Former Los Alamos program director brings 15 years of NNSA production leadership — and hands-on PTC Windchill and digital-engineering-thread transformation experience — to Element’s growing federal practice.
WEST DES MOINES, Iowa, July 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Element Consulting, a product lifecycle management (PLM) and PTC Windchill implementation firm, today announced the appointment of James C. Shipley as Strategic Relationship Manager for Federal and National Security. In the role, Shipley will lead Element’s engagement with defense, aerospace, and national-security organizations modernizing how they manage engineering and manufacturing data.
Shipley joins Element after a distinguished 15-year career at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), where he rose to Project/Program Director overseeing an $85M+ production portfolio and served as the primary point of contact to the NNSA Federal Program Director for scope, schedule, and budget across production operations. Critically for Element’s clients, he held full accountability for digital engineering execution — including the implementation and integration of PTC Windchill MPMLink — and served as a primary liaison to the NNSA Digital Engineering Transformation Team, driving adoption of the digital engineering thread across national-security production programs.
His experience spans the full arc of high-consequence manufacturing: weapons production, high-explosives and energetics program management, flight-test modernization, and the production-planning and change frameworks that keep complex, highly regulated operations on schedule. Earlier in his career, Shipley spent 15 years at Intel Corporation in thermal and mechanical engineering leadership roles, and he is the founder of JCS Labs, an engineering consultancy specializing in advanced thermal management and precision systems. His work has been recognized with the LANL Distinguished Performance Award and multiple Defense Programs Awards of Excellence.
“Jim is a rare hire,” said Eric Larson, founder of Element Consulting. “Most people in the federal space understand the mission but not the technology, or the technology but not the mission. Jim has personally led a PTC Windchill and digital-engineering-thread transformation inside one of the most demanding production environments in the world. When he talks to a defense manufacturer about what it actually takes to connect engineering to execution, he’s speaking from experience — not a slide deck.”
“On the implementation side, the one thing you can’t teach a team is what it feels like to be the customer — to own the outcome when the program is that critical and there’s no margin for error,” said Eric Horn, Managing Partner of Element Consulting. “Jim has lived that. He drove a Windchill and digital-engineering transformation from inside a national-security production environment, so when he sits down with a defense manufacturer, he isn’t guessing at their world — he’s been in it. That makes us faster and sharper for exactly the clients we’re built to serve.”
“Element does the part of this work that most firms skip — the people and process side that determines whether a digital transformation actually sticks,” said James Shipley. “I lived that reality on the government side for 15 years. I’m excited to help federal and national-security organizations get the outcomes they’re after, not just the software.”
Shipley’s appointment reflects Element’s continued investment in the defense and national-security market, where connected engineering-to-manufacturing data, digital-thread maturity, and compliance are increasingly mission-critical.
About Element Consulting
Founded in 2003 and headquartered in West Des Moines, Iowa, Element Consulting is a team of PLM and PTC Windchill specialists who help manufacturers connect PLM, ERP, MES, and CPQ — so engineering, manufacturing, and IT work from a single source of truth. With 127 successful PLM implementations across aerospace and defense, medical devices, automotive, and industrial manufacturing, Element pairs deep technical expertise with the organizational change management that turns technology investments into adopted, lasting outcomes. Learn more at element-consulting.com.
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