Canadian Defence Review (CDR) Industry Profile on DEW Engineering

DEW Engineering and Development ULC is an Ottawa-based, defence contractor that provides its customers with total solutions involving platform integration, vehicle armour innovation, and large-scale manufacturing.

Company President, Ian Marsh told CDR for this report, "Part of our success is our ability to team with the right partners. We're not an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer). What we are is a very versatile company that can bring a lot of capability to the table. One of our core strengths is to be a generalist in a world of specialists. With that said, we have some pretty sophisticated capabilities and we are a very credible source of manufacturing in Canada. If you give us a task we will make it happen. Our goal is to work within our well defined core areas to offer OEM's the best potential to win programs in Canada and abroad".

Excellence in Armouring. DEW's add-on armour can be found on all of the 4,000 plus Stryker vehicles in service around the world today. DEW's armour product line specializes specifically in ceramic composite armour. DEW president Ian Marsh said, "Our armour is on approximately 5,000 vehicles around the world. We've been in continual production of armour solutions since 1997. Those solutions demonstrated a high level of performance, and we've seen a high level of customer satisfaction. And Bill Brewer pointed out, "Once we got into armour, we immediately recognized that you needed to have a comprehensive research and development program in order to remain on the cutting edge of this technology. As a result, we established just such a program along with a range testing facility in order to have the ability to put together new armour products, test them and very quickly determine if they will nullify or defeat a specific threat. This has significantly decreased our turn-around time in developing new armouring products.

Recent Successes. In July of 2009, the Government of Canada awarded DEW a contract to design and produce a family of shelters for the MSVS (Medium Support Vehicle System) Project. The scope includes six distinct baseline shelter variants built to ISO standards. In addition to a mechanical room which includes a generator and HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) the shelters all feature a separate working area equipped with the infrastructure.

The overall project includes the design, prototyping, formal qualification test program, standard integrated logistic support activities and production of 896 shelters. In the words of Ian Marsh: "This project leverages DEW Engineering's well established expertise in military shelters. Designs have been validated and production is underway. The end result will be the fielding of a world class capability for our soldiers."

Full article in Canadian Defence Review by Joetey Attariwala (PDF).