2nd Lt Walter R. Washburn (USAF) started his career in 1976 as Chief of Maintenance at a remote RADAR site in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. There he managed various craft skill sets in the maintenance of two multi-megawatt heavy ground RADARs, a computer facility, a 500 MW power generation plant, and a high-power UHF radio data-link site – contributing to the operations of the BUIC and SAGE air defense network during the height of the cold-war. Memories of the challenges of managing maintenance without the benefits of Doc Palmer’s handbook guided this review. Beyond his start in the Air Force, Walt has spent another 30 years leading technical projects in systems integration, systems implementation, enterprise change management, and software application development. He’s worked in DoD, Applied Sciences Consulting, Banking, Consumer Services, e-Commerce, and Healthcare, where for the past 10 years he’s helped build strategic software applications for CVS Caremark.
