David Nicholls, Engineer

Fred interviews David Nicholls, an engineer Quanterion and Director of the RMQSI Knowledge Center about his work supporting reliability engineers world wide. David Nicholls has been sharing reliability knowledge for years – we talk about the evolution of sharing knowledge and why it’s still important.

Mr. Nicholls has over 35 years of research and experience in reliability engineering, quality assurance and technical information management. He is currently the Director of Quanterion’s RMQSI Knowledge Center, drawing from his many years’ experience as the Operations Manager of the DoD Reliability Information Analysis Center (RIAC), responsible for leadership of all RIAC core operation activities. He previously served as Deputy Director for the DoD Data and Analysis Center for Software (DACS ) and as the Deputy Director of the DoD Reliability Analysis Center (RAC), which was later renamed the RIAC.

Mr. Nicholls has been recognized on many occasions for his significant contributions to DoD and industry initiatives to improve the reliability discipline such as the development of the joint government/industry GEIA-STD-0009 Reliability Program Standard and the TechAmerica TA-HB-0009 Handbook supplement as well as the development of DoD RAM Policy as related to Directive-Type Memorandum 11-003. He is an accomplished author/researcher in the field of RMQ, including such works as authoring the “Software-in-Systems Reliability Handbook” and the “System Reliability Toolkit”, developing the “Web Accessible Repository of Physics-based Models (WARP)” on-line database and co-authoring the “Reliability Impact of GREEN Technologies” state-of-the-art-report.

While with GE Aerospace, Mr. Nicholls successfully managed R/M&S technical/contractual and Program Office requirements on 15 product lines and was the R/M&S Engineering representative for several Department productivity improvement initiatives. He has an M.S. in Manufacturing Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (concentration in Reliability), an M.B.A. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a B.S. in Physics from Rochester Institute of Technology.

In this episode, Fred and David discuss:

The evolution of Rome Laboratories RAC to RiAC, and current RMQSI Knowledge Centers supporting the Department of Defense reliability programs
Changes over his career sharing knowledge and sharing failure data
The benefits and problems with available software tools

Recorded January 2017.