Courtesy Photo | Juan Carlos Gordillo, a combat systems project engineer and test coordinator for...... read more read more
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As deadlines tighten and requirements get tougher and more complex, that’s when Juan Carlos Gordillo shines as brightly as the Navy medal he just received.
Rear Admiral D. W. Small, program executive officer, integrated warfare systems, awarded Gordillo the Civilian Service Achievement Medal recently for leading teams the past five years on nearly 100 successful modernizations aboard littoral combat ships.
Gordillo, in his role as a Combat Systems Project Engineer (CSPE) and test coordinator for Littoral Combat Ship (LCSs) with Naval Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme Division, now temporarily working aboard USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000) and stationed at San Diego, oversaw and resolved complex issues that “directly increased mission readiness, enhanced overall capability and brought uniformity” to the entire LCS class of ships, specifically USS Freedom, USS Independence, USS Fort Worth and USS Coronado, wrote Small in his award letter.
The medal caught the recent Naval Postgraduate School graduate completely off guard, he said.
“This is an honor,” Gordillo said. “Medals are harder to receive, and they represent more than just a pat on the back. At the ceremony, I thought I was just getting something like a Letter of Commendation, but when they put a medal up on the screen, I was floored! My thanks goes to all the teams that helped me achieve this honor.”
His nomination, written by the program office, commends Gordillo for his “remarkable degree of expertise and professionalism” as well as “exceptional expertise and unparalleled resourcefulness.”
Nominating Gordillo was an easy decision, said Robin Nussear, LCS seaframe sustainment project manager, who commented on behalf of the program office.
“Juan Carlos never shies away from taking on the tough tasks, and always demonstrates the highest levels of dedication to the mission,” Nussear said. “Not only does he excel when the pressure is on, but he does it with a smile and in a way that makes those around him more productive and feeling better to have worked with him. He is the true embodiment of what it means to be a professional.”
The medal is just the latest of Gordillo’s honors, which include two On-the-Spot awards and a Letter of Commendation, for the short five years he’s been a Navy employee.
Gordillo said he was a bit of a late bloomer, Navy-wise. The Monterey, California native joined the Navy at 28 after moving back to the U.S. from Lima, Peru and became a hull technician aboard USS Gonzales.
While still on active duty, he was next stationed in Little Creek, Virginia at the Personnel Support Detachment as a personnel specialist until 2009. He transitioned to work on the LCS program with Lockheed Martin Corp. and served in the reserves for another four years. In 2014, Gordillo joined PHD as a CSPE contractor and returned to the government world as a civilian the following year in the same position.
He attributes his desire for a naval career to the naval influence running through his family—an uncle, great grandfather and godfather were vice admirals; his father a naval officer, and his great uncle a Navy minister—all with the Peruvian Navy.
“Being born in that environment had an effect on me,” he said.
As one of the CSPEs for PHD, Gordillo leads teams of technicians as they integrate combat systems on 16 LCSs during CNO availabilities. When technician teams come aboard to do installations of an average of 25 different systems and equipment, Gordillo is the one who makes sure the systems work doesn’t conflict with active systems on the ship, or with other systems getting worked on; and don’t overlap. He makes sure each team member has the needed support; that the ship’s crew is informed about the work being done and that all the installations are done correctly and following the appropriate rules.
The need to understand the interconnectedness of ships’ systems during alterations was so great that Gordillo earned a second master’s degree—his first was in business administration—this one in systems engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School and following in his father’s footsteps.
Among the 119 alterations Gordillo has overseen, two stand out as the most challenging. The conditions also hint at why the program office selected him for the achievement medal.
In 2016, the total system computer environment modernization on USS Independence not only started late in the game, making Gordillo scramble to get the technicians and equipment needed, but then the entire job lasted 10 months while most never go beyond two months.
“This was a complete overhaul of computer environments within a ship,” he said. “If it wasn’t for the team I had, it wouldn’t have been possible.”
While working at Lockheed in 2013, Gordillo and his team had to squeeze two weeks of installation work into nine days because the ship urgently needed to leave dry dock.
“I gathered my team in an office, and everybody started panicking; I told them to leave their emotions at the door,” Gordillo said. “We started brainstorming on what we had to do to finish. We came out three to four hours later, and then finished the installation within seven days. Probably the hardest time during that job was the 36-hour day in which I worked from 4 a.m. Friday and finished 4:30 p.m. Saturday. And then slept till Monday morning.”
Under these conditions Gordillo flips a switch and goes into “crisis mode.”
“I start beating it down—‘What is it we need? Do we need more overtime? More people?’ And I push for that,” he said. “Most of the time—not every job but most—we are successful at finishing (by the due date.)”
The “bold leadership, tenacity, and wise judgment” the program office lauds him for, Gordillo attributes to his family and the Navy.
“My dad always taught me to exhibit leadership at home, in the community and at work,” he said. “Leadership was taught to me by my parents, and then the Navy made it 10 times better.”
Gordillo credits his success to his immediate family, in addition to his teams.
“None of this would have been possible without the relentless support of my wife Ximena and my daughters Tabata and Nasca,” he said. “They always supported me when I travelled or worked weekends and long hours.”
| Date Taken: | 08.03.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 08.03.2020 12:03 |
| Story ID: | 375160 |
| Location: | PORT HUENEME, CA, US |
| Web Views: | 131 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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