all-hands meeting at the Coffee County Conference Center in Manchester.
The National Aerospace Solutions (NAS) management team held the first all-hands meetings with hundreds of members of the AEDC contractor workforce Thursday (April 14) to provide an update on contract transition and answer questions. The meetings were split into four sessions to give different shift workers the opportunity to attend.
NAS General Manager Cynthia Rivera opened the meetings by praising the AEDC workers for the jobs they do to protect national security and promote the advancement of the Air Force mission.
“We are proud to be a part of Team AEDC,” Rivera said, “but to make this transition work we will need your help to continue to make AEDC the world’s premier ground test facility.”
NAS Deputy General Manager, Air Force Ret. Major. General. (retired) Doug Pearson, spoke about the importance of safety in our daily lives at work and at home, and then about the need for AEDC to change in order to stay relevant in the testing world.
Transition and hiring process
The briefing to the people attending the sessions focused on major areas of the transition process including, who is NAS and the partnering companies, the hiring process, benefits and organizational structure. NAS Transition Manager Ben Souther explained how NAS is organized to better meet the needs of a changing Air Force.
“In order to support the needs of the Air Force’s 2024 vision for AEDC we are focusing on a more streamlined organizational structure,” Souther said. “This execution approach will look different to a lot of people and we will need the workforce’s help to successfully implement.”
More than half of the four sessions was devoted to questions and answers from the workforce. According to Souther there were many great questions. Many of those questions were about changes to current benefits. Souther explained that NAS is in discussions with all of the current benefits and insurance providers to help ensure there will only be minimal, if any, changes to current benefits.
“NAS understands there are questions and concerns, and we are here to try and alleviate those concerns as best we can,” Souther said. “We are only two weeks into this transition so there are still some questions we don’t have answers to, but there are many answers we do have that were addressed during the all-hands meetings. NAS will continue to execute our transition plans and will diligently work toward a smooth transition and into the start of contract operations on July 1.”