AP&C opens new AM facility in Quebec to meet demand for its 3D printing materials

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  23 mars 2024 | Local, Aérospatial

  Orbit Fab ships first satellite refueling ports to Space Force

  The company's RAFTI port is designed to be installed on satellites to allow them to receive propellant either in space or on the ground before launch.

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  8 avril 2020 | Local, Aérospatial, C4ISR

  CAE answers the federal government’s call to procure ventilators

  The federal government has launched an accelerated procurement plan with several Canadian companies, including Montreal-based CAE, to procure up to 30,000 ventilators. “Canadian companies are answering the call to protect our health care professionals with made-in-Canada solutions,” said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a statement on Apr. 7. “This is exactly the kind of innovative, collaborative thinking we need to respond to this rapidly evolving pandemic.” CAE is best known in the aerospace sector for aircraft simulators and training services, helping train over 150,000 pilots per year worldwide. But for more than a decade, the company has also made a name as a healthcare training solutions provider for colleges, universities and hospitals and for medical equipment manufacturers. That includes patient simulators that respond to treatment, including intubation and ventilation. “We have the [medical] and engineering expertise in house – electrical, mechanical, software and human physiology,” said Erick Fortin, director of engineering at CAE Healthcare. A team of 12 engineers took up a challenge issued on Mar. 21 by the Montreal General Hospital Foundation and McGill University Health Centre to develop a simple and low-cost ventilator. Within 10 days, they had a working prototype built with parts from around the lab. “It worked quite well,” said Fortin. “It showed how you can put a team together with the right experts ... and what we can do.” For a company that on Apr. 6 announced the temporary laying off of 2,600 of its 10,500 employees and reduced work weeks for another 900, the opportunity “to do something” has been rewarding. “The whole company is mobilized,” he said. “We are really prepared to produce and we are productizing.” From that initial team of a dozen engineers, the project now has about 100 employees involved. And CAE expects to pull in more as they move to full production. CAE might not be the only company in the Montreal aerospace cluster seeking to solve the ventilator shortage. According to industry think tank Aero Montreal, Pratt & Whitney Canada is also exploring how to use its engineering and manufacturing capabilities to design and validate a ventilator concept that would likely “pull on local manufacturing,” including from Bombardier and AON3D. Fortin said CAE had received “hundreds and hundreds” of emails from companies interested in supplying components, from valves to flow sensors. Though all options are under consideration, including having several contingency plans at the ready, the priority would be to find Canadian suppliers who can deliver high volume. “Some parts are a bit more complex to source, like valves. We'll look at all offers, at all suppliers that can help,” he said. “We are confident that we have everything we need. We certainly have the expertise in house to do the production of thousands of ventilators.” CAE must still fine-tune the prototypes, but it intends to deliver about 10,000 units within three months once it starts production. A low-cost solution might have been part of the engineering team's initial objective, but Fortin admitted the final price might be higher than a typical commercial ventilator. “We try to build it as low as possible,” he said. “As you can imagine, as time is of the essence, cost will be a bit higher that what it could be with a bit more time.” CAE will also be leaning on its training expertise to ensure the final product comes with a complete operator training package. Since mid-March, in fact, the company has been offering online re-skilling courses for ventilators and has released a number of COVID-19 scenarios on its current products such as patient simulators. Fortin noted that more than 2,000 health professionals had participated in coronavirus-related webinars “After 25 years at CAE, I am always surprised at how nimble a big company like this can be, and how we can adjust to different situations,” he said. In its statement on Apr. 7, the government said that about 5,000 Canadian companies have offered expertise and capacity to develop and produce medical personal protective equipment, hand sanitizers and other protective gear. The government is also “working through over 22,000 submissions to Public Services and Procurement Canada from companies interested or able to sell to Canada. All efforts are being made to secure contracts and deliveries as quickly as possible.” “In mobilizing industry and creating partnerships, we are moving swiftly to build up a secure domestic supply of key personal protective equipment to protect Canada's frontline health workers as they fight this pandemic,” said Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry. https://www.skiesmag.com/news/cae-federal-governments-call-procure-ventilators/

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  6 mars 2020 | Local, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Pentagon push to boost cybersecurity could affect Canadian suppliers

  We're at cyberwar every day' - Ellen Lord, the U.S. undersecretary of defence for acquisition Murray Brewster · The Pentagon has been engaged in a quiet, deliberate effort to plug all of the cyber-holes in its high-tech systems and among its defence contractors — an operation that will soon spill across the border into Canada. Ellen Lord, the U.S. undersecretary of defence for acquisition and sustainment, said today cybersecurity has been one of her biggest concerns since being appointed by the Trump administration two and a half years ago. Increasingly, major defence contractors have found themselves targeted by hackers from China and Russia who have stolen troves of sensitive data on new and existing weapons systems. "Bottom line is, I don't think the average American citizen understands that we're at cyberwar every day," Lord told the Conference of Defence Associations Institute's annual meeting in Ottawa today. The burden of keeping data secure is being placed on the companies themselves, she added. After consulting with the National Security Agency (NSA), the U.S. electronic spy service and the military's Cyber Command, the Pentagon rolled out a new program in January aimed at forcing defence contractors to deal with points of vulnerability. "We have written new cyber security standards that we are putting in all of our new contracts," said Lord. "We are looking at the defence industrial base and how they need to address cyber security and how we as a government can hold them accountable." The initiative includes a cyber security "certification and accreditation" system, similar to the International Organization for Standardization. Lord said it's not a one-size fits all solution and that companies looking to do business with the Pentagon will have to meet one of five levels of certification, depending upon the contract. The defence industrial complexes of Canada, Britain and Australia are tightly stitched into the U.S. system. Lord said allies are looking at a similar measures which she hopes to see coordinated with American efforts. "This is something we're talking with Canada about, with allies and partners, because a lot of us are doing the same thing," she said. The problems with existing systems — software already in the field — is being dealt with aggressively. Contractors who are responsible for maintaining complex systems on warships and aircraft are being told by the Pentagon to close their potential security gaps. "We are going to start shutting equipment down if they are not brought up to standard because every day we see [intelligence], we see how much has been compromised," Lord said. Troy Crosby, head of the Canadian Department of National Defence's materiel branch, said Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada has launched a "cyber secure program" and there's a hope that the two countries can find a way to align their efforts. Some analysts and critics in the U.S. have argued that contractors — even those that make cyber security a priority — will find the cost of meeting uniform standards prohibitive. Beyond that, many major contractors have complex supply chains with many smaller companies that also would be required to spend substantial sums of money to keep up with evolving threats. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pentagon-contractors-cyber-security-1.5487452