For more than 20 years, the Aviation Week Program Excellence Awards have recognized and honored outstanding program and project management practices in the aerospace and defense industry. This prestigious awards program, designed by industry leaders, has showcased the best of the best in program management.
The Aviation Week Network leads and facilitates this strategic initiative with three core objectives to:
- Identify and promote best practices in program management
- Foster knowledge sharing across the A&D community
- Drive continuous improvement through peer evaluation and recognition
How It Works
The Program Excellence initiative maintains its high standards through a carefully designed structure and process. Our Evaluation Team conducts comprehensive assessments of both individual and team-based nominations. Through this rigorous process, we identify and celebrate outstanding achievements in program management.
Program Excellence Scoring Framework
When you submit a program or project for Program Excellence Awards, you will be asked to:
- Showcase your program’s outstanding achievements and innovations over the past three years
- Demonstrate its value — from organizational impact to customer satisfaction, team development, and broader societal benefits
- Illustrate your strategic approach to success through optimized systems, workforce development, and supplier engagement
- Share how your team navigated and overcame challenges in an environment of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity
- Present your predictive metrics framework and performance outcomes
Key Dates
- March 14, 2025: Initial Nominations Deadline
- June 30, 2025: Full Submissions Deadline
- November 15, 2025: Finalists Announced
- May 2026: Program Excellence Awards Ceremony, Washington, D.C.
Program Excellence in 2024
In 2024, 35 programs qualified for Program Excellence Awards and 17 submitted nominations. The Evaluation Team selected 13 finalists; from this group winners will be announced at the awards dinner on May 13, 2025, as part of the Defense Conference in Washington, D.C.
