Archie Smart is a project manager for NIOSH.
He calls himself Bill Nye the Finance Guy, but everyone else knows him as Archie Smart. Smart, a project manager on the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Dose Reconstruction Project, has been with ORAU for more than 20 years working on the NIOSH Project doing a little bit of everything in operations.
Since 2002, the NIOSH Project has submitted more than 66,000 dose assessments and conducted more than 192,000 claimant interviews, in addition to thousands of other documents and trips so that workers’ claims can be processed. Smart manages the program management support team, making sure that everyone on the NIOSH Project has everything they need to do their jobs well.
“The NIOSH Project is the case study for a lot of things,” Smart said. “When ORAU was automating the process that we use now to approve requisitions, they came to the NIOSH Project and asked if we would test the system before they rolled it out to everybody because of the high number of requisitions that we do on a monthly basis.”
Archie Smart has always worked in finance, operations, or project management.
While he earned a degree in history with an English minor from South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, S.C., Smart has always worked in finance, operations, or project management. “I look back over my career now and say, ‘how did I get here?’” Smart said. “Well, I think we can blame it all on the army.”
Smart attended college on the Basic Education Opportunity Grant, now called the Pell Grant, and was involved in ROTC. He was contracted to go into service after he graduated, and he became an Adjutant General (AG) Officer with a Regular Army Commission. He explained that AG officers usually work in human resources otherwise known as personnel management, but Smart didn’t do any personnel management in this role. “When I arrived at my first duty assignment in Pirmasens, Germany, I was given the captain assignment of Community Morale Support,” he said. “Instead of 42 A (Alpha), which is personnel management, I worked as 42 B (Bravo), which is Community Morale Support Fund (CMSF). That’s when I learned spreadsheets and financial management.”
Archie oversaw the financial management military operations of gyms and bowling allies in three separate locations in Germany: Pirmasens; Budingen, and Gelnhausen. He also oversaw the finances of a rod and gun club and a fleet of 10 CMSF vehicles. These skills followed him throughout his career.
“I don’t know how, but I always ended up in funds management in some form or fashion,” Smart said. “When I came to this job at ORAU, I was hired based on my operations experience. When I interviewed here, there was someone else who had HR civilian experience. I had military HR experience. So the hiring manager decided to hire both of us. My coworker did the HR work, and I managed the operations work. And that’s how I got the job that I currently have now for the NIOSH Project.”
Archie Smart has been with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Dose Reconstruction Project since almost its beginning.
Smart considers himself a workaholic, and he also recently earned an MBA from Southern New Hampshire University in Organizational Leadership, graduating summa cum laude. When he’s not thinking about work, he and his wife Millette are very involved with their family and in Greater-Works Church. They are in the process of adopting Millette’s niece’s son, Mason, who they’ve been raising since he was four months old. Mason turned five in June 2023. “We never had any children, and we got this little four-month-old, and he has totally changed our lives,” Smart said. “‘Papi’ has to come in every day and play with Mason.”
He may not have known how he got here, but Smart knows It’s good to be part of something greater than himself. Whether at home with his family, pursuing an MBA, or at work on the NIOSH Project, Archie draws from every experience and pours himself into the people and work most important in his life to help them succeed. He has been with the NIOSH Project almost since its inception and has watched it grow into what it is today: a team of people who love their jobs and do their jobs excellently.