By Michael Watkins

What began 14 years ago as a six-week, work-related trip to the United States, has turned Michael Guenigault into an American taxpayer.

Photo by Rob Welch, Salt Lake City, Utah
Engineer of the Year — Michael Guenigault was honored as the 2007 Corporate Engineer of the Year for Rockwell Collins Services because of his technical expertise and leadership in the area of commercial simulation applications. He is a native of Crawley, West Sussex, England.

A native of Crawley, West Sussex, England, Guenigault joined Rockwell Collins almost two years ago via our acquisition of the simulation assets of Evans & Sutherland in Salt Lake City, Utah. Today, he is one of three employees who were recognized recently as the 2007 Rockwell Collins Corporate Engineers of the Year.

A technical project manager for Rockwell Collins Simulation & Training Solutions (STS) Visual Programs, Guenigault's technical expertise and leadership in the area of commercial simulation applications prompted Dennis Hartley to nominate him for our company's highest engineering award.

"Mike's vision and ability to bring that vision to a successful reality are terrific," said Hartley. "This was evident in his lead role in producing a new projector product for commercial airline pilot training at just the right time. It's been a home run for our company with more than 20 installed systems to date, and more than 50 on backlog."

Finding his true calling

Guenigault's journey toward an engineering career began upon completion of secondary school. Like most 16-year-olds in England, he needed a job, so he applied for four different positions and received two offers – the more interesting being in aircraft simulation at Rediffusion Simulation in London.

For the first two years of his apprenticeship, Guenigault learned about all aspects of the company – from purchasing to payroll – and focused on engineering the last two years. He did this all the while attending Crawley Technical College.
It was during these final two years that he found his calling working in the pre-test and integration department on visual systems.

"Before Rockwell Collins, Evans & Sutherland supplied custom visual display systems for simulation applications," explained Guenigault. "We investigated new COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf) display technology to see if we could adapt it to meet our requirements for the next generation product.

"We ended up with a much more reliable, less expensive, lower maintenance system for simulation displays – saving the company as well as our customers money," he continued.

On the customer side, the new visual display system – which uses an existing JVC LCoS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon) projector already on the market – is greatly reduced in costs compared to the previous generation display product. The new system also provides improved fidelity, which is very important for pilot training.

The Rockwell Collins team is months ahead of the competition, and they have established themselves as the innovator in the marketplace by achieving the first raster-only visual system with FAA Level D certification on the Boeing Alteon B777 simulator in Seattle.

For Guenigault, being named an Engineer of the Year is a tribute to more than just his own work because he does very little of it alone.

"I've said all along – this was a team effort, and I'm very pleased that everyone can be recognized through this award," said Guenigault, who works on a team of about 10 to 12 engineers. "It's quite nice to feel like a member of the bigger team when you're brought in as part of an acquisition, and I've felt like a part of Rockwell Collins from the very beginning."