Rick Kowalewski serves as the Acting Chief Safety Officer and Assistant Administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). As Acting Chief, Mr. Kowalewski provides policy direction and leadership for PHMSA in ensuring the safe transportation of nearly 1 million daily shipments of hazardous materials and the safety of America's energy infrastructure of 2.3 million miles of liquid and gas pipelines.

Rick Kowalewski is the Senior Policy Advisor for the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), where he provides guidance and support to the executive leadership team in directing priorities, strategic planning, managing performance, and understanding risk.

Prior to his work at PHMSA, Rick was Deputy Director of the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, where he served as chief operating officer for six years and as chief executive from 2002-2005; and Deputy Director of Budget and Program Performance in the Office of the Secretary.

Rick has worked with transportation data for most of his 30+ years in the Federal government. As a career Coast Guard officer, he served in a variety of field and staff positions in the maritime safety programs. He's been an inspector, investigator, licensing examiner, emergency responder, national security planner, and field manager of all these activities. He developed information systems for collecting data, and led strategic planning and analysis for major Coast Guard operating programs. For two years, he helped manage the Army Corps of Engineers' navigation program.

Mp>Rick's work on a Business Plan for Marine Safety grew into one of the early pilot projects under the Government Performance and Results Act-selected by OMB as one of ten exemplars and cited by GAO to illustrate "best practices" in performance measurement. He guided DOT's efforts in performance planning in the mid-1990s, and later led development of the first two performance plans and first performance report to Congress-often cited for "best practices." He has taught performance measurement widely in the Federal government, and his work has been used as the basis for a Harvard case study developed by the Kennedy School of Government.

Rick is a 1997 graduate of the Industrial College of the Armed Forces at the National Defense University (NDU), with a Master of Science degree in national security resource strategy. From 1997-1998, he taught the art and science of strategy to senior military and civilian leaders at NDU.