The South Australian Engineering Associate of the Year Award for 2015Peter Newman has over 6 year’s hands-on experience on the new Air Warfare Destroyers with the AWD Alliance. With the Test & Activation Team, Peter is developing complex Set-to-Work documentation for a wide variety of Combat Systems equipment. These Set-to-Work processes are now being implemented as more CS systems are loaded out onto Ship 1. This Air Warfare Destroyer experience builds on over 30 years’ experience, initially as a Marine Radio Surveyor, then moving into designing, installing, commissioning and maintaining Industrial and Maritime electronic and control systems. Peter’s unique combination of Government and Private industry experience, including as Company Director for over 10 years, ensures he can work very effectively and cooperatively in all levels of Government, Industry and Commerce. His Engineering together with his Project Management / Contract Administration expertise enables him to not only DO the job, he can also coordinate all resources and systems as Team Lead to ensure contract requirements are fulfilled on time and within budget.Peter’s work on the installation, testing and inspection of AWD’s world class optic fibre – OF- system brings together a range of commercially available components, processes and test equipment into the harsh naval military environment. This is a major innovation which had to overcome the embedded “legacy” designs and has resulted in an adapting COTS optic fibre (glass) tails fusion welded to ships OF cables and enclosed in the protective sleeve of the connector with nil waste material. Utilising fusion-spliced connectors in a Military application has broken new ground.A major impediment to fault-finding of optical fibre systems in confined environments – such as warships and aircraft – is the need to locate faults to within a few mm.ALL currently available technology utilised Optical Time Domain Reflectometry – OTDR – which has an inherent characteristic that inhibits fault-finding to closer than several meters – NO use when cabling disappears into a bulkhead straight from the rear of an equipment rack.ASC introduced into Australia the portable Optical Backscatter Reflectometer – OBR – and – assisted by our suppliers AusOptic – were able to demonstrate the effectiveness for our AWD applications.ASC have now procured an OBR (cost approx. $65k) and are already using this to locate faults in Ship 1 OF cables – saving many $1000s and much time.This has huge implications for the future Through Life Support of these ships – and for ALL other ships and submarines to be built by our teams.It is this sort of INNOVATION that lifts ASC above the crowd – Aussie Innovation adapting world-class technology to build exceptional submarines and warships.