NSWCPD’s Mark Grant Honored with Prestigious Admiral Stan Arthur Award for Logistics and Sustainment Excellence

NSWCPD's Mark Grant Honored with Prestigious Admiral Stan Arthur Award for Logistics and Sustainment Excellence

By Steven Infanti

Naval Surface Warfare Center, Philadelphia Division (NSWCPD) proudly announces that Sustainment Readiness Team Lead Mark Grant has been named the 2024 Junior Civilian Logistics and Sustainment Professional of the Year as part of the Admiral Stan Arthur Awards for Logistics and Sustainment Excellence.

The award was established in honor of Admiral Stanley R. Arthur, and it recognizes both military and civilian contributions to enhancing combat capability, advancing technology, resolving logistics issues, and fostering innovation in Navy logistics.

This recognition celebrates Grant's groundbreaking contributions to Navy logistics through the development of the Spare Parts Analysis for Readiness Tradeoff Assessment (SPARTA) process. SPARTA has revolutionized supply support analysis by enabling targeted procurement strategies that significantly enhance system availability and operational readiness across the fleet.

"I'm humbled to receive this award and deeply grateful to the exceptional team of logisticians and ISEAs [In-Service Engineering Agents] I've had the privilege to work with," Grant said. "This recognition reflects the collaborative spirit and technical excellence that drives our mission forward."

Grant's innovative approach addresses longstanding challenges in Navy logistics, including outdated procurement models and inefficient resource allocation. By leveraging advanced algorithms and data-driven insights, SPARTA identifies root causes of system failures and recommends cost-effective solutions that yield measurable improvements in Operational Availability (Ao). In Fiscal Year 2024 alone, SPARTA recommendations demonstrated potential Ao increases of 5-15% across multiple systems, including a projected 10% improvement for Missile Guided Destroyer (DDG 51) Class 200-Ton Air Conditioning Plants.

NSWCPD congratulates Grant on this recognition and celebrates his continued impact on Navy logistics and sustainment excellence.

"SPARTA is a game-changing solution that will revolutionize the U.S. Navy's logistics operations and significantly improve system Ao. Under Mr. Grant's visionary leadership, the SPARTA process has become a shining example of innovation and excellence, leveraging data-driven insights, proven results, and strategic alignment to drive transformative change in the U.S. Navy's logistics operations," NSWCPD Department Head of Machinery Research, Logistics & Ship Integrity Allison DeRocco said.

His work directly supports the Chief of Naval Operations' 2024 Navigation Plan, which seeks to eliminate maintenance delays and achieve an 80% mission-capable surge readiness rate by 2027. SPARTA's success has earned endorsements from the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and Naval Supply Systems Command (NAVSUP), positioning it as a potential standard across Navy logistics operations.

"The significance of the SPARTA process cannot be overstated, providing a positive Return on Investment-based recommendations that enable leadership to focus finite resources on areas of greatest return. By proactively reducing known failure modes, SPARTA will yield significant savings compared to the current costs of reactive support," NSWCPD Logistics Product Readiness Branch Head Justin Spahr said. "By optimizing procurement decisions and improving the availability of critical components, SPARTA plays a vital role in reducing maintenance backlogs and accelerating the return of assets to operational status."

In addition to this honor, Grant is a past recipient of the 2024 Warfare Center Knowledge Sharing Award and the 2018 Warfare Center Collaboration Award, further underscoring his commitment to innovation and teamwork.

Grant joined NSWCPD in 2010 after a diverse engineering career that spanned rocket engine development, heavy industry consulting, and refinery operations management. A graduate of Ohio State University with Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Mechanical Engineering, he consistently applies his expertise to integrate reliability engineering with Navy logistics processes.

NSWCPD employs approximately 2,800 civilian engineers, scientists, technicians, and support personnel. The NSWCPD team does the research and development, test and evaluation, acquisition support, and in-service and logistics engineering for the non-nuclear machinery, ship machinery systems, and related equipment and material for Navy surface ships and submarines. NSWCPD is also the lead organization providing cybersecurity for all ship systems.