Steve Harnden

Maintenance Training Instructor, GP Strategies

My name is Steve Harnden. I work with GP Strategies out of the Tampa office where I’ve been a maintenance training instructor and technical writer for 25 years. I’m also a former member of the US Air Force where I was an avionics technician on F-111 aircraft. Besides working in the aviation industry, I’ve had the opportunity to work on a variety of projects across multiple industries including those for space, transportation, power generation, and steel.

I’m a registered professional electrical engineer in the State of Florida. I’m also a Certified Reliability Leader and an NFPA Certified Electrical Safety Compliance Professional.

I have a Bachelors degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from California State University, Sacramento, and a Bachelors degree in Zoology (it’s a long story) from the University of California, Davis.

I’ve been married to my wife, Lisa, for 37 years and have three children, Stephen, Kelsy, and Tyler.

I Didn't See That Coming

The need for training isn’t just to improve technical skills, although it’s important to remain technically competent. Some things that get overlooked for training include time management, along with prioritizing and managing workloads. Or how about working with other people, whether they’re on your team or on a different one.

This presentation will address the importance of identifying and prioritizing the important issues and separating the important things from those that appear to be urgent but may not be all that important.

We’ll talk about the importance of working with other people and how the personalities of those you work with can either help you get things done or generate a lot of friction in the workplace.

Finally, we’ll discuss the importance of a root cause failure analysis as a method of figuring out what happened, how it happened, and what can be done to prevent it from happening again, or at least minimizing the impact to the organization if it does.