Article sourced from AMRDEC Public Affairs
REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. — A U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center employee was recently conferred by the International Council on Systems Engineering as an Expert Systems Engineering Professional.
Tom Channell is the associate director for Systems Engineering Management for AMRDEC’s Engineering Directorate, and also serves as the AMRDEC chief systems engineer.
INCOSE is a membership organization whose goal is to develop and disseminate principles and practices that enable the realization of successful systems in order to advance systems engineering. Since its formation in 1990, INCOSE has grown significantly in membership.
There are currently 256 ESEPs in the US, with seven residing in Huntsville, Ala. Channell is one of only two government employees to achieve the expert level in the Redstone community. There are only three total ESEPs in the Redstone community, including the two government employees.
There are three levels of certification an individual can achieve through the INCOSE organization: Associate SEP, Certified SEP and ESEP.
Channell continues to encourage professional systems engineers to pursue certification through the CSEP. With a minimum of five years of systems engineering experience, a qualifying degree and three references, an individual can qualify to apply for the CSEP certification. As an advocate for the INCOSE organization, Channell has acted as a sponsor for personnel from across the center to help them achieve their CSEP certification. Within ED, technical encouragement is provided to employees seeking their CSEP.
“I thought I understood systems engineering well, even when I had titles like Lead Systems Engineer, because of my experience base, training, and education. I understood it a lot better and it all made a lot more sense having gone through the certification process,” Channell said.
Channell said preparing for the CSEP can be rigorous. The 80 question exam is thorough and can be difficult; He suggests studying the INCOSE handbook to prepare and credits the program with furthering his knowledge of systems engineering, with hope that more engineers will apply for the program.
The application process for the expert level certification took approximately one year to complete. Once completed and submitted, Channell went through a rigorous interview process with the board of ESEPs at INCOSE.
Stan Sherrod, deputy director of the Engineering Directorate, acted as a reference for Channell.
“Tom is a true professional. His interest is in increasing technical excellence and raising the bar for AMRDEC and the area of systems engineering and systems engineering management,” said Sherrod, ED deputy director.
To be qualified to apply for the ESEP, an individual must have at least 25 years of systems engineering experience. The individual must also provide evidence of professional development leadership as part of the application.
If interested in applying for the CSEP or ESEP certification programs, please visit https://www.incose.org/certification/CertWhichOne.
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U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center is part of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, which has the mission to provide innovative research, development and engineering to produce capabilities that provide decisive overmatch to the Army against the complexities of the current and future operating environments in support of the joint warfighter and the nation. RDECOM is a major subordinate command of the U.S. Army Materiel Command.
