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Since the CTO Team visited Australia, C-E Solutions has received advice that the team has completed their deliberations and have advised that 31 of the 90 + companies with whom they met, have been recommended by the Team as having products or services with demonstrated merit against the CTO's Areas of Interest List.
C-E Solutions will now join a mission led by Australia's Defence Export Unit to the US to attend the National Veterans'
Small Business Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans, Louisiana,
where the CTO will arrange one-on-one meetings with key US DOD
procurement personnel.
| As C-E Solutions' Software Manager, Paul Moore (centre, blue shirt) received a "Pride of Workmanship" Award |  |
The Award citation reads:
"In the last year, C-E Solutions has been busy evolving its Wisard software for future use at the Woomera Test Range in South Australia (can be thought of as an Australian equivalent to NASA’s Cape Canaveral). In this time, C-E Solutions has recruited four more software developers to help Paul achieve the mission of delivering the software within the extremely tight schedule and budget constraints. Paul has built an effective and professional software development environment, testament to his own application of superior quality software development. Paul’s desire to meet deadlines drives him to work with his staff to work whatever hours are necessary to simply get the job done. His dedication to achieving milestones is underscored by the success and quality of the software produced, to the exacting standards required of Defence. Paul’s dedication to excellence and “getting the job done” assures worthy recognition of his “Pride of Workmanship”.
| As C-E Solutions' Deputy Security Officer, Facilities Officer, Project Manager and Systems Engineer, Simon Whorrod received a "Pride of Workmanship" Award |  |
The Award citation reads:
"Simon works in a supervisory capacity and is an excellent mentor for the company’s junior staff in practical electronics application. Simon’s desire to meet deadlines inspires other staff to work many long hours simply to get the job done, however he always ensures that quality is not compromised in such endeavours. His dedication to achieving milestones is underscored by the success of C-E Solutions’ projects and his relaxed but professional disposition provides for a harmonious and content team under his instruction. Simon’s dedication to excellence and “getting the job done” assures worthy recognition of his “Pride of Workmanship”.
As C-E Solutions' Prototype Manager and IT Administrator, Stacy Walker received a "Pride of Workmanship" Award against the following citation:
C-E Solutions is currently delivery and installing two major sub-systems of a technology replacement at the Woomera Test Range in South Australia (kind of the Australian equivalent to NASA’s Cape Canaveral). Stacy conceptualised and designed an innovative display system that provides flexibility, scalability and superior performance to enable scientific evaluation of range tests. For this project, Stacy has taken personal responsibility for the definition, development, assembly and test of all hardware for the system. The project has been run to extremely tight schedule and budget constraints. Close to the Project completion, Stacy has successfully navigated all challenges to date with 'flying colours'. Stacy's role and responsibilities have posed him some significant interpersonal and managerial challenges. Throughout these, he has remained calm, collected and focused on the task in hand. He is also administrator of the company’s IT system and business information support system. Stacy’s dedication to achieving milestones is underscored by the success of C-E Solutions’ projects and his calm, professional disposition contributes well the company’s wellbeing. Stacy’s dedication to excellence assures worthy recognition of his “Pride of Workmanship”.
The Awards night was celebrated with other community members worthy of recognition either by their workplace efforts or efforts for the community.
General Manager, Boris Novak, presented the business case for the use of Horus, and finished with a demonstration of this exciting system that enables data mining of geospatial track data, providing susbstantial capability improvements to Intelligence, and real-time track monitoring for Homeland Defence.
The visit by the RAAF's DCAF follows another visit recently made by notable Defence and Defence Industry people comprising the Board of the Rapid Prototyping, Development and Evaluation Program. During that visit, C-E Solutions impressed with Horus, Visual iQ, Vigil-i and anubis.
]]>C-E Solutions wowed Board members with a tour of the company, including overviews of products including Horus, Visual iQ, Vigil-i and anubis. The Board left impressed with C-E Solutions' commitment to the RPDE Program, and how C-E Solutions has participated with RPDE in every level of engagement possible.
]]>C-E Solutions Directors Mike McMahon and Mario Grima were on hand last Thursday evening to receive the Hunter Aerospace Industry Award for Innovation. At the inaugural Gala Dinner held at the Officers Mess at RAAF Base Williamtown, C-E Solutions was presented with the prestigious award – the latest in a number of such awards garnered by the Company over the past eighteen months.
Part of the Hunter Aerospace Industry Summit, held over 18-19th September, the Gala Dinner was attended by many of the leading companies which contribute to the Hunter’s rapidly growing aerospace sector. Director Mike McMahon said in his acceptance speech “C-E Solutions is, once again, pleased to receive recognition for its engineering excellence and innovation. In particular, though, I am proud that we are helping to drive national and international recognition of the Hunter’s attractiveness as a location to establish and grow high-tech industries, such as aerospace.”
The event was sponsored by Port Stephens Council, Newcastle City Council, Newcastle Airport, NSW State Government, Williamtown Aerospace Centre, HunterNet, and Regional Development- Australia - Hunter. The award for Innovation was sponsored by Coffey Projects and was presented by Mr Jim Zehnder.
The innovation award was an acknowledgment of the unique Horus pattern recognition system, which looks at detecting anomalies in air traffic movements and highlights/detects those behaviours that are ‘out of the ordinary’. This detection system is unique as the data mining takes place in ‘real-time’ and can be represented to the operator as a standard map overlay or as a 3D view of the airspace.
This system is set to revolutionise air traffic surveillance as it can help air defence operators to separate ‘friend’ from ‘foe’ by automatically learning and comparing patterns of behaviour. By relieving operators of much of their standard workload, the system enables much larger areas to be monitored by a small team than would otherwise be the case.
The potential uses of the technology are diverse, including national border protection, military surveillance and civilian search and rescue. The system is unique, cost-effective and can be tailored to specific needs or requirements.
]]>With more than 60,000 visitors hosted by RAAF Base Williamtown during its 2010 Air Show, the ability to provide effective traffic management was a very high priority for the Australian Defence Force (ADF), the NSW Police, the NSW Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) and Port Stephens and Newcastle Councils. In the absence of any permanent surveillance infrastructure to monitor local road conditions, C-E Solutions volunteered to support the event by positioning its mobile Vigil-i surveillance and communications trailers at key junctions on the approaches to Williamtown and relay live video to the event Command Post.
Originally developed by C-E Solutions to support the acceptance into service of the Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter by providing highly-accurate weapons impact tracking and scoring at the ADF's Woomera Test Range, the Vigil-i system combines a number of highly desirable features into a compact, mobile platform:
The Vigil-i system was enthusiastically received by both NSW Police and the RTA, with consistent praise from both parties about the high quality of the video pictures provided
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After more than ten years of hard work, General Manager Boris Novak said “In a year in which C-E Solutions was recognised with three major awards for business and manufacturing, the award of this Contract is further evidence of the real capability we have here in the Hunter and Port Stephens regions. The Test Range at Woomera has extensive history with aerospace and ordnance testing in Australia, as well as space vehicle launch. We’re thrilled to be involved with the Test Range, and look forward to helping to upgrade and sustain an iconic part of Australia’s aerospace history.”
As a subcontractor approved by Defence, Boris Novak added: “The partnership with C-E Solutions on a project that is core to their global business demonstrates QinetiQ’s confidence in our own organisation’s capabilities, and a genuine commitment to investment within Australia’s highly skilled workforce. From an Australian Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) perspective, we are finding that as a Prime, QinetiQ truly knows the meaning of collaboration with a SME, and this is proving to be a refreshing and satisfying experience for all of our staff.” ]]>The Innovate Port Stephens program will provide specialist resources to assist business within the Port Stephens Local Government Area to establish a commitment to, and ability to innovate, whether it be in product development, manufacturing, marketing or client service as examples of how they may apply innovation.
As part of this program, C-E Solutions is being used as a case study of how Innovation can be expressed to provide competitive advantage. At the launch, the Company was cited as a shining example of an innovative business, with its business essentially revolving around innovation.
More information can be found at Innovate Port Stephens page of the Business Port Stephens website.
Get the Case Study here.
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In accepting the awards, General Manager Boris Novak remarked “Winning these awards is very humbling, especially when one considers that winners are determined by a peer review within the manufacturing industry. I am extremely proud of all of our staff’s efforts, and very happy and proud to be a part of the Hunter region, well-recognised for its pedigree in engineering and manufacturing. The products for which we earned these awards are fitting examples that the Hunter region can, and are doing things better and smarter, regionally, domestically, and globally.”
C-E Solutions received the “Excellence in Innovation” for its development of Horus, a system that analyses air traffic radar and other sensor data to 'learn' the patterns of aircraft behaviour across very large volumes of airspace. Once 'trained' the system can automatically identify flights that exhibit unusual or suspicious behaviour (for example, the sort of unusual behaviour that presaged the “9/11” terrorist strikes) and provide an alert to air traffic, or air defence, operators.
In order to construct a system able to carry out the enormous technical challenge of air traffic data analysis, pattern recognition and matching and in real time, C-E Solutions took a highly innovative approach by building a supercomputer-class processing node comprising a cluster of specially-configured Sony Playstation 3s. As well, games console technology and development knowhow was also applied to the problem, especially given that many of the underlying problems had strong parallels with technologies already deployed within team console games and console games delivering 3D playing environments.
C-E Solutions received the “Excellence in Technology” for its development of a Mobile Ordnance Impact Scoring System, a “trailerised” variant of another C-E Solutions’ system that provides highly accurate scoring support to defence forces' live firing exercises. Designed to be easily and quickly deployed to remote areas, the system utilises geo-referenced video capture to spot and score ordnance (such as bombs, artillery rounds, rockets or missiles) impacts. This unique system provides vital support to warfighter training.
Because of the short development cycle available, C-E Solutions had to apply practices similar to the Boehm-Spiral method for software development as the short time available (four weeks) did not provide the “luxury” of a linear development path. The process was inclusive of all personnel involved in sourcing sub-system components and participating in the actual manufacturing of the product.
Reflecting upon the awards, Boris concludes that much of the company’s success centres on its location of Port Stephens, “The lack of background noise, transport problems and other psychological intrusions inherent in industrial or CBD areas of capital cities doesn’t cramp our creativity. Our office environment is peaceful and productive. We all love living and working in Port Stephens.”
C-E Solutions subsequently received a congratulatory letter from The Hon Jodi McKay MP, amongst other portfolios, the NSW Minister for the Hunter.
| C-E Solutions Board receive Excellence in Innovation Award | C-E Solutions Board receive Excellence in Technology Award |
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Horus is a system that analyses air traffic radar and other sensor data to 'learn' the patterns of aircraft behaviour across very large volumes of airspace – in the case of the demonstration, an area of more than 5,000 nautical miles square. Once 'trained' the system can automatically identify flights that exhibit unusual or suspicious behaviour (for example, the sort of unusual behaviour that presaged the “9/11” terrorist strikes) and provide an alert to air traffic, or air defence, operators. In 'training' the system, emergent patterns can be analysed and flagged for future time-sensitive targeting, allowing operations to immediately identify the next occurence of specific behavioural profiles. More information, see our Horus product flyer.
For detail on the presentation see the presentation supporting slides.
The demonstration covered:
Various levels of interest were shown at the demonstration via a Question and Answer session following the demonstration.
]]>For detailed information, check out the agreed skillsets.
]]>To match these challenges requires an innovative approach and marshalling of all the resources available, both within the ADF and in the wider Australian community, to provide both improved technology and adaptive systems that are agile and able to deal with massive amounts of data and the diversity of requirements and priorities, while remaining secure and resistant to direct and indirect attack.
An important part of the mix that can assist the ISR environment is Australian industry. A close and on-going engagement with industry is seen as a major source of ideas and technology to enable reliable and capable systems to meet the needs of the ADF. Such engagement also enables industry to understand the context in which ISR is required to operate, to anticipate ISR requirements, and to contribute to the development and sustainment of the Defence ISR capability.
The ISR-FG will function within the framework of the Australian Defence Information and Electronic Systems Association (ADIESA) in enhancing Defence and industry capabilities by facilitating increased Defence-industry collaboration in the areas intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance.
The purpose of the Intelligence Focus Group (ISR-FG) is to develop and promote an overall industry engagement strategy with the ISR Branch to:
C-E Solutions has participated so far by attending meetings and providing feedback on actions arising.]]>
The awards night showcased 3 notable achievements by the company:
Each achievement above is noteworthy in its own right. Considered collectively, they clearly make C-E Solutions a standout business. The judges of the Hunter Business Awards thought so too.
