Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Carderock Division celebrated Engineer’s Week by welcoming two guest speakers: NSWC Crane Division (Indiana) Technical Director Dr. Brett Seidle and Coast Guard Sector New Orleans Commander Capt. Kristi Luttrell.
On Feb. 11, Luttrell and Chief of Emergency Contracts Operation Branch at the Coast Guard Shore Infrastructure Logistics Jackie Dickson from Norfolk, Virginia, presented “A Volcano of Oil at the Bottom of the Gulf.”
In 2004, Hurricane Ivan moved through the Gulf of Mexico, toppling an oil platform off the coast of Louisiana. For 15 years after the storm, a sheen of oil was visible on top of the water until April 2019 when a containment system was installed and designed by an emergency contractor under the direction of the Coast Guard.
Luttrell and Dickson spoke about how the containment system works, how the contractor was selected and the leadership challenges involved in implementing this groundbreaking effort to contain the oil spill.
“We spent a year trying to get our game plan together for how we were going to respond to this. In the Coast Guard, we don’t usually do responses like this on this big of scale, that cost this much money; but this was a targeted, measured risk we needed to take,” Luttrell said.
Seidle discussed “The Impact of Leadership on Culture: The Paul O’Neill/Alcoa Story” with Carderock employees on Feb. 19, sharing his experiences with former Alcoa CEO and Chairman Paul O’Neill.
In the late 1980s and 1990s, factory jobs in aluminum industries offered less than adequate safety conditions for their employees. At the age of 18, Seidle experienced firsthand dangerous working conditions for General Motors and suffered third-degree burns after equipment malfunction.
“I was working in the foundry industry for General Motors at the time, and I was running a co-op machine which injected molten aluminum at 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit with 3,000 psi to make a casting,” Seidle said. “One day the machine did not close all the way and spat out molten aluminum, which hit me and although I had the proper PPE on, when I stripped my clothes off in the hall, I realized I had third degree burns on my neck.”
Seidle was provided silver sulfadiazine (Silvadene) to treat his dermal burns and prevent infection and then was expected to go back onto the factory floor to continue his normal duty.
“My boss at the time asked me if I knew what I did wrong, and I told him ‘yes, I closed up on overflow’ and he said, ‘ok, don’t do it again’ and wanted me to get back to work 30 minutes after the incident,” Seidle said. “They treated molten aluminum like it was water.”
In 1995, Seidle accepted a position with a joint venture between Alcoa and Cast Metals Industries, becoming the plant manager of the CMI-Precision Mold casting facility in northern Indiana. It was at Alcoa where Seidle met O’Neill and witnessed positive change in safety protocol at the workplace.
O’Neill announced there would be zero injuries in his first speech as CEO of Alcoa and outlined his commitment to workers safety. His intention was well received amongst factory workers and sparked a healthy revolution in culture for the aluminum company. Seidle recalled watching his co-workers buy into O’Neill’s values, which also coincidentally transcended a popular economic boom for the Alcoa Company.
Prior to O’Neill’s implemented change, Alcoa was infamously known for having a 40% chance of being injured on the job, Seidle said. The new safety culture developed a powerful relationship between factory employees and leadership.
Seidle recognized the effects of this change and mentioned to Carderock employees that he models his leadership after O’Neill’s. He highlighted values as an agent of change that can influence an individual’s working environment. Seidle emphasized leaders must express their values clearly, be intentional in their behaviors and recommended everyone remain true to themselves.
“I tell people all the time, if you find that you’re incongruent between your work-self and your personal-self, you ought to pause and reflect,” he said. “The things you decide to be about, you need to be about. You need to be who you are.”
Other qualities important to leadership, according to Seidle, included unity, authenticity and service.
“When we do things for others, it makes us happy,” he said. “Looking after their well-being and considering their needs should not be underestimated. I’m here to tell you that if you do those four things, if you model yourself on values-based behavior; if you’re authentic and comfortable in your own skin; serve others well; and care enough to share, you will impact your culture wherever you are at.”