Kevin Ford, who spearheaded the rise of Calian Group from a mid-sized local company into a major Canadian defence industry player, is retiring at the end of this year after a decade as CEO of the Kanata-based firm. The 61-year-old Ottawa native will be succeeded in the top job by Patrick Houston, Calian’s chief financial […]
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Kevin Ford, who spearheaded the rise of Calian Group from a mid-sized local company into a major Canadian defence industry player, is retiring at the end of this year after a decade as CEO of the Kanata-based firm.
The 61-year-old Ottawa native will be succeeded in the top job by Patrick Houston, Calian’s chief financial officer and chief development officer, effective Jan. 1, 2026, the company announced Tuesday.
Ford, who joined Calian 15 years ago and became chief executive in 2015, used a sports analogy to explain why he decided now was the time to step down.
“I feel like as a coach of the team that I’ve taught the team everything,” he said in an interview from Calian’s head office on Tuesday. “We’ve done the systems, we’ve done different things. I think some new perspective on the bench is a good thing. I know Pat is going to bring great energy and vision to the company. I felt the timing was right.”
Ford showed an aggressive streak and a willingness to take risks that belied his humble, down-to-earth demeanour during his time at Calian, which began when he left his job as IBM’s global defence leader to take over Calian’s business and technology services division in 2010.
When he moved into the CEO’s suite five years later, Calian’s annual revenues barely cracked the $200-million mark. But Ford – who entered the workforce straight out of high school in the early 1980s as a key-punch operator at software outfit Computel and eventually landed a job as a computer programmer at the Department of National Defence before jumping to the private sector in the mid-1990s – soon charted Calian on a course for growth that has seen its revenues nearly quadruple over the past decade.
As CEO, Ford worked hard to shift the market’s perception of the company as an IT staffing firm, even long after it branched out into sectors such as providing health-care services, building military training software and manufacturing satellite components.
Ford summed up that mission during an interview in 2017, when he was named Ottawa’s CEO of the Year by OBJ and the Ottawa Board of Trade.
“The company was the best-kept secret around, and my job was to come on board and tell the story,” he said.
Revisiting the topic Tuesday, Ford said he was proud of how far the company has come in reshaping its public image.
“I think there’s a book to be written on evolving a company brand,” he said. “I think we’ve made a lot of progress on an unknown brand in the public markets, frankly. We had one analyst following us (in 2015). ‘Sleepy dividend company’ were the words that were kind of used at the time.
“But now I think we’re being viewed as an innovator – as a company that’s going global with a bunch of crazy great technology and innovation across defence, space and health care. I think we’ve made a lot of progress, but I think the journey for Pat and the team is to continue to evolve the brand and continue to take it global. There’s still work to be done, but I’m proud of where we’ve come from.”
Perhaps Ford’s greatest legacy was being the driving force behind Calian’s aggressive strategy of growth through acquisitions – a campaign that really began when he joined the firm.
Since then, Calian has completed more than two dozen M&A deals that have expanded the company’s customer base and product offerings beyond Canada and into the United States and Europe.
Nearly 85 per cent of Calian’s revenue growth last year came from newly acquired companies, while customers from outside Canada accounted for 32 per cent of its revenues, up from 25 per cent four years earlier. Meanwhile, revenue from commercial clients rose to $366 million from $203 million in the same timeframe.
