Page 62 - Australian Defence Magazine April 2023

62 FROM THE SOURCE JIM MCDOWELL
APRIL 2023 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
“AUSTRALIA HAS BUILT ITS INDUSTRIAL ARCHITECTURE IN A CERTAIN WAY, WHICH HASN’T BEEN FOCUSED UPON INDUSTRY POLICY”
cruitment and retention. The aim is to recruit people because of Nova’s brand, the work you’re offering and the terms and conditions you’re offering and so on – and then you need to retain them, because when you have a particular culture that’s focused on people, which I believe Nova Systems does, then I think you’ve got a better chance than oth- ers at recruiting and retaining your workforce.
ADM: How are you growing the technical side of the company?
MCDOWELL: Technology solutions has not been our tradi- tional business, except in geospatial, which is now quite a mature business and growing. The best way for us to grow is to team with the big guys who are bidding for the big pro- grams, the Air 6500s and the Land 125s and so on, where we’re teamed with Northrop Grumman and Safran respec- tively. That way we can start to grow our capabilities, take a little bit of risk off those primes, and assume a little bit of risk for ourselves on the technology side of things and cre- ate proper Australian Sovereignty.
ADM: How does Australian Government assistance with building local industry and capability compare with gov- ernments in the other countries you operate in? MCDOWELL: Australia has built its industrial architecture in a certain way, which hasn’t been focused upon industry policy. It’s been focused, ever since I came here in the early 2000s, particularly after the Kinnaird and Mortimer re- views on military off-the-shelf equipment, designed and de-
The other side is the demand side. Has the Department always contracted with defence industry in an efficient way? The answer probably is, no, as we haven’t had to; because we haven’t had the supply pressures we currently have. So, how do we more efficiently plan, particularly on the demand side? How do we get the
most out of the workforce that we already have?
You’ve got to get the demand side and supply side matched
to become much more efficient.