Founded in Ottawa in 1992 as Gallium Visual Systems, Kongsberg Geospatial was acquired by Norwegian defence giant Kongsberg Gruppen in 2006.
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The Canadian arm of a Norway-based multinational company is expanding its Kanata office and plans to hire dozens of workers in a bid to capitalize on a growing push for more homegrown defence and security solutions.
Founded in Ottawa in 1992 as Gallium Visual Systems, Kongsberg Geospatial was acquired by Norwegian defence giant Kongsberg Gruppen in 2006.
The firm’s flagship product is TerraLens, geospatial visualization software that helps clients such as the U.S. Navy create 2D and 3D models of combat environments. The company has been expanding its products and services in recent years, adding offerings such as software that helps pilots of drones used in mission-critical operations like fire rescues and organ delivery navigate beyond their visual line of sight, as well as training software that simulates real-world conditions for clients such as the Canadian Armed Forces.
President and managing director Jordan Freed says it’s a booming business, and it’s about to get even bigger thanks to a new contract with NAV Canada, the non-profit private organization that owns and operates the country’s civil air navigation system.
The “multi-decade” deal will see Kongsberg Geospatial work with Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace, a business unit of its Norwegian parent, to build software that will help airports provide remote air traffic control service.
The system is now being tested at Kingston Airport with the aim of getting the green light from Transport Canada for use in terminals across the country. Freed says the software could eventually be installed at up to 80 Canadian airports over the next 15 years.
“It’s really been about not just capacity growth but capability growth,” he explained.
Fuelled by growing service offerings, Kongsberg Geospatial has been on an expansion tear of late. The firm now has about 90 employees, up from around 40 when Freed joined the firm three years ago.
At the beginning of this month, the company took over 10,000 square feet of space on the first floor of 411 Legget Dr. in Kanata north, the same building where Kongsberg Geospatial has occupied 19,000 square feet on the fourth floor for the past seven years.
The new space comes decked out with cutting-edge laboratory facilities and a product demonstration room as well as room for an additional 30 employees.
Freed says he expects the company will have no trouble filling its new digs. He says Kongsberg Geospatial is perfectly positioned to win contracts from a new Liberal government that has pledged to boost defence spending and implement a “made-in-Canada” procurement policy for military equipment amid rising trade tensions with the United States.
“We have a major opportunity,” Freed told OBJ in a recent interview. “We have a government that’s just come in with a requirement … to radically increase defence spending. We have a geopolitical situation that means industry needs to step up and provide our government with solutions that are developed in Canada or developed with international partners to provide options that are not U.S.-based. Kongsberg is uniquely situated for that.”
Three years ago, Kongsberg Geospatial unveiled a long-term strategic blueprint that projected the company would double its revenues within five years. It actually hit that mark two years earlier than originally expected, prompting management to draw up a new five-year plan that sets a target of 50 per cent revenue growth by 2030.
Freed is confident the company will reach that goal. While he concedes the “race for talent” is fierce in the Kanata tech hub and Kongsberg Geospatial doesn’t have the name recognition of some of its bigger competitors, he believes the best is yet to come for the upstart firm.
Still, Freed also admits nothing is guaranteed in today’s volatile political and economic landscape.
“The geopolitical situation is incredibly uncertain,” he said. “As much as we believe it is a huge opportunity for the international companies that have subsidiaries here in Canada, that can change on a dime.”
