Paul R. Adams, one of Pratt & Whitney Co.’s top aeroengineers for more than a decade, is the East Hartford firm’s new chief operating officer.
Pratt President David P. Hess said Adams’ appointment to the brand new post is effective immediately.
Adams, 51, joined Pratt in 1999 from gas-turbine builder Williams International in his home-state Michigan, where he began his engineering career testing cruise-missile motors.
Adams arrived at Pratt in time to have a key hand in the $1 billion, 20-year development of what Pratt expects to be its most lucrative propulsion system ever — the geared turbofan. He also shepherded Pratt’s work on the F135 jet-fighter engine.
He is one of the youngest chief engineers in Pratt’s history. In October 2011, he was put in charge of its global operations and engineering organizations, including new product development, technology strategy, manufacturing operations, and managing its supply chain.
His latest Pratt promotion puts Adams a step closer to the pinnacle of his dream to some day become a CEO. Indeed, Adams told The Hartford Business Journal in an interview last August that the reason he left Williams after 16 years was because he eventually realized the CEO chair was unavailable to him at that closely controlled company.
As operations chief, Adams will lead a unified operations strategy across all Pratt business units to ensure the readiness of the company’s global supply chain. Among the organizations reporting to him will be commercial and military engines, Pratt & Whitney Canada, Power Systems, AeroPower, as well as engineering and operations, the company said.
Last May, Adams was inducted into the Connecticut Academy of Science & Engineering (CASE). He was honored for his contributions in that arena and to the state’s economic well-being, through his leadership of the Pratt team that developed the geared turbofan.
Pratt is a division of United Technologies Corp. in Hartford.
