Boeing announced today that it has established several new senior-level engineering leadership positions “to help drive engineering excellence and ensure program success across the company.” The appointees include vice president and chief project engineer for the 787 program Mike Delaney, who will now serve as head of airplane performance and product architecture for Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Other 787 managers appointed as vice presidents of engineering include Jim Ogonowski, the Dreamliner’s chief structures engineer; and Mike Sinnet, the program’s vice president and systems chief engineer. Ogonowski now assumes the position of vice president of engineering for airplane structures and Sinnett becomes vice president of engineering for airplane systems. All three will continue to concentrate on the 787 program, said Boeing. The fourth new engineering appointee at BCA, Keith Leverkuhn, will continue to head propulsion systems after serving as BCA’s vice president/general manager of propulsion systems. 

From Boeing’s Integrated Defense Systems division, the previous director of mechanical/structural engineering, Bill Carrier, will assume responsibility for structures; director of flight engineering Laurette Lahey takes over flight and controls; and vice president of mission assurance Jack Murphy will continue in his current role while also taking responsibility for system-of-systems/systems engineering. Meanwhile, the director of the satellite development center for Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems, Darrell Uchima, becomes IDS’s head of engineering for mission systems payloads and sensors, and senior technical fellow James Farricker assumes the post of vice president of engineering, networks and communications. 

The new vice presidents will work closely with program managers and chief engineers to help ensure the technical integrity of their products by providing technical guidance in their various areas of expertise, said Boeing. That guidance will manifest itself in a number of ways, it added, including direct and active involvement in key system requirements and criteria definition, critical design and production readiness reviews, technical risk assessments and issues resolution and any other important engineering challenges that might arise.