the record
Where the thirty years went.
1996 to 2026, 7 roles. Regulated manufacturing throughout, in three industries that each punish the same mistake differently.
2022 to 2026
VP of Engineering & Technology
Whiskey House · Elizabethtown, Kentucky
Executive team member, with ownership of P&L, budget and the software development lifecycle. Led the electrical, process, controls, software and data-engineering teams.
Built the greenfield Whiskey House distillery: a 24/7 production plant running on the MES, WMS, historian, OT/SCADA and governance software created in-house rather than bought.
Owned electrical safety for the site, directing third-party short-circuit, coordination and arc-flash studies and leading implementation of the findings under NFPA 70E.
- MES
- WMS
- historian
- OT/SCADA
- MPC/APC
- Ignition
- Allen-Bradley
2018 to 2022
Director of Engineering
Bardstown Bourbon Company · Bardstown, Kentucky
Led capital projects, process engineering and automation, and ISO-certified quality systems. Built and grew cross-functional engineering teams, and managed vendors and integrators.
Doubled plant capacity, delivered during a live-plant controls migration from Allen-Bradley L82 to a new Ignition build, with production continuing throughout. Recognised by the Ignition Discovery Award at ICC 2019.
Cut natural-gas use by more than 40%. The energy project was recognised by the EPA / ENERGY STAR Project of the Year and the Douglas C. Griffen Environmental Award, both in 2021.
- Ignition
- Allen-Bradley ControlLogix
- ISO 9001
- stage-gate capital delivery
2015 to 2018
Senior Process Engineer
Sazerac Company · Bardstown, Kentucky
Process engineering at the Barton 1792 Distillery in Bardstown, a very old plant, with a small share of the work at Sazerac's Glenmore facility in Owensboro. Reported to the plant engineer. The work was improving processes and equipment in a distillery that had to keep running while it was being improved.
Replaced the dry house, the largest project of the role. The original was built in 1948 and was still in service, with availability, performance and quality all badly degraded. Built its replacement and took dry house OEE (overall equipment effectiveness) from between 0.40 and 0.59 to above 0.90.
The plant ran on Allen-Bradley, Siemens and GE PLCs, mostly Allen-Bradley, supervised through Schneider Electric's Citect SCADA. Wrote updated HMI screens and trending tools for that system. Drives, motor starters and instruments came from six or seven equipment makers, so standardized on Allen-Bradley PowerFlex 525 and 700 series drives and Emerson instrumentation, replacing nonstandard equipment as it failed rather than all at once.
Data collection barely existed at the start, and what did exist sat in silos. Began standardizing how plant data was collected and built new relational and time-series databases to hold it.
Owned the operational technology side of the company's ISO 27001 program: connectivity, data collection and calibration of plant instrumentation, and network security of the OT networks.
Regulated manufacturing throughout, under TTB rules, Distilled Spirits Council (DISCUS) standards, NFPA codes and the National Electrical Code.
- Allen-Bradley
- Siemens PLCs
- GE PLCs
- Citect SCADA
- PowerFlex VFDs
- Emerson instrumentation
- OEE
- TTB regulated manufacturing
2007 to 2015
Senior Electrical Engineer, Control Systems
Joy Global (Joy Mining Machinery) · West Virginia
Senior Electrical Engineer for control systems at Joy Global, reporting to the area director, in a manufacturing business where equipment is designed, built on a production floor, tested and then commissioned in the field. MSHA governed the work throughout, so a design error was a safety event rather than a defect report.
Started in the surface mining division on draglines and shovels, then moved to the underground division: conveyors, crushers, longwall miners, continuous miners and shuttle cars. Designed, built and maintained the control systems for that equipment.
Designed surface and underground power distribution from 12,470 V down to 480 V three phase, including transformers, switchgear and motor control centers, and engineered AC/DC inverter and converter systems for underground equipment operating below 999 V.
Produced single-line and schematic designs in AutoCAD Electrical, specified components, and issued bills of material and design-to-manufacturing packages. Supported factory acceptance testing and field commissioning to MSHA and National Electrical Code requirements.
Led, trained and mentored the technicians who built, tested and maintained the systems.
The longest single stay of the career, and the bridge between the telecom infrastructure years and the process-control years that followed.
- Mining control systems
- medium-voltage power distribution
- AC/DC drive systems
- AutoCAD Electrical
- MSHA
- NEC
- UL 508A
2000 to 2006
Telecom Power Distribution Engineer, then Systems Integrator
Lucent Technologies · United States
Started on power distribution for carrier telecom facilities: -48 VDC rectifier plants, battery strings and DC distribution, UPS systems up to 1 MW, standby generators and transfer switches, built for mission-critical network sites where an outage is measured in dropped calls and lost circuits.
Moved into systems integration in 2002, building out voice and data systems for local exchange carriers and the competitive carriers that entered the market after the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The work ran across Lucent platforms, the 5ESS switch and the APX-8000, MaxTNT and Stinger remote-access concentrators, taking designs through installation, turn-up and commissioned service, with power, telecom and network systems integrated end to end.
The standout project was expanding voice and data capacity to carry the bandwidth needed to televise and support the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. The opening ceremony date was fixed and the world was watching, so the deadline could not move.
Worked to Bell System Practices, Bellcore and Telcordia specifications, and the National Electrical Code, and held BICSI Technician certification through these years.
- -48 VDC power plants
- UPS to 1 MW
- standby generation
- 5ESS
- APX-8000
- MaxTNT
- Stinger
- Bell System Practices
- Bellcore/Telcordia
- BICSI
1998 to 2000
Electrical & Telecom Infrastructure Engineer
Bell Atlantic · United States
Central-office power, structured cabling, grounding and bonding: the ordinary infrastructure work that everything else in telecom sat on.
Short on purpose. The work here was foundational rather than novel, and the six years at Lucent that followed covered the same ground at greater scale and with harder problems. That is the entry worth reading.
- Central-office power
- structured cabling
- grounding and bonding
1996 to 1998
Electrical Engineering Technician, Infrastructure
Columbia Gas Transmission · West Virginia
The first engineering role, starting the year both degrees were completed. Electrical infrastructure on a regulated gas transmission network, including the RF microwave work that carried telemetry before anything was carried over IP.
This is where the SCADA thread of the next thirty years starts.
- SCADA
- RF microwave telemetry
- pipeline infrastructure