Class of 1954; Elected 2012
Chuck attended State Technical Institute CT and graduated from Tri-State College in 1957 with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering. As an electrical control engineer at Combustion Engineering (CE), he performed manual calculations (this would be done today by computer) to determine the response of the automatic protection system for a nuclear submarine reactor for various accident conditions. He became an expert in the nuclear power field, and was hired by electric Boat as test director on the first ballistic missile nuclear submarine George Washington. Returning to CE in the Naval Reactors Division, he became manager of the training program which oversaw the training of the majority of navy crews certified to operate nuclear subs. Promoted to General Manager, he reported directly to the CE president and to Admiral Rickover for the operating and training contracts. Chuck transferred to the commercial Nuclear Division of CE and worked on the Maine Yankee project and was project manager for Boston Edison, which had a contract to develop two new nuclear power plants. He left CE to become president of Electro Mechanics Inc (EM)which supplied CE with electronic control and protection systems for nuclear power plants. At the time he took over, EM was losing money on every CE contract. Chuck restructured the engineering and manufacturing processes and within a year, EM became profitable.
Chuck left EM to join Sensor Engineering which manufactured electrical and brake parts for the automotive after market. Once again Chuck changed the structure of the engineering, manufacturing, and sales departments and turned a company that had been losing money into a profitable enterprise, increasing Sensor’s market share in access control cards from less than 1% to over 24%.
In 1986 Chuck became President of CE Delas Weir Inc, a joint venture between CE and Delas Weir of France which made large steam condensers for electric utilities. Realizing that the company had made significant errors in costing a major project, Chuck took advantage of a customer requested delay to terminate the contract and save the company $7million in losses. He convinced the owners that there was not a viable market to support the joint venture and after completing existing contracts, the company shut down and Chuck went to CE’s Nuclear Outage Services Division as Director. Again restructuring, Chuck turned around a $36m operation which lost $10m in the previous year to one with a small profit of $1m on sales of $53 million.
Subsequently, Chuck became VP of Nuclear Fuel at CE when the Windsor plant was on the NRC watch list for manufacturing quality and safety issues. He implemented systems which ultimately produced several million dollars in cost reductions, reduced cycle time, and improved quality, safety, employee morale, and customer satisfaction for which he received the highest level Flame of Excellence award from CE.
When ABB bought CE in 1989 Chuck became President of Steam Generator, a joint venture of ABB-CE and Seimens of Germany to build replacement steam generators for Nuclear Utilities. In 1994 he transferred to ABB Traction to work on the upgrade and remanufacture of ten locomotives for Metro North and the Long Island Railroad. Prior to his arrival, the ten had been remanufactured but not acceptable to Metro North and the project manager was asked to leave the company. By restructuring the chain of command and reworking the locomotives, all were accepted within a year. Chuck was then promoted to VP of New Vehicles division at ABB Traction and ultimately to Executive VP of the Elmira operation of Adtranz which was a joint venture of ABB and Daimler-Benz from which he retired in 1997.
Chuck lives in Suffield with his wife Marianne Carney and has 6 children