Rick Spaulding
Operational Advisor

Rick is an Operational Adviser at Ventus, and works with portfolio companies to drive operational excellence across areas such as planning, scheduling and process improvement. Rick previously spent 39 years in senior operational roles at Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), and was a key part of Irwin Edenzon's executive team at Ingalls Shipbuilding

Rick joined Newport News Shipbuilding in 1983 and spent the first  25 years of his career holding various positions of increasing responsibility across submarine, aircraft carrier and commercial ship design, steel fabrication and manufacturing, repair and conversion, construction, planning and scheduling, and production control.  While in planning, Rick was responsible for manufacturing and assembly planning, production control, labor resource, capacity, and capital planning for Newport News.

In 2008, Rick joined Irwin Edenzon’s executive team at Ingalls as Vice President of Central Planning & Process Excellence, playing a pivotal role in program scheduling and cost reduction.

In 2019, Rick returned to Newport News as Vice President of Business Process Standardization, responsible for standardization of program and production processes, acceleration of digital shipbuilding, implementation of a new phase review process, and process improvements and best-practice sharing across Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII).

Rick retired in June 2022 after 39 years. 

In 2023, he was elected to serve a two year term as President of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME). 

Rick holds a degree in Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering from the University of Michigan and is a SNAME and Royal Institute of Naval Architects (RINA) Fellow