Employee of Month
Andrew
J. Shepherd
NOAA Research
“Making exceptional contributions for nearly 20 years.”
For almost
two decades, Andy Shepherd has been a senior member of the TAO Project
which, despite essentially flat funding since 1996, has sustained high
efficiency in delivering top quality oceanographic and surface meteorological
data to NOAA forecasting centers and researchers and the scientific
community. Andy was nominated as Employee of the Month for
his exceptional contributions over these 20 years. He is a supervisory
operations specialist
at NOAA Research's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle.
The TAO
array is a major component of NOAA’s El Niño/Southern Oscillation
Observing System. In particular, Andy is being cited for his work in
managing the recent transition from the original ATLAS moorings to the
new NextGeneration ATLAS moorings. Developed at NOAA's laboratory, the
newer technology allows for easier assembly, deployment and recovery,
greater flexibility in sensor payloads and higher accuracy of some measurements.
Although first introduced into the TAO array in 1996, funding limitations
restricted the transition to a full array of all NextGeneration ATLAS
moorings. For a period of several years, it was necessary to maintain
two sets of instrument inventories and two sets of calibration. Completing
the transition also required developing new procedures and software.
Andy supervised the design and implementation of these new procedures
while keeping track of the two inventories of instrumentation and hardware.
Although
basic design of the new ATLAS mooring was sound, several design modifications
were required. Andy was instrumental in identifying the problems, working
with engineering staff to solve them, and organizing TAO laboratory
personnel to implement design modifications. In addition, new and never-before-used
instrumentation was introduced into the sensor suite. To monitor performance
prior to deployment, Andy conceived of a test facility and spearheaded
its construction. The aim was to detect faulty instruments and other
concerns before the new instrumentation was ever put to use.
The transition
is now complete. In preparing for it, Andy supervised the checkout and
deployment of approximately 900 temperature and temperature/conductivity
sensor modules and the calibration of 114 air temperature sensors, 185
relative humidity sensors, 200 wind sensors, 105 rain gauges and 1146
module temperature calibrations.
He managed
the entire transition, including development of new calibration procedures,
production of new sensors and design and construction of a new sensor
test facility, with no increase in budget or personnel.
