Navy Rear Adm. John Polowczyk, supply chain task force lead at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), will serve as a keynote speaker at Potomac Officers Club’s Supply Chain Resilience and COVID-19 Virtual Event on Thursday, June 11th. 

Click here to register for the Supply Chain Resilience and COVID-19 Virtual Event.

Polowczyk was appointed to run a White House supply chain task force in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He also serves as vice director for Logistics, J4 with the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Polowczyk recently spoke at the COVID-19 task force briefing, where he stated that the government will continue to expand the emergency stockpile of critical supplies and medicines managed by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

He noted that federal officials will enact a provision that would shield companies from antitrust regulations to help the country from running out of medical supplies in a pandemic. Under the voluntary agreement, the government would develop a plan for future large-scale acquisitions with suppliers, manufacturers and distributors.

Legislation in Congress would require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to increase the amount of personal protective equipment it buys from American companies to create incentives to build domestic production.

“The shortage in personal protective equipment during this pandemic underscores the urgent need to shore up our domestic supply chain in case of national emergencies,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., one of the bill’s authors. “The COVID-19 outbreak has exposed severe inadequacies in our PPE supply chain which need to be addressed immediately."

Potomac Officers Club’s Supply Chain Resilience and COVID-19 Virtual Event, Polowczyk will address the unprecedented global demand surge in personal protective equipment to supply-side challenges amid the COVID-19 outbreak. 

Polowczyk will be joined by Darrell Williams, director of the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and Stuart Jones, director of Supply Chain Management at LMI to further discuss the implications inherent with the global pandemic. 

Register here to join Potomac Officers Club for  its Supply Chain Resilience and COVID-19 Virtual Event on June 11th to learn about the speakers’ perspectives on the state of public-private collaboration and how coordination at the strategic and tactical levels can strengthen supply chain response to future challenges.

LexisNexis Risk Solutions has been named as a leader among risk-based authentication (RBA) providers because of the company’s security and risk strategy, LexisNexis reported on Wednesday. 

"We believe Forrester's ranking us as a leader stands as a proof point that LexisNexis Risk Solutions is making good on our long-term vision to help our customers gain a 360-degree view of an identity," said Kimberly Sutherland, vice president of fraud and identity strategy at LexisNexis Risk Solutions.

LexisNexis has continued to improve its fraud prevention throughout the year, receiving the highest score in the risk-based authentication report’s Strategy category. The company received the highest marks possible in 13 of 16 criteria including execution roadmap, market approach, biometrics plans, support engineers, professional services and partner ecosystem.

"We're proud of where we stand in the industry and the gains we've made in recent years through organic product enhancements complemented by several strategic acquisitions, which have made our offering truly comprehensive," added Sutherland. 

The company also received the highest score possible in four of the Current Offering criteria evaluated, including rule management, statistical decisioning, device scale and user scale. The LexisNexis Risk Solutions vendor profile has outlined the company's acquisition and integration of the LexisNexis ThreatMetrix device reputation and online fraud management solution. 

LexisNexis was also recognized for the company’s identity verification, risk-based authentication and transaction monitoring onto one platform by integrating traditional physical identity with digital identity capabilities.

The company expanded its fraud and identity solution growth strategy through its acquisition of ID Analytics and Emailage. The company announced the acquisition of Emailage in Feb. 2020. 

Emailage will become a part of the Business Services group of LexisNexis Risk Solutions. The company has helped organizations reduce online fraud by building multi-dimensional profiles associated with customer email addresses to render predictive risk scores.

The acquisition will enhance the LexisNexis Risk Solutions Fraud and Identity Offering through Emailage's Email Intelligence-Based Fraud Risk Scoring Solutions. Emailage's network database will improve LexisNexis’ Digital Identity Network, which analyses an average of 39.9 billion transactions annually to provide organizations with actionable insight into the world's rapidly changing threat landscape.

Sutherland added, "Our key differentiator is that we offer our customers a full suite of risk assessment and authentication tools that allows them to receive real-time and on-demand insights. These shared insights place our customers in a solid position to fight fraud while providing a positive consumer experience."

About LexisNexis Risk Solutions

LexisNexis® Risk Solutions harnesses the power of data and advanced analytics to provide insights that help businesses and governmental entities reduce risk and improve decisions to benefit people around the globe. 

We provide data and technology solutions for a wide range of industries including insurance, financial services, healthcare and government. Headquartered in metro Atlanta, Georgia, we have offices throughout the world and are part of RELX (LSE: REL/NYSE: RELX), a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers across industries.

Bechtel has announced that the company’s construction team completed the installation of a cooling water tank on Plant Vogtle Unit 3, the first of two new nuclear units under construction in the Unites States, in Waynesboro, Ga., the company reported on Wednesday.

“This is a significant day on the project because this is the last big, heavy lift for Unit 3,” said Bechtel Project Director Brian Reilly. “I am extremely proud of the team that completed this milestone task. They safely delivered an impressive milestone in challenging circumstances for our customer.”

The 35-foot Passive Containment Cooling Water Tank module has an outer diameter of 85 feet. The tank module, including the outfitting and rigging, weighs more than 720 thousand pounds and was assembled at ground level in one year.

The tank will play a major role in the AP1000’s safety systems. The water tank system does not require active intervention from the operator or electricity in order to bring the reactor to a safe shutdown state.

Bechtel’s tank will hold approximately 750 thousand gallons of cooling water ready to flow down into the containment vessel in the event of an emergency, and will retain operability in the event of lost external power. The water could also be directed to top off the spent fuel pool, while the tank itself can be refilled from water stored elsewhere on site.

Bechtel will continue construction of Vogtle Units 3 and 4 under the management of Southern Nuclear, the Southern Company subsidiary that operates the existing two units at Plant Vogtle. Vogtle Units 3 and 4 are the first Westinghouse AP1000 units to be built in the U.S.

“This is an important milestone for the project and signifies the topping out of the Shield Building for the unit,” added Reilly. “We continue to make progress on the project as we transition these units closer to operation. We are proud to be a part of building the future of nuclear power in the United States.”

In addition to the work Bechtel has completed at Unit 3, the company-led construction team placed the massive reactor building dome on Unit 4, the second of Plant Vogtle’s Units 3 and 4, the company announced in April 2020.

Bechtel’s nuclear reactor weighs approximately 1.5 million pounds and measures 130 feet in diameter and 37 feet tall. The dome is the roof of the high-integrity steel structure that contains Unit 4’s nuclear reactor, comprising 58 large plates. Setting was completed March 27, following a complex rigging operation.

The placement follows the installation of Unit 4’s nuclear steam supply system — the reactors, reactor coolant pumps, steam generators, pressurizer and associated piping. These are the essential elements of the unit’s nuclear power system, used to generate the steam needed to drive the unit’s turbine generator to produce electricity.

Bechtel has completed over 74 thousand megawatts of new nuclear generation capacity and has performed engineering and construction services on more than 80 percent of nuclear plants in the United States and 150 plants worldwide.

About Bechtel

Bechtel is a trusted engineering, construction and project management partner to industry and government. Differentiated by the quality of our people and our relentless drive to deliver the most successful outcomes, we align our capabilities to our customers’ objectives to create a lasting positive impact.

Since 1898, we have helped customers complete more than 25,000 projects in 160 countries on all seven continents that have created jobs, grown economies, improved the resiliency of the world’s infrastructure, increased access to energy, resources, and vital services, and made the world a safer, cleaner place.