www.vanguardcanada.com FEBRUARY/MARCH 2019 37
teChnology WatCh
by niCole Verkindt
Practical lessons
Jake Trainor
COO, PAL Aerospace
Jim Gillespie
VP and General Manager,
Peraton Canada
Jamie TurcoTTe
VP Services, Thales
Canada
I
founded OMX in 2012 as a collab-
orative platform to access opportuni-
ties at every stage of the procurement
process. For most people, "procure-
ment" simply means acquiring or
building something.
But for those of us in the defence sector,
procurement extends to maintenance and
upkeep – both in terms of physical parts and
the training required to service the program.
These contracts are known as in-service sup-
port (ISS) and represent a significant and
crucial part of many large programs.
(There are currently 12 major ISS proj-
ects in Canada ranging from over $10 bil-
lion for the Canadian Surface Combatant to
the low $100 millions for the Halifax class
Integrated Platform Management System.)
I had the pleasure of speaking with three
procurement leaders, who are OMX users,
from three leading ISS companies to dis-
cuss their current projects, their corporate
philosophy on ISS, and just where the fu-
ture of ISS is headed:
in iss
a roundtable With
Pal aerosPace, Peraton
canada, and thales
Q What is your organization's
philosophy towards ISS?
PAL: PAL's philosophy towards ISS ac-
tivities involves a holistic, customer-centric
approach based on decades of experience.
Our ISS activities enable our clients (both
internal and external) to conduct opera-
tions and maintain readiness.
Leveraging our own operational back-
ground, we understand what our clients
need and are able to bring them practical
and efficient solutions. We constantly look
for opportunities to optimize and bring ef-
ficiency through cross-utilization of assets.
Peraton: Fundamentally, performance-
based ISS is Peraton's core business. We
are a platform-agnostic service provider,
which means that our focus is on opti-
mizing the performance of the individual
systems, regardless of the platform upon
which they are installed.
We have found significant success le-
veraging our mission sustainment model
which is based upon excellence in the
core areas of supply chain management,
