John O'Sullivan
Program Manager, Federal Aviation Administration
Harris Corp.
Melbourne, Fla. Customer: Federal Aviation Administration
How the customer benefited: O'Sullivan supervises the FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure Program, which is expected to save the Federal Aviation Administration hundreds of millions of dollars while modernizing its network to support advanced air traffic control systems.
What makes him a leader: O'Sullivan led Harris' pursuit of the FTI contract, then created a business model for it based on a partnership with the agency. The model aligns the objectives of agency and contractor through incentives for superb performance. O'Sullivan also keeps a sharp eye on the project and adjusted the transition schedule to make a higher priority of some hub airports so that they would get the lower-cost FTI system sooner. O'Sullivan also created a team to work in partnership with Lockheed Martin Corp. and FAA in support of Lockheed Martin's work in taking over control of FAA's Automated Flight Service Stations, which were moving from government control to the contractor.