Vanguard Magazine

www.vanguardcanada.com JUNE/JULY 2020 21 interView A Company of the Immediate Response Unit (West) leaves Prince Albert in Light Armoured Vehicles (LAVs) 6.0 in a convoy to travel to a fire affected zone of Saskatchewan. Photo: DND for the Canadian Army. Colonel Renahan assumed the role of the Director of Land Requirements in June of 2018 and contrib- utes to the management and delivery of the Canadian Army's capability development and equipment programme. Q We all went through some work- related changes and challenges due to the Coronavirus. How is the DLR team man- aging their mandate during the remote working constraints of the COVID-19 crisis? This has been an extremely challenging time for many people, but as for being set up for business continuity, the DLR team has been quite well positioned. Since our role before COVID-19 required that we travelled often and worked from remote locations at times, the majority of our personnel are equipped with smartphones, laptops, tablets, or other mobile devices, so we are well-equipped to adapt to work- related changes. One limitation has been the need to pri- oritize access to the network and other re- sources for those directly involved in the re- sponse to COVID-19. We have been able to work within those limitations by minimizing our use of network resources, logging in at off peak hours, and doing as much as we can offline or through other collaborative tools that have been made available to us. Some of our Army experience may even be helpful as all the teleconferences that have replaced face to face meetings are reminiscent of, and demand the discipline of, tactical radio com- munications and voice procedure we are all familiar with. The real limitation is what I think most of us have been dealing with, and that is juggling the demands of family, parenting and childrens' education, along with the duties of the job. It has taken some real creativity and patience to keep on top of all those demands, and in most cases, we have been able to balance work requirements to ensure that individual and family needs are placed first, to make sure we get through this challenging time as best we can. Q Under Strong, Secure, Engaged, the Government of Canada planned to invest up to $8.8B over 20 years in 28 new equipment projects for the Canadian Army. There were some very ambitious timelines provided, and a bow-wave of programmatic activity for DLR over the next two years. Can you share with us the general status of the Investment Plan (updated in 2019) and its timelines? I will need to leave the status of any In- vestment Plan updates to others. The Canadian Army continues to work to meet the Strong, Secure, Engaged time- lines and budgets as coordinated and managed by the Department. We have been very successful in moving our proj- ects through the approvals process, with the majority of our projects making ad- vancements through the gates of the Department's project approval process. Those that haven't yet are due to the lon- ger timelines assigned to them by Strong, Secure, Engaged, so we remain on track. And while there have been some chal- lenges and some internal delays, they have not translated to delays in project delivery timelines in the longer term.

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