And the winner is …  HII’s Chris Soong, for the CapitalCIO ORBIE Award! The awards ceremony was held June 26 at The Ritz-Carlton, Tysons Corner. The CapitalCIO ORBIE Award goes to CIOs who have demonstrated excellence in technology leadership.

In accepting the award, Chris credited his IT/Cyber team for overseeing an ambitious enterprise digital transformation at HII that is yielding results for all of our stakeholders, including employees and customers. “Our goals as an IT/Cyber team have been about building a way of working, including a common user experience, that supports a large, mission focused organization,” Chris says. “This enables the company to scale quickly and support enterprise collaboration and growth. We want to always be cognizant and respectful of our 140-year legacy while driving the organization toward a more modern, digital future.”

Chris’ IT/Cyber team is working in close coordination with HII’s divisions to consolidate cyber operations, payroll, collaboration tools, identity and core infrastructure into unified enterprise platforms. By integrating disparate networks, the team is working to eliminate duplicative systems, reduce labor requirements, strengthen cyber resilience, standardize processes and improve reliability across divisions. This modernization is enhancing the employee experience and reducing operational costs.

Measurable results include:

• 20% of IT resource reductions or redeployed to higher value tasks
• 80% increase in cyber efficiency for enterprise events and threats
• 11 legacy mission critical applications and systems retired

Chris was nominated for the Award in the Large Enterprise category, for companies in excess of $2B in annual revenue. Other nominees in this category included CIOs for Estes Express Lines, Constellation Energy, and the U.S. Department of Transportation.