Press Coverage

34 csengineermag.com MAY 2019 Gadgets, gizmos, and tech nology are in David Barton's blood. Growing up in southeastern Virginia, there was plenty of neat stuff around the house to spark his imagination. His father, Ray, worked as an electrical engineer at the GE television production facility in Hampton Roads, and he brought some of his work home with him. As a result, Barton learned to tinker at an early age. "It was a unique experience that I grew up with, but it was normal for me," he said. But the GE plant closed down, so Barton's dad went into government contracting. Barton's older brother, Jason, did the same thing. So, when Barton graduated from high school, he knew a lot about technology, and had the background to easily gain security clearance. Instead of going to college, Barton went to work. As a defense contractor, he was either around, introduced to, developing, or chasing down the best technol- ogy of the day, and even founded, built and sold a multi-million dollar company – video sharing startup EchoStorm Inc. – in the process. At some point he came across drones, and while he didn't fall in love at first sight, they ultimately cast their spell on him. An acknowledged expert in the field of unmanned systems, he is one of only a handful of people who can operate a drone inside the 14-mile Washington, D.C. Security Flight Restricted Zone. In 2017, he was hired by engineering firm Draper Aden Associates where he is the manager of Aerial Services. A proud tech nerd who jokingly says he works 22 hours a day, Barton is determined to stay out in front of whatever's coming next. "My brain is always thinking about this stuff," he said. "It's addicting – you're doing something that's never been done before." A Conversation with David Barton Civil +Structural Engineer: Part of your experience includes co- founding a company, growing the business, and then selling it to a Fortune 100 company. This is classic entrepreneurship. In a nutshell, tell me about the process from conception to sale. David Barton: My brother and I had an idea and put it on a whiteboard in my condo back in 2001. The idea was lofty and novel. It took a lot of determination, commitment and even more hours to grow it into a company with revenue and a meaningful purpose. The eventuality of the company was clear, our unique product and services would become a commodity for the larger defense contractors. The larger firms were purchasing smaller firms with the goal of making our unique capa- bilities a value add versus a unique product or service. We ultimately explored the merger and acquisition process so that our idea could live on as part of another company's existing product. The experience from start to finish pushed me and forced me to learn in ways I never imag- ined. It gave me a passion for entrepreneurship. C+S: How does having the heart of an entrepreneur affect your current role with Draper Aden Associates? DB: It's been invaluable. I manage our Aerial Services at DAA like I'm building a start-up with a great angel investor. For me, the en- trepreneurial spirit equals a round-the-clock drive and commitment to achieving our goals. Our leadership embraced my vision and strategy which translates into the resources (personnel and financial) to execute and deliver. Together we have had great success. I also leveraged soft- ware development and management concepts from Agile methodolo- gies I've used in prior work into how I run our team so that it has a start-up mentality of lean and agile. C+S: In regard to your standing as a UAS expert, where do you see yourself in 10 years? DB: I love technology and solving hard problems. I will follow inter- esting or emerging technology wherever it leads me. If you told me 10 years ago I would be working in the civil engineering community I would not have been able to envision how my career path could lead there, yet it did. I've never known or aspired to be anything in particular when I grow up. I still don't and I love that my future can be anything. C+S: You have done plenty of work mapping landfills. What is the key issue with those types of facilities, and what problem does the UAS mapping of them solve? DB: Landfills can be very dangerous environments with heavy equip- ment moving around or even landfill gasses from decomposition. Landfills have a number of use cases for drone mapping, the easiest is the topographic mapping which is used for volumetric calculations An expert in UAS, David Barton has been surrounded by technology all his life. He went to work as a government contractor straight out of high school. Photo: Draper Aden Associates Manning the unmanned Drone expert David Barton is collecting data at a big clip, but with his voracious appetite for information, it's never enough. By Richard Massey

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