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Incoming AIAC chair discusses aerospace vision
by Chris Thatcher
As Members of Parliament return to the House of Commons this week, aerospace eyes will be on the cabinet ministers and MPs most likely to support a new vision for the industry.
With the return of Marc Garneau to Transport Canada, Navdeep Bains to Innovation, Science and Industry, Harjit Sajjan to National Defence and Mary Ng to Small Business and Export Promotion, and the introduction of Anita Anand to Public Services and Procurement and Carla Qualtrough to Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion, the government's front benches include ministers well acquainted with key issues that need to be addressed if Canada is to retain its position as a leading global aerospace nation.
Last fall, the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada (AIAC) asked Jean Charest, a former premier of Quebec and deputy prime minister of Canada, to lead a cross-country discussion on the sector's future and a possible course forward.
His ensuing report, “Vision 2025,” delivered at the Paris Air Show in June, offered recommendations centred on six core themes: expanding the skilled workforce; growing small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs); promoting innovation; investing in Transport Canada's aircraft certification and regulation capacity; sustaining Canadian leadership in space; and better leveraging defence procurement to drive industry growth.
The recommendations were drawn from five months of meetings with industry executives, provincial premiers and their economic development ministers, federal ministers, opposition parties, academia and the general public.
“Our goal was to re-start the discussion between the industry and its partners in government, education, research and the business community,” Patrick Mann, president of Patlon Aircraft & Industries and the former chair of AIAC, reminded the sector during the recent Canadian Aerospace Summit in Ottawa. “It has been a truly pan-Canadian event that has reached all through the industry . . . [and] into every level of government.”
If Charest's report provides a guide for how to address some of the challenges generated by a multitude of countries and technology companies now seeking to gain a larger footprint in aerospace, the task of implementing it rests in part with Keith Donaldson.
Donaldson assumed the chair of AIAC during the summit and acknowledged the report will drive much of the association's activities over the next 12 months.
“I'm all in on Vision 2025,” he told Skies. “This is the time to re-engage as an industry, to recognize that [aerospace] is a jewel we have in Canada. It's R-and-D intensive, it's pan-Canadian, it has the highest input for STEM (science, technology, math and engineering)-type jobs, men and women – let's grow this. We need the support and partnership of the federal government. That is how we combat [other entrants].”
A chartered accountant by training who previously worked with KPMG, Donaldson is vice-president of APEX Industries, a machining, components, subassembly and structures manufacturer in Moncton, N.B. Over his 15 years with the company, he served as president of the New Brunswick Aerospace and Defense Association and co-founded the Atlantic Canada Aerospace and Defence Association. He's also been a fixture on AIAC's technical committees, from audit and finance, to small business, defence procurement and supply chain access.
That experience could be crucial, as much of the heavy lifting to make the report's recommendations reality will come from the technical committees. Under Mann's leadership, AIAC spent part of the past year restructuring the committees to align with the direction of Vision 2025.
“We spent a lot of time . . . making sure their mandates were going to match the recommendations,” said Donaldson. “We wanted to make sure the chairs were well aligned. [They] are some of the heavy hitters in the industry, from Bombardier, UTC, Cascade, Collins Aerospace . . . [They have] industry interest, company interest and personal interest for the success of these recommendations.”
Winning the skills battle
Because of ministerial familiarity with the report's recommendations, AIAC will be hoping it can move quickly to implement some of them. The appointment of Qualtrough, who has spoken at previous AIAC conferences, to a portfolio that will focus on the sector's top priority of skills development is seen as “an early win,” Donaldson noted.
“When AIAC did the industry engagement, it was very evident that to maintain and grow, we have to win the skills battle,” he said. “A lot of the other recommendations are going to move forward, but we have to solve the skills one. Failure is not an option here.”
Other sectors are going to be competing for the same STEM talent, but the Vision 2025 blueprint might give aerospace a leg up with government, he suggested. That means offering ideas not only to retain and retrain the current workforce where necessary, but also to recruit and support more women in the sector, attract First Nations, and collaborate with immigration initiatives.
“It is not going to be a one size fits all. We are going to have to work on each one of those areas,” said Donaldson. For APEX, a medium-sized business of about 250 people, 70 of whom work specifically in aerospace, finding and retaining talent is the issue that keeps most senior managers awake at night, he added.
The association will also be looking for quick progress on some of the recommendations aimed at strengthening the capacity of Transport Canada. “They are already a world class organization. We are not starting from zero on that one,” noted Donaldson.
However, much of the early effort will go to growing SMEs, which account for over 95 per cent of the aerospace sector. It's terrain Donaldson knows well and believes can be improved through initiatives to build on government programs that are already in place.
“We are going to be taking what's already working and say, we want to expand some of these programs. That is going to give us some early wins,” he said.
One possible tool could be the expansion of Quebec's MACH program, which has provided mentorship from OEMs and Tier 1s to SMEs to help improve business processes and make the transition to digital systems. “From an SME perspective, that program is one of the ways to go because it involves a larger company, the SME, the province, and support nationally,” observed Donaldson.
Support and mentoring from larger businesses for digitization and best cyber practices are a critical need for smaller companies, he added, noting that many capture “thousands of pieces of data every day” and don't make as much use of the information as they should.
“The new protocol for Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification in the U.S. is going to be applied to every single company in aerospace and defence, no matter where you are,” he said. “[These are areas] where a MACH-type program could hugely benefit SMEs across the country.”
He cautioned, though, that while the emphasis must be on growing SMEs, those small companies often rely on strong OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and Tier 1 suppliers for their export opportunities. In APEX's case, that's about 50 per cent of the business.
“We need to keep the OEMs and large Tier 1s healthy in Canada,” he said. “The MACH [programs] of the world are only going to work well if Pratt & Whitney, Bombardier, Bell, IMP, Magellan, if they grow and invest in Canada. That goes back to a part of the overall Vision 2025.”
During separate addresses to the aerospace summit, both Donaldson and Mann appealed to fellow executives to get involved in the process. Committees are the “place where our company can impact and shape the issues that are important to our business,” observed Mann. “There is a lot to making Vision 2025 a reality . . . and we need everyone's help to do that, to make sure aerospace is a key part of our new government's new strategy.”
AIAC will continue to lobby the federal and provincial governments on the Vision 2025 recommendations, especially the 48 MPs whose ridings including substantial aerospace activity, and will serve as secretariat to a newly re-created all-party aerospace caucus in Ottawa. Speed is of the essence said Donaldson, noting the pace with which other jurisdictions are growing their aerospace capabilities.
“We do not have the luxury [of time],” he said. “It's not like we have Vision 2025 and then there's a whole other plan. Vision 2025 is going to drive the industry. Period.”
https://www.skiesmag.com/news/incoming-aiac-chair-discusses-aerospace-vision
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Maxar's Radiant Solutions Awarded $92 Million Small Business Innovation Research Phase III contract by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
Expands development of machine learning and crowdsourcing capabilities to augment global GEOINT missions HERNDON, VA, Oct. 18, 2018 /CNW/ - Radiant Solutions, a Maxar Technologies company (NYSE: MAXR) (TSX: MAXR), today announced a $92 million contract award on a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase III contract with the National Geospatial- Intelligence Agency (NGA) to rapidly develop, prototype, and deploy machine learning and crowdsourcing capabilities to augment a wide variety of NGA missions. NGA exercised the 2019 contract option year and expanded the value over a three year period of performance. The SBIR Phase III program incents commercial firms to apply innovative solutions to pressing national security problems. As outlined in NGA's recently updated commercial GEOINT strategy, the agency is employing a variety of contracting methods to leverage commercial automation capabilities to augment conventional analysis, giving analysts more time to focus on more challenging, mission-critical problems. Through SBIR Phase III awards, the U.S. government can fund logical extensions of SBIR Data and receive a royalty-free license to that technology while protecting commercial industry's ability to make these offerings available to the global marketplace. Radiant Solutions participates in the SBIR Phase III program through its ongoing investment in Signature Analyst™, a predictive modeling engine that applies machine learning to massive amounts of geospatial data to help analysts quickly search broad geographic areas. Since 2006, Radiant Solutions and its subsidiary companies have been awarded eight SBIR Phase III contracts across multiple agencies. Radiant Solutions will advance development of machine learning capabilities, such as its DeepCore Computer Vision SDK and crowdsourcing capabilities, such as Tomnod, to help analysts quickly process large volumes of remote sensing data, understand global patterns of life and enable broad area search. The award also expands support for the NSG Open Mapping Enclave (NOME), a volunteered geographic information operational prototype that enables trusted users on multiple domains to easily create or modify foundation GEOINT to create living maps and enable timely analysis. These capabilities will be available for broad use across the U.S. Government and its global mission partners. "We are excited to expand our SBIR Phase III partnership with NGA and apply commercial innovation in machine learning and crowdsourcing to difficult national security problems," said Tony Frazier, President of Radiant Solutions. "We are fully committed to helping the NGA harness the massive potential of Commercial GEOINT to reveal insights where and when it matters to build a better world." Radiant Solutions has made several recent announcements that reveal how the company is applying Machine Learning and Crowdsourcing to Global GEOINT Missions: Maxar Technologies' Radiant Solutions Awarded Janus Geography Prime Contract by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Maxar Technologies' Radiant Solutions Partners with NGA to Accelerate Innovation in Machine Learning Technologies Applied to Satellite Imagery SpaceNet™ Team Earns the 2018 USGIF Industry Achievement Award The company will be showcasing a number of these capabilities at the NVIDIA GTC DC event Oct. 22-24. About Radiant Solutions Radiant Solutions provides highly specialized, innovative geospatial multisource data, analytics, software, and services to deliver critical insights and intelligence where and when it matters. Poised to transform how customers support global mapping and intelligence missions at scale, Radiant Solutions harnesses the proliferation of pervasive information-gathering sensors, open-source software, cloud computing, machine learning, and big data analytics. Our combined team of over 1,000 sensor and spacecraft engineers, geospatial analysts, developers, data scientists, and DevOps engineers delivers innovative geospatial solutions that keep our nation safe, protect critical infrastructure, and preserve scarce natural resources. Building on the legacy of MDA Information Systems, RadiantBlue, DigitalGlobe Intelligence Solutions, and HumanGeo, the newly combined Radiant Solutions has a strong track record with its advanced capabilities, open approach, and experience supporting missions that helps customers in the GEOINT community reach critical decisions faster and with greater accuracy. Radiant Solutions is based in Herndon, VA with major offices across Virginia, Maryland, Florida, Michigan, and Colorado. Radiant Solutions is a Maxar Technologies company (NYSE: MAXR; TSX: MAXR). For more information visit: www.RadiantSolutions.com. About Maxar As a global leader of advanced space technology solutions, Maxar Technologies (formerly MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates) is at the nexus of the new space economy, developing and sustaining the infrastructure and delivering the information, services, systems that unlock the promise of space for commercial and government markets. As a trusted partner, Maxar Technologies provides vertically-integrated capabilities and expertise including satellites, Earth imagery, robotics, geospatial data and analytics to help customers anticipate and address their most complex mission-critical challenges with confidence. With more than 6,500 employees in over 30 global locations, the Maxar Technologies portfolio of commercial space brands includes MDA, SSL, DigitalGlobe and Radiant Solutions. Every day, billions of people rely on Maxar to communicate, share information and data, and deliver insights that Build a Better World. Maxar trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange as MAXR. For more information, visit www.maxar.com. Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements and other information included in this release constitute "forward-looking information" or "forward-looking statements" (collectively, "forward-looking statements") under applicable securities laws. Statements including words such as "may", "will", "could", "should", "would", "plan", "potential", "intend", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate" or "expect" and other words, terms and phrases of similar meaning are often intended to identify forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. Forward-looking statements involve estimates, expectations, projections, goals, forecasts, assumptions, risks and uncertainties, as well as other statements referring to or including forward-looking information included in this release. Forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially from the anticipated results or expectations expressed in this release. As a result, although management of the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which such forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. The risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations include, but are not limited to, the risk factors and other disclosures about the Company and its business included in the Company's continuous disclosure materials filed from time to time with Canadian and U.S. securities regulatory authorities, which are available online under the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com, under the Company's EDGAR profile at www.sec.gov or on the Company's website at www.maxar.com. The forward-looking statements contained in this release are expressly qualified in their entirety by the foregoing cautionary statements. All such forward-looking statements are based upon data available as of the date of this release or other specified date and speak only as of such date. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements in this release as a result of new information or future events, except as may be required under applicable securities legislation. Investor Relations Contact Jason Gursky Maxar Technologies 1-303-684-2207 jason.gursky@maxar.com Media Contact Andre Kearns Radiant Solutions 1-703-480-6290 andre.kearns@radiantsolutions.com SOURCE Maxar Technologies Ltd. https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/maxars-radiant-solutions-awarded-92-million-small-business-innovation-research-phase-iii-contract-by-the-national-geospatial-intelligence-agency-697898421.html