Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1367446
MAY 2021 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 55 Feature Article by Jonathon Vermillion BALL AEROSPACE I started coming to committee meetings around 15 years ago. I was working at an aerospace company as an instructor and pro- cess control engineer. When I say aerospace, I mean space flight. At that time most of our contracts were with NASA and I participated in the monthly workmanship telecons. ey would answer emailed questions and we had a few inputs to updated NASA standards. e big news was about a new document, an adden- dum to the J-STD-001. at sounded familiar. A colleague of mine that I worked with back in the '80s was heading up the effort. He was giving a presentation at a conference in Balti- more in the spring of 2001 and some Ball Aero- space instructors were attending. I had sub- mitted my resume and they wanted to talk to me about that. My first interview was in the hotel pub before they got on the plane back to Colorado. I was basically hired based on that interview. ere were concerns about companies using the J-STD-001 Space Addendum. NASA wanted people from the different sites and their contractors to attend the committee meetings. My management had changed but I received permission and funding to start attending IPC APEX EXPO conference meetings. At first, I only attended one meeting and just held on, trying to get the hang of things. Eventually I started attending other meetings, partici- pating, and submitting comments. My com- pany was quite pleased as we had some issues with current criteria and the comments were discussed and resolved. We felt they sup- ported manufacturability while still retaining reliability. About four years ago, I was asked to co-chair the J-STD-001 task group for Revision H. My IPC liaison suggested that I read the IPC Chair Handbook, where I noticed under "Roles and Responsibilities" it listed "Drive for Consen- sus." is helped me clarify that decisions didn't IPC Committees as an Emerging Engineer IPC Emerging Engineers Jonathon Vermillion