ORLANDO, Fla — A Sidney High School graduate was the keynote speaker for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Timothy C. Adams, son of the late Alga “Barney” and Reba Adams, and a 1968 graduate of Sidney High School, continues to work for NASA at the Kennedy Space Center as a senior and certified engineer in Reliability.
On Nov. 2, 2020, Adams kicked off the Department of Veterans Affairs’ 10th annual Improvement Forum for the “Veterans Affairs Sunshine Healthcare Network (VISN) 8. VISN 8 is the nation’s largest system of hospitals and clinics serving a population of more than 1.5 million Veterans.
A total of 357 senior managers, medical doctors, and nurse managers attended Adams’ keynote session. It was reported the attendance level was about 20 to 40% greater than any previous VISN 8 annual Improvement Forum keynote session.
The title of the keynote presentation was “The R in HRO, A Reliability Engineer’s Perspective.” HRO (for High Reliability Organization) originated as a study of organizations that operated error free while working with complex and hazardous systems. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs adopted HRO as the philosophy and methodology to achieve “zero patient harm.”
For the last couple of decades, Adams’ role at NASA has been to apply the Reliability Engineering as an aid to help senior managers make risk-informed decisions. Available to the public is Adams’ website (https://extapps.ksc.nasa.gov/Reliability/) that blends the crafts of risk, safety, reliability, systems thinking, and decision making with the disciplines of Mathematics and Management.
Prior to NASA and in Texas, Adams survived the “ups and downs” in the oil business by serving as the product manager for Baker Hughes in Houston, Texas, the executive director for the city of Bryan, Texas, and the industrial engineer for CNC Machines at NL Industries in Bryan, Texas.
Before moving to Texas, Adams was employed with the Monarch Machine Tool Company in Sidney. After graduating from Sidney High, Adams studied Mathematics at Trine University in Angola, Indiana, Competency-Based Education at the University of Oklahoma, and General Management at the University of Houston.
Adams was inducted into Sidney City Schools Hall of Honor in 2009.
Adams currently resides in Orlando, Florida. Anyone wishing to contact Adams can do so via email, [email protected].
