Page 98 - Australian Defence Magazine Nov 2020

98 FROM THE SOURCE AMANDA HOLT
NOVEMBER 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
AMANDA HOLT
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER | SYPAQ SYSTEMS
SYPAQ Systems has gone from strength to strength in recent years, with an expanded focus on C4ISR solutions to complement their solid engineering foundation. ADM’s Julian Kerr caught up with CEO Amanda Holt of the ex-SME (now over 200 people) to look at where the business has come from and where it’s headed.
ADM: How did SYPAQ Systems get its name? What’s the company’s role?
HOLT: SYPAQ stands for SYstems, Projects And Quality, which is what George Vicino, our founder, has always insisted we deliver on. SYPAQ is very much an engineering organisa- tion and systems integrator, and for a relatively small business we’re quite diversified in what we do. Essentially, we apply technology to solve problems, and that means we get to tackle some really interesting bodies of work. In the last five years we’ve diversified the business from purely services into sover- eign technology development. We are ambitious – we want to deliver for the C4ISR domain what Nulka does for ship de-
In the past couple of years we’ve started to see more and more of a crossover in this space as military capabilities be- come more and more network-dependent and ICT-enabled. So we’re delivering a lot of agile and DevSecOps programs, again mostly into the high security domain through the At- lassian framework.
We’ve also recently stood up our Cyber Services practice in an exclusive agreement with Brisbane company Keystone Cyber Security. This bridges the gap between CASG’s tradi- tional capability acquisition, and the assessment and informa- tion network assurance work undertaken by CIOG. There are a lot of great Australian cyber businesses but not many who really bridge that engineering and ICT gap, and that service
fence and what the Bushmaster does for a unique, sovereign Australian capabil- ity that is world class and export ready.
ADM: How is SYPAQ structured? HOLT: Our structure has evolved a lot recently as we have diversified the business. We started 28 years ago as a consultancy house, and that is still the mainstay of our business through the delivery of complex technology-centric projects. Consulting is still about half of what we do, and our customers are split pretty much 50/50 between defence and civil. So we have our Defence and Secu- rity practice and we have our Enterprise and Government practice. Defence and Security supports CASG and CIOG.
What’s really growing quite rapidly for us now that we’re bigger, is partnership with other defence industry players. Our phone often rings regarding what we call “troubled project remediation”. The Enterprise and Government practice is very much ICT-focused and operates predominantly in the higher security domains. So a lot of that work is direct into other government departments and also around business transformation for some quite significant enterprise clients.
protected vehicles –
PROFILE
2015 CEO SYPAQ Systems
2014 General Manager Defence and
Aerospace SYPAQ Systems
2011 Consulting Services Manager SYPAQ Systems
2009 Chief Engineer Defence and Aerospace SYPAQ Systems
2009 Senior Consultant SYPAQ Systems
2007 Engineering and Acceptance Manager Thales Australia
2005 Principal Capability Acceptance Manager Thales Australia
2004 Project Engineer – Integration (Combat and Platform Systems)
Thales Australia
2003 Combat Systems Design Engineer Thales Australia
2002-01 Software Engineer Adacel
Senior Executive MBA from MBS
B.Eng – (Aerospace) from RMIT University
University B.Bus from RMIT
has helped us become who we are today. About five years ago we created our Innovation and Strategic Program busi- ness unit, which manages all our C4IS- REW and autonomous systems pro- grams. Our research and development and our engineering and technology programs are all run out of there, and this is the business unit that will drive our future expansion as we continue to build our systems integration capabili- ties and develop our own technologies.
ADM: The 50/50 split between the civil and Defence roles appears likely to continue?
HOLT: Absolutely, and there’s real ad- vantage to that. When you’re not aware of how technology is being developed outside the military space and don’t retain some expertise in it, there’s a real risk that you’ll become irrelevant quite quickly. Balancing both skillsets within our workforce and understand- ing where expertise needs to come from has been a significant part of our success in recent years.
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SYPAQ