2015 Awards
PMI Awards Announced for 2015 Project Manager of the Year and for Project of the Year
The Honolulu Chapter of the Project Management Institute (PMI) announced its annual awards for Project of the Year and for Project Manager of the Year. Jonathan Hichborn, PMP and PMO Director in Power Supply at Hawaiian Electric, was awarded Project Manager of the Year and the PMI Project of the Year Award went to HMSA.
PMI Project Manager of the Year: Jonathan Hichborn PMP, PMI Project Manager of the Year: Jon was recognized for his overall contributions involving numerous project leadership assignments that have more recently included alternative fuel strategies, especially scenarios involving Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). Jon has been responsible for managing varying stakeholder interests while developing multiple approaches to difficult problems and simultaneously addressing concerns of multiple government agencies and community interest groups. Pictured below are Hawaiian Electric personnel congratulating their awardees. L-R: Richard Houck, Tim Sprowls, Jonathan Hichborn, Rich Hill, Dave Brauer, Greg Colbert and Mike Yuen
PMI Project of the Year: The award went to a diverse team successfully led by HMSA’s Benjamin Yuan, PMP. The project involved HMSA’s migration of its members from the Hawaii Health Connector to a Federally Facilitated Marketplace, HealthCare.gov. This conversion had to be completed in a very compressed timeframe with a ‘could-not-be missed’ deadline that was dictated by the State of Hawaii’s movement from State-developed web technology to a standard federal technology provided under the Affordable Health Care Act. The team is pictured immediately below.
PMI Project of the Year – Runner-up, The Hawaii Electric Light Data Center Expansion: To protect Hawaii Electric Light Company (HELCO) customers from system failures in the event of a natural disaster, the HELCO data center was upgraded, expanded, and hardened to protect against catastrophic events. A specialized technique known as Failure Modes Effect Analysis was used to provide an extensive risk analysis for the project. Further, the site was engineered to accommodate both Hawaiian Electric and Maui Electric servers for backup as a disaster recovery site.
Other awardees of the evening: included Project Manager of the Year nominees from First Hawaiian Bank and Hawaiian Telcom. Tom Ku, of First Hawaiian Bank was recognized for his effective style in leading a series of highly technical projects and Caprice Vida from Hawaiian Telcom was recognized for her particular talent in keeping stakeholders involved and supportive.
