Thomas Maynes
Director, DDG 1000 Program
A little serendipity can be a good thing when a young company is juggling the demands of fulfilling a major contract with charting a course for the future.
Case in point: Tom Maynes and RSL Fiber Systems.
In early 2008, RSL was in the initial stages of executing its Navy contract to provide advanced lighting systems for the Navy’s latest stealth destroyer, the DDG 1000. The project was complex, the specifications vague and the deliverables demanding. In short, it was the kind of contract that can make or break a growing technology company trying to make its mark.
And that’s when RSL’s then-President, David Patch, accepted an innocuous dinner invitation from his Boothbay Harbor, Maine neighbor, Maynes. By the time the routine social occasion-turned-business summit had ended, Maynes had accepted Patch’s impromptu offer to join the team and work the DDG 1000 contract.
RSL’s future was forever changed.
By April, Maynes had developed a project schedule and begun work on a requirements analysis. By August, Maynes and the RSL team had met with Navy officials in Washington, helped clarify objectives and rescoped the project to an entirely new set of deliverables.
In Maynes, RSL could not have chosen a more astute professional to lead the DDG 1000 effort. A Vietnam veteran and Navy nuclear submarine operator, Maynes has more than 30 years of experience as a senior executive, systems/control engineer, project manager and supply chain manager. He has played key roles in nuclear plant design, engineering and construction throughout the country, and was among the first engineers hired at the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire in 1980. There, Maynes developed the plant’s entire operational procedures and processes, an enormous, multi-year undertaking at a time when the nuclear industry was in upheaval.
Following seven years in the Navy, Maynes earned his bachelors degree in electrical engineering from the University of New Hampshire. He performed post-graduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s School of Nuclear Engineering.
