An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir April 2017 www.dfmagazine.ie 38 | Oliver McKeOwn TTS, Air cOrpS cOllege FlT SgT F lt Sgt Oliver McKeown is a serving senior NCO with 30 years' service. He joined the Air Corps in 1986 and graduated from the Technical Training School (TTS) as an aircraft technician in 1989. From 1990 to 1999, his main appointment was crew leader and NCO in charge of aircraft, completing all levels of maintenance on helicopters from daily inspections in No 3 Sp Wing to major overhauls with Engineering Wing. Subsequent to achieving management, leader- ship and teaching qualifications, he was transferred to the TTS as a technical instructor in 1999 and was promoted sergeant in 2002. He served in Lebanon with HQ Coy, 77 Inf Bn UNIFIL, as battalion pay clerk, working in the Orderly Room and carrying out duties on the ops panel. He instructed on the 34th Senior NCOs course in the NCO Training Wing, DFTC and has delivered lectures on leadership as part of the Army Ranger Wing's Special Operations Forces Instructors Course and was selected as a dissertation supervisor for the Irish Defence Forces/IT Carlow's two Level 7 degree programmes in 2015: the BA Leadership, Management, Defence Studies (LMDS) and the BA Logistics Management (LM). In 2012 he was promoted to flight sergeant and ap- pointed Training Manager for the TTS. He is directly responsible for delivering and managing the Bachelor of Engineering degree in Military Aviation Technology (DT011M). The awarding body for this transferrable level 7 qualification (as approved by Quality & Qualifi- cations Ireland - QQI) is the Dublin Institute of Tech- nology (DIT). In addition to the four-year B Eng degree programme, he is also responsible for 22 other techni- cal courses that are delivered to Air Corps personnel in the TTS. In 2016, Flt Sgt McKeown was the appointed project leader, and liaised with the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA), to seek accreditation for the TTS to become a European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) Part 147 train- ing school, which he and his team recently achieved, and which Ollie sees as possibly one of his great- est achievements. As the senior technical instructor/ senior aircraft inspector in the TTS, Ollie is one of four primary post holders and is appropriately titled Training Manager. It is a position that brings a lot of responsibility but he relishes the challenge. He has attained a Level 7 BA in LMDS from IT Carlow, a Level 8 BA (Hons) in Training & Education from NUIG, and has recently attained a Level 9 Masters in Engineer- ing Management in the UK. He has completed many technical courses throughout his career and has been on courses such as the NATO Advanced Leadership and NATO Academic Instructor courses, both of which were held in the NATO School in Oberammergau, Ger- many. He holds profes- sional membership with the Dublin branch of the Royal Aeronautical Soci- ety, the Engineering and Scientific Association of Ireland, the City & Guilds of the London Institute, and the Institute of Lead- ership & Management. With the promotion competition for 2017 now active, Flt Sgt McKeon has been pre- paring for and looking forward to being in- terviewed for sergeant major appointments. " We live life looking ahead but learn from looking back "

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