VP - Professional Development at PMI-Northeast Indiana Chapter

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Mr. Maynard graduated from State University of New York with a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering. Immediately after graduation, he started work at NASA – Houston at a very exciting time. While there he participated widely in the design phase of the Shuttle project.

One of the two areas of his engineering emphasis was a problem called ‘TAEM’ -- Terminal Area Energy Management. The essence of this problem was: “How to take a vehicle in orbit, without fuel and land it on a runway where we want it?” After TAEM was solved, Dave became deeply involved in the Shuttle flight computer configuration, timing, voting and reliability issues.

After the Challenger disaster, and the loss of close friends, Dave’s life-time focus shifted from solving technical problems to diagnosing troubled projects and assisting in their turn-around. Leaving NASA, Mr. Maynard worked on several diverse projects from the F16, the Learjet 55 and the Airbus A320 (the world’s first fly-by-wire commercial aircraft). During this time he earned his MBA – his thesis being “The Accuracy of Stochastic Methods of Risk Assessment.” His interest remained in examining “what can go wrong?”.

In 1986, Dave was asked to become the General Manager of Systems Management Inc (SMI) in Orlando, Fl. The company’s charter was to buy, obtain and manage troubled projects and operations. SMI grew rapidly and achieved sales of over $25 million / year with 70 direct employees and “herds” of consultants.

Honors include:
• Author of 5 original published papers all centered upon troubled projects.
• “The David Arthur Maynard” scholarship -- $2,000 granted each year by the NEIC to deserving college students
• Personal award from NASA prime crew for “keeping the computers running.”
• NASA presentation of an American flag flown aboard the first Shuttle mission
• Certification from the US Coast Guard for “efforts beyond the call of duty” (a turn-around project)

Specialties:

Project / program and operations management
 

For complete information please check his profile on Linkedin.