During 2017, Mike Durham, an Electronics Engineer and Instructor in the FAA Academy, was working with members of the Department of Defense (DOD) to locate an Enhanced Terminal Voice Switch (ETVS), which they were decommissioning. This is equipment that handles communications among Air Traffic Controllers and pilots, radio, and telecommunications in the Terminal and TRACON environments. The FAA Academy’s training on this communication equipment helps to train Tech Ops Technicians in the field who support and maintain Air Traffic and National Airspace System operations. While the equipment is several years old, in its day, a new system would have cost over a million dollars to purchase. Thanks to Durham’s efforts and collaborations with the DOD, members of the AJW team and Bill Howard, Aviation Technical Systems Program Office, they were able to furnish the FAA Academy with an ETVS system to be located at the Aeronautical Center at no cost! Durham was the driving force behind obtaining this new equipment. With the assistance of long timer fellow instructor and friend, Lamar Duverger, together they installed and configured the system in a designated laboratory space. In no time, the laboratory area was up and available to conduct training in early 2018. The provision of having an added Voice Switch is a huge asset to the Academy curriculum and is certain to improve the overall quality of the ETVS course. “We have less downtime in the classroom, and the learning process is more efficient,” says Duverger. “We can better adapt to different paces of learning to better accommodate the students.”

Thanks to Durham’s initiative and Duverger’s help, the new equipment will drastically reduce student down time, enabling the organization to condense classroom time of the ETVS course from 20 days to 16 days. Shortening the course days reduces travel costs per student by $568 per course. For FY19, this estimates to be a total of $22,725 in direct cost savings. This represents a tremendous cost savings for the agency, while allowing the Academy the capability of increasing the number of students trained per fiscal year. Congratulations to Mike Durham and Lamar Duverger for thinking strategically to save government dollars while improving the agency’s services.