Austin VA Finance Center Press Release to News

Austin VA Finance Center Press Release to News click here (PDF).

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EMERGENCY RESPONSE – Vets helping Vets

In late April 2008 the VA Medical center in Richmond was struck by lightning and it took out the telephone switch. This was a very large switch serving over 3500 users.

Based on Standard Communications, Inc. expertise, reliability and capability, the Department of Veterans Affairs tapped us to provide an emergency response to upgrade the fourteen year old NEC switch with a new state-of-the-art NEC PBX with a VOIP enabled component and the first VA PBX installation that is IPV6 capable. A project of this type and magnitude usually takes from four to six months. Standard Communications, Inc. (SCI) and its services delivery component, Standard Federal Corporation (SFC) did the job from start to cutover in under two weeks, one week after performing a flawless cutover at the Sheridan, WY VAMC. These Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Businesses (SDVOSBs) were on the job helping their own.

There are many people in the VA who should get credit for assisting in making this happen from the Contracting Officer in El Paso, TX, Valeria Elizondo with assistance from Deborah Martinez in Silver Spring, MD. The COTR, Ted Steckler, his supervisor, Bob Bruce, their boss, Bruce Geanaros, and Dave Cheplick from the VA Central Office, demonstrated cooperation at its best and were all instrumental in getting this done from an executive VA position. The VA technical leadership beginning with VISN-6 CIO, Milton Harrison, Durham, NC and the Region 3 CIO, Mike Lay, Ann Arbor, MI and from a hands-on-know-what-to-do-in-a-crunch, the actions of Region 3 Telecom Director, John Kucans, were spectacular. Adequate praise for the Management team from top-down at Richmond cannot be over expressed. Now retired Medical Director, Michael Phaup and the current Director, Deanne Seekins provided extraordinary guidance and ran interference to ensure the Richmond VAMC Department Heads were all on board and in synch with the overall effort. The head of OI&T, Dave Dahlstrand, CIO and his Assistant CIO Johanna Crawford were always on tap to get done that which needed to be taken care of and Cari-Ann Masters, Telecom Specialist was there to provide logistical guidance for the physical plant.

From the vendor community, the NEC management team lead by Doug Martinez, John Shroeder, Bill Nelson and Al Liebmann were instrumental in expediting delivery of a smaller emergency NEC 2000 standby switch to accommodate 150 strategically placed phones that SCI/SFC installed over the first weekend. Then the NEC team turned to assisting the VA with designing the appropriate configuration of hardware, software, and applications for the NEC 2400 UMG upgrade. Just before the delivery of the NEC 2400, the New Hampshire based team arrived with a temporary replacement for the rectifier/inverter that had been hit by the surge in voltage from the lightning strike. Working together, the SCI/SFC and NEC technical teams brought the system to full power, programmed the database and prepared for the cutover to begin on May 16th and with completion scheduled for May 19th for opening of business. All emergency service and critical phones were operational on the evening of the 16th within hours of the cutover commencement.

Most of the Standard team that wasn’t deployed to their permanent VA stations in Sheridan, Wyoming; Kansas, Missouri and throughout New England converged on Richmond. They came from their assigned stations in Long Island, NY; Murfreesboro, TN; Salisbury, NC; Northern Virginia; Manchester, NH; Northampton, Brockton and Boston MA and made an almost impossible task seem like a rather normal and orderly process.

John Molière, SCI and SFC President feels strongly in the joint effort of the VA leadership, the NEC executives and technicians and our rapidly assembled team at Richmond, “I believe the small military unit discipline, rapid decision-making ability is what carried the day and got this job done with precision and great spirit. Our on-site personnel are second to none in fulfilling their duties.” They are: Steve Mannarino, VP Operations; (whose leadership was steady and unflinching), Chuck Mavrogeorge, Chief of Operations, (whose genius never ceases to amaze everyone who gets to know Chuck); the corps of certified technicians included: Paul Piva, Jim Lowell, Brian Souci (Main Distribution Facility lead) , John Shannon (2000 lead), Frank Constantino, Pete Farmer (seasoned technician charged with keeping the old system limping along), Jeremy Mavrogeorge, Joshua Mavrogeorge, electrician (U.S. Army Reserve Sergeant. who had to report to the Army for duty by May 15th), Justin Mannarino, John Moliere, Jr., Ramon Rivera, Kevin Miller, Chris Estes, Al Kaai, Jeremy Poitrawski (entered the Navy on May 17th), Eric Smith, Craig Yancich, Dennis O’Brien, Tammy Cothron, Trainer (who trained thousands in a few short days). Of course credit has to go to Bob Waizenegger, our CFO, who kept Purchase Orders streaming to vendors and suppliers so we could stay ahead of the work.

John Moliere

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Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center

The Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center, located in Richmond, Virginia, is a 427-bed facility offering primary, secondary, and tertiary health care in medicine, surgery, neurology, rehabilitation medicine, intermediate care, acute and sustaining spinal cord injury, skilled nursing home care, and palliative care. Primary and secondary levels of care are provided in psychiatry beds, along with a substance abuse rehabilitation program. Richmond offers a broad range of diagnostic and therapeutic services including a 12-station dialysis unit, magnetic resonance imaging, cardiac catheterization, mammography, radiation therapy, electrophysiology, photophoresis and lithotripsy.

Richmond is a national referral center for heart, lung and liver transplantations, and the medical center acts as a tertiary care referral center for subspecialty treatment, traumatic brain injury, open-heart surgery, oncology, and vascular diseases. The medical center has one community-based outpatient clinic located in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and a strong and mutually beneficial affiliation with the Medical College of Virginia. Residency programs exist in virtually all general and specialty areas of medicine, rehabilitation, surgery, psychiatry, and dentistry. The medical center is the host site for a Parkinson's Disease Research, Education and Clinical Center (PADRECC), one of six in the nation.

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