MS&T recognizes 2018 award winner CAE

MS&T would like to recognize the 2018 Industry Award winners one final time before the 2019 winners are announced in mid-September. This week, we highlight the achievements of CAE, the 2018 winner of the Outstanding Training System Integration Project award.

CAE receives the 2018 MS&T Industry Award for Outstanding Training System Integration Project. Gene Colabatistto, group president, Defence & Security, CAE (left), Ray Duquette, president and general manager, CAE USA (middle), MS&T Editor Rick Adams (right).

What is the Outstanding Training System Integration Project award?

This award recognizes projects that have designed, developed, integratedand delivered complex training systems with a delivery date within the lastthree years. To be outstanding, not only must the project have met or exceededthe project success criteria, but also have provided exceptional value to theclient.

Why CAE won:

CAE U.S. Army Dothan Training Center
In March 2016, CAE USA was officially put on contract to provide Army Fixed-Wing Training. Then the challenge became executing on the contract within the time constraint. CAE needed to go from contract award to operational training in 12 months. That meant taking a green field – actually a peanut farm next to the Dothan Regional Airport – and constructing a new training center in under a year. And the training center building itself may have been the easy part – the facility needed academic classrooms, high-fidelity simulators and training devices, a new fleet of aircraft, and the supporting infrastructure in order to deliver world-class training. CAE beat the schedule by a month, starting training in February 2017. The CAE Dothan Training Center is a company-owned and company-operated training center, and the Army pays for a service.

The Army Fixed-Wing Flight Training program provides training forexperienced Army rotary-wing aviators transitioning to fly the Army’s fleet ofmore than 350 fixed-wing aircraft. A new part of the training program, theInitial Entry Fixed-Wing (IEFW) course, allows entry-level Army studentsto begin their career track to fixed-wing aircraft much sooner.  Overall,more than 600 pilots will be trained annually. CAE is also able to offertraining to other U.S. and international customers.

WhatCAE has to say about their award win and project updates since last year:

Ray Duquette, president and general manager, CAE USA: “When you can look holistically at a training enterprise, you can design and develop an integrated training system to be efficient and cost-effective while focusing on the primary objective – the output of producing prepared, proficient and mission ready military aircrew. The development of the Dothan Training Center for the Army fixed-wing flight training program afforded us the opportunity to do this, and the recognition from MS&T as the first winner of the Outstanding Training System Integration Project award means a great deal to everyone at CAE who played a role in creating this world-class training facility.”

Gene Colabatistto, group president, Defence & Security, CAE: “CAE’s approach to developing an integrated training system, our global experience, and our flexibility to partner and collaborate helps us differentiate the company, and there’s no better example of our training systems integration capabilities than what you see at the CAE Dothan Training Center. We are justifiably proud of the comprehensive training program and facility we developed for the Army, so it is especially gratifying when MS&T put the spotlight on the Dothan Training Center as its first-ever winner of the Outstanding Training System Integration Project.”