P3 project cleans up at Engineering Australia awards

Greg Combet, the Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Procurement, today congratulated the RAAF Edinburgh-based P3 Accord project team for its success at the South Australian Engineering Australia Achievement Awards this week.

The team won the major Project Management award, as well as the Malcolm Kinnaird Engineering Excellence Award for their work delivering the Orion aircraft Tactical Common Data Link upgrade.

“This prize is usually dominated by civil investment and infrastructure projects in South Australia and it is the first time that a Defence Aerospace project has taken the award. Considering the relatively small size and cost of our project, it emphasises just how good our project management and design had to be, in essence it was a David and Goliath scenario,” said Officer Commanding Maritime Patrol Systems Program Office, Group Captain Tim Pedley.

Defence, BAE Systems Australia and Australian Aerospace are part of the P3 Accord Master Agreement that provides capability upgrades and Through-life-Support for the RAAF’s Orion AP-3C maritime patrol fleet.  The P-3 Accord partners are especially pleased to have received the award which is named for Malcolm Kinnaird, AC, who was also responsible for recommending the current Defence capability development and acquisition two pass approach.

Mr Combet said that “the P-3 Accord project team rapidly acquired, integrated, tested and fielded the AP-3C Tactical Common Data Link (TCDL) capability for the AP-3C aircraft.

“The Defence Material Organisation delivered the TCDL capability to a very aggressive schedule and under budget through the strategic alliance.  The capability is now being introduced on all AP-3C aircraft under the AIR 5276 CAP1 project recently announced by the Minister for Defence, Joel Fitzgibbon, in Adelaide on 15 August,” said Mr Combet.

The judging panel was impressed with the commitment of the parties to build an ongoing relationship and recognised the benefits of strong strategic partnerships to deliver not only this project, but other upgrades for critical Defence assets. As a result, there is potential for Australian industry to undertake comparable work overseas.

“Australian Orion’s are now better placed to support Coalition operations in the Middle East with the introduction of ‘real time’ tactical video links to support ground and maritime forces,” Mr Combet said.

“The upgrade enables RAAF Orion crews to provide Coalition commanders with valuable real time aerial views of their surrounding environment. The introduction of TCDL technology means that detailed, aerial visuals of an area can be beamed to ground troops, day or night, to help identify hostile or suspicious activities. This has never been successfully done by any major Australian Defence systems to date, let alone from an aircraft to individual soldiers.”

AP-3C Orions are traditionally a maritime patrol aircraft but since late 2003 the aircraft have been conducting overland patrols of Iraq, in addition to watching over international waters in the Persian Gulf.

The project will now go onto Engineering Australia National Awards judging with the winners to be announced on 19 November in the Great Hall at Parliament House in Canberra.

Media contacts:

Rod Hilton (Greg Combet):                                            02 6277 4771 or 0458 276 619

Defence Media Liaison:                                                 02 6265 3343 or 0408 498 664