For CDR’s annual DEOY feature, we asked Ottawa Bureau Chief, James Careless, to profile this seasoned executive. Ford’s deep roots in Canada’s defence industry, his company’s support for the CAF and NATO Allies, and the pursuit of a billion dollars in annual revenue, were all discussed as part of our in-depth profile. Please join us in celebrating Canada’s Defence Executive of the Year for 2024.

The best of the best: This is what defines the annual winner of Canadian Defence Review’s Defence Executive of the Year (DEOY) award. This year’s recipient is Kevin Ford, CEO of Calian Group. He is a calm, competent professional with a strong belief in teamwork and customer service, and displayed an immense sense of gratitude for winning this prestigious honour. “Winning the DEOY award feels amazing,” Ford told CDR. “I am cognizant of the depth and quality of the leaders in Canadian defence, both in industry and at the Department of National Defence (DND) among civilian and military personnel alike. Receiving the DEOY award refects upon the great work being done by the professionals at Calian, and I am lucky to have the opportunity to work with this team.” For the record, Calian provides healthcare, information technology, space & communications, and training services to the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), among other clients. Founded in Ottawa in 1982, Calian has a workforce of about 4,500 in oforces around the globe. Kevin Ford joined Calian as Calian Business and Technology Services Division President in 2010. He was promoted to CEO in 2015 and has guided its growth and success ever since.

A LIFE IN DEFENCE

Kevin Ford’s working life has been associated with defence from day one. “I started right out of school with DND in January 1982, working in their data centre,” he said. “It was literally a big computer room in Ottawa where I mounted big data tapes and all kinds of other things.” Soon after joining DND, Ford signed up for an in-house training course and became a COBOL [computer programming language] programmer. He then moved up the civilian computer ranks at DND to the level of Director of Applications Management – Materiel Systems, before joining the private sector as a sales leader with DMR Group in 1996. Various corporate acquisitions resulted in Ford eventually becoming an IBM Canada partner responsible for defence in 1999, where he stayed until Calian hired him in 2010. “So, it’s been more than 40 years now in this industry in some shape or form,” said Ford.

COMMITTED LEADERSHIP

Kevin Ford makes no apologies about being a committed, passionate leader at Calian. “I always say that a leader’s responsible for their company’s vision, pace and culture,” he said. “In my case, I’ve always had an idea of where I wanted to go, whether personally or in running an organization. Creating a vision that inspires is definitely something I think I’ve done in my career culturally.” This being said, Kevin Ford doesn’t equate committed leadership with prima donna behaviour. “I think the people that work with me would say that I am somebody that is easy to get along with,” he said. “I’m not egotistical, I’m not really a title guy. I would say that I’ve always been a good team player, I think — one that works hard, has a passion for what he does, and brings his A game to the officce every day. I also like to build rapport and respect among my team; managing by consensus and allowing everyone in my team to have a voice. Whatever book you read, management is 80% listening, 20% speaking. I try to live by those values, and I think that is what has driven my success.”

WHAT FORD BRINGS TO CALIAN

Kevin Ford is quick to point out that Calian was a strong, growing, and diversifying company before he took the reins in 2015. “Calian has developed through organic growth, and mergers and acquisitions,” he said. “I really credit my immediate predecessor, Ray Basler, for focusing on profitable execution rather than just growth. We’ve had 87-88 consecutive profitable quarters as a result of this strategy. This is why Calian is open to new ideas and ready to jump on opportunities that may stretch us.” As for his contribution to Calian’s ongoing success? “What I brought – and still bring – is a sales and marketing focus as well as recognizing that our brand was and is important,” Ford told CDR. “Coming from a company like IBM, you recognize a brand’s importance. That’s why I changed our company name from Calian Technologies to Calian Group, changed the company stock ticker, and sent these and other signals to the market to indicate that the thought process at Calian had changed.” Kevin Ford is also a big believer in the power of the right mergers and acquisitions (M&A). “I’ve done 18-19 M&A deals since I’ve taken over as CEO, using them and our organic growth to achieve double digit pro table growth for the last six years,” he said. “We’re seeing that a billion dollars in annual revenue is no longer just a number you’re throwing at a wall: We see a road to a billion, as I have told the market and our shareholders. So, embracing growth, embracing investment, organic growth and M&As, evolving the culture to sales and marketing and continuing to innovate — all of that matters. And I think the last point that I have brought to Calian is to take the company global. We are now in three very big areas: Canada, U.S. and Europe. We were primarily Canadian-based when I took over.”

STANDING OUT

With six years of double-digit growth under its belt, Calian is obviously doing something right. So, what makes this company stand out from the competition?

That’s a good question, said Ford. “After all, there’s a lot of great companies in the defence industry. As for the thing that differentiates Calian? I have not yet met a company, even some of the larger ones, that are involved in healthcare, IT, cyber learning, and advanced technologies. We have a lot of companies that do one, maybe two of those, but there’s not a lot of companies that can basically handle all four. I think our biggest differentiation is that we’ve come at this from a diverse perspective and we’re able to deliver across all of those because of the strong, credible teams that are delivering on behalf of Calian every day.”

This is just the first point that makes Calian stand out from the pack. “Number Two is our  nancial stability,” Ford said. “As a company that’s been around 42 years, is publicly traded, has had 87-88 consecutive profitable quarters, and has a clean balance sheet so we can invest in the future — that really makes us different from everybody else. Finally, there’s our people. I know everyone talks about their team and how good they are – but I have to point out – success like Calian’s doesn’t happen without the right kind of committed people at all levels of the organization. We have a team that’s very connected to the purpose of what the military does. And I think that passion shines through on how Calian delivers for our customers.”

GOING GLOBAL

Kevin Ford has built Calian’s success on what he calls the ‘four pillars’: Customer retention, customer diversification, innovation, and continuous improvement. “I think you have to execute on all four of those pillars to continue to grow profitably,” he said. This strategy has led Calian to ‘going global’. “We’re basically now supporting defence agendas in Europe across advanced technologies and training,” Ford told CDR. “We have done more diversification and innovation in areas such as virtual learning and virtual delivery of healthcare to military clients than ever before. In fact, the biggest change at Calian over the last two years is how much more global we are across all that we do now, and how we will continue to do these things, to continue our journey to a billion dollar’s annual revenue and beyond.”

GROWING BUSINESS WITH THE CAF

Even with its movement into other markets, Canada remains important to Calian, as does the CAF. “We’ve really evolved,” said Ford. “The core entry point for us into DND on the training side was working with the Canadian Army. We started with land synthetic environments but are now working with them on core training mandates and exercises. We’re also working with the RCAF on how to maintain weapon release systems on CF-18s, and with different facets of the military in training related now to health, logistics, engineering, or mission rehearsal, which is kind of our forte, frankly. So, we’ve just taken that one contract with DND and expanded into this national training capability in Canada across multitudes of training requirements.”

The secret to Calian’s training success is the “really smart people” who provide these services to clients, said Ford. These really smart people include “a lot of veterans who wanted to give back to the CAF, and we were happy to bring them into Calian to help them do this. We understand how beneficial it is for a new recruit to be trained by somebody who’s actually been in Afghanistan or a similar scenario that this person will face.”

ADDRESSING CAF CHALLENGES

As anyone who has been watching the news knows, the CAF is facing many challenges. They include replacing aging equipment at a time of budget cuts, coping with ballooning costs in current procurements, and having serious issues in recruiting and retaining the people they need. Calian’s goal is to help the CAF and other militaries facing similar challenges to make the most of what they have. For instance, being able to train troops using onsite immersive education allows them to learn without having to travel and be away from their regular duties. As well, being able to support the health and cybersecurity needs of the CAF allows its remaining personnel to focus on other missions. “Our advanced technologies group, depending on the mandate, is definitely helping the CAF with the space element of their duties,” Ford told CDR. “They’re also engineering and manufacturing components for army vehicles, along with supporting some Navy programs. What we do really well is delivering high quality, low quantity engineering. Those areas where clients say that they can’t afford to fail, is what we do really, really well across all of Calian.”

WORKING WITH NATO

One of Calian’s biggest achievements has been to extend its business reach to NATO and its member military organizations. “The key element is we’ve planted a flag, if I can put it that way,” he said. “We acquired two companies that had worked with NATO a couple of years back, and we’ve leveraged that as our initial footprint and expanded. We’ve just incorporated in Belgium, and are running training exercises now across a lot of the NATO nations in Europe.”

Mindful that clients like to physically see who they’re working with, Calian is establishing itself in Europe. “So, one thing we’ve done with NATO is to invest in a local presence through acquisitions and geographically planting of forces there,” said Ford. “We’re also meeting with executives there, spending time walking through NATO headquarters and finding out what is on their minds, and what do they need industry to do? But most importantly, we are delivering on what we’re promising to NATO clients. We’ve got people coming to us and challenging us to do some things that they didn’t think we could do, and we’re actually stepping up. So, the brand continues to get stronger because not only are we physically there, but we’re actually delivering value.”

WHY CANADA NEEDS TO TAKE DEFENCE SERIOUSLY

With all that he does and has done for the defence of Canada, Kevin Ford has strong concerns about the future of Canadian democracy and the need to defend it. “As a former CADSI board member and chair, I hope we don’t lose sight of the fact that we can’t take our democracy’s continued existence for granted,” he said. “As well, we need to invest in our military capability. We need to invest in our ability to support global reaction forces, whether it be with respect to climate change or hostile adversaries. Now I know right now that everyone’s struggling. We’re coming out of COVID relief-inspired government deficits. But we have to continue to remind the government, politicians, and Canadians that a capable and strong military is still a key component to our democracy. I hope that doesn’t sound like soapbox stuff, but right now we still need to make sure that those discussions are happening — not discrediting at all the requirement for environment, social issues and housing among all the things that we’re dealing with. We just can’t lose sight that we still need a strong military here to defend our values globally.”

LOOKING AHEAD

Having won this year’s DEOY award, Kevin Ford has no intention of resting on his laurels. “We have a roadmap to that billion, so Number One, we must continue to execute on our vision as we have been over the last six years,” he said. “Number two is to make sure that we don’t lose sight of the fact that we have to watch our pace. We’ve got to watch what we ask of our people and make sure to do things in a way that’s sustainable longer term. Finally, Number Three is for me to continue to  nd those opportunities where we can make a difference!”