

The “Jimmie” Hamilton Award for best paper published in the Naval Engineers Journal was presented to Team Submarine members, Rear Adm. (s) Michael Jabaley, Christy Goff and Charles McNamara for their paper titled, Maximizing Platform Value: Increasing Virginia Class Deployments. The paper discusses how the program office reduced total ownership costs by reducing depot-level maintenance, thereby improving operational availability and maximizing mission time.

Press Release, March 1, 2013