Organizational award recognizes team effort

1 June 2006 -- Champaign, Ill. -- Established in 1996, the Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL) Research Product Development Team Award is an excellent example of project management business process at work, with communication and customer focus as key elements. The winner of this year's award is the Range Managers Toolkit (RMTK) Noise Tool for Range Managers team, led by Dr. Michelle Swearingen, Dr. Michael White, Dr. Larry Pater and Charlotte Pettis of CERL. The 15-member team spans academia, industry and other government agencies.

Team members present at the ceremony were: back row (l. to r.) - Jason Walters (ATSC), Billy Karnes (ATSC), Phil Whitley (GIS Inc.), Dr. Dan Levine (GIS Inc.), Dr. Michael White and back row (l. to r.) - Dr. William Russell (CHPPM), Dr. Michelle Swearingen, Charlotte Pettis and Dr. Larry Pater. Photo by Sandy Bantz, IIM. (not pictured: Col. (ret.) Tom Gray, Joe Pereira, Carlos Hathcock III, James Furlo, Thomas Apple and Kristy Broska.

"The purpose of the award is to foster an environment where a team works inclusively in a positive, secure manner, where partnering is the norm and customers are anticipating highly valued products that impact daily life and bring broad recognition to CERL," said Ilker Adiguzel, acting director, CERL. The guiding values for the award include clarity of purpose and process, inclusiveness, integrity, fairness and excellence.

In 2003, the Army Training Support Center (ATSC)-led RMTK Working Group contacted CERL about adding a noise tool to the RMTK software suite. The bold objective was to create a Geographic Information System-based tool into which range personnel without acoustics expertise could easily enter training scenarios and receive reliable guidance regarding potential noise problems within installations. The CERL noise environmental technology management plan already included plans to develop such a tool to satisfy trainers' needs. The two efforts were merged, and the "RMTK Noise Tool Team" was formed explicitly to provide the new noise tool.

The RMTK Noise Tool was completed and fielded in September 2005 after two years of intense effort. The result of this collaboration was a quick and successful development and deployment of a well-received user-friendly tool enabling range personnel to evaluate noise compliant risk for proposed operations. As noted on their awards, "this exemplary contribution to the Army and Marine Corps training mission brings credit to the team members and their organizations."

Team members were chosen to provide the diverse range of expertise and disciplines needed to successfully achieve the project objective. Each team member received a certificate with federal employees also receiving a plaque. "Users seem to really value this product," Pater said. "The project is an excellent example of how we conduct research and development (R∧D) and use those R∧D results to make a useful product."