SHIFT WITH THE WIND
With over two decades of Army civilian service, Elias Vainchenker said there is “no right answer” to the advice he could give fellow junior engineers for success in the Army Acquisition Workforce. “We typically transition engineers or other math and science careers to project management due to the sheer quantity of such co-located personnel. Te primary discriminator of whether someone from a career field based on calcula- tions and precision will be successful in project management is on whether they can shift their mindset to developing decisions with lack of all the information,” he said. “Tose that pause or hesitate until enough information is collected will have their proj- ect paths decided for them based on time,” he said, when their alternate options might no longer be viable.
ELIAS VAINCHENKER
COMMAND/ORGANIZATION: Joint Pro- gram Executive Office for Armaments and Ammunition, Directorate of Integration
TITLE: Project officer
YEARS OF SERVICE IN WORKFORCE: 24
DAWIA CERTIFICATIONS: Advanced in program management, Practitioner in engi- neering and technical management
EDUCATION: Bachelor of Engineering in mechanical engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology
AWARDS: Commander’s Award for Civil- ian Service (2012); Commanding General FORSCOM Award for Excellence (2008); Commanding General’s Award for Excel- lence (2006)
“I advise those entering this field to inflect on their course of actions in only so far as the schedule allows and to make decisions to move forward and to take the risks they are uncomfortable making with the data they currently have,” he said.
As the project officer for the Joint Program Executive Office for Armaments and Ammu- nition (JPEO A&A) under the Directorate of Integration, Vainchenker is responsible for finding solutions to supply chain issues, so our warfighters have the ammunitions they need when they need them.
“In a project management role, we have a daily responsibility to make hard decisions that are worth millions of dollars to the DOD,” he said. “Whether it be a production project that requires a decision to direct a contractor to stop production due to test anomalies and conduct a root-cause investigation—which may still result in inconclusive data—to developing programs that require continuous and consistent communication of progress. … It is a unique authority entrusted to us in project management by the U.S. Army.”
Vainchenker began his career at JPEO A&A in what he said was a “less complex prod- uct portfolio” in pyrotechnic munitions—used for illumination, signaling simulation of battle sounds and effects—transitioning from the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command in system engineering. He was fortunate to have a mentor to guide him through “a new way of thinking” and introduce him to planning, program- ming, budgeting and execution, and contracting.
“I was fortunate to have contractors with sufficient expertise and historical product knowledge to be afforded the bandwidth to focus on learning product improvement programs, urgent materiel releases and other approaches to developing capabilities for the user,” he said. “As a result, in my first couple of years, I had worked with a broad team to field escalation of force capabilities to Operation Iraqi Freedom [OIF]/Opera- tion Enduring Freedom [OEF)].”
During OIF/OEF, Vainchenker said his experiences included anything from conducting fast-paced safety tests to demonstrate the risk of shooting pen flares at windshields of approaching vehicles (in order to waive them away from checkpoints), to collaborating
96 Army AL&T Magazine Spring 2024
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