Codarra began as a ‘pretty sure I can do it better’ idea from two Defence industry guys. Almost 30 years later, they’re still right.
Philip Smart | Adelaide
In the movie Apollo 13 original lunar module pilot Ken Mattingly, bumped from the mission for fear he may have contracted measles, played a critical role in his colleagues’ survival by using a simulator to divine the exact order in which the crippled spacecraft’s equipment could be brought back on line without overloading its damaged electrical system.
Codarra Advanced Systems managing director Warren Williams recounts that scene as a textbook demonstration of the value of the company’s electrical loads analysis (ELA) software. With ELA today’s engineers would solve the same problem in minutes at their desk.
“He went through every scenario, switching things on, switching things off, testing to see whether there were overloads,” Williams told ADM. “That’s what the ELA does. It models the loads and allows people to do ‘what if?’ analysis.”
Originally designed for Australian Army Blackhawk helicopters, Codarra’s ELA is now in service with a host of US aerospace manufacturers plus the US Navy and US Air Force. Lockheed Aeronautics was the first major customer, thanks partly to the flexibility of its ubiquitous C130 Hercules transport aircraft.
“Every country that bought their C130 Hercules aircraft wanted a different configuration,” Williams said. “So every time they made a change it would take them three months to do the analysis to check the airworthiness of the aircraft.
Codarra has designed its own UAV and is now developing a counter-UAV system called Talion
“The ELA automatically does all of that switching and configuration and enables the user to set up a whole bunch of scenarios, whether it’s an aeroplane taxiing, taking off, cruising, firing a missile, landing, etcetera. You can have a thousand scenarios and put them all together and say okay, now if I change my radio receiver, what is the effect in every one of these scenarios?”
ELA is a two-edged sword for Codarra, creating a market footprint and sometimes opening the door for the company’s
primary services of engineering design, project management and software. But as Williams points out, it also provided an early lesson in return on investment.
“It would be brilliant if it ever paid for itself,” he said. “It’s one of these things where we found that the costs of commercialising a very good product were so high that it was really hard to ever recoup those development costs with a reasonable licence fee.”
Beginnings
Codarra Advanced Systems was born when Williams and co-founder Scott McGeechan were made redundant from a Canberra based multinational in 1990. Sure they could provide at least as good a service as their former employer, they started in a back yard shed and immediately landed a subcontract; with their former employer.
Williams then found himself writing the specification for Defence’s data communications network, which eventually evolved in to the DRN and the DSN.
“And there was a thing back in those days called the DPSDN, Defence Packet Switch Data Network,” he said. “We wrote the spec for that and then we evaluated the tenders and back in those days I think it cost little to put in place. And I remember saying to the DMO guys, you’re going to need at least six people to support this. And I think that was the predecessor to the current support, which requires a huge team. But then again, the network’s about a thousand times bigger as well nowadays.”
With success came growth, followed by the next small growing pain.
“We did a lot of work for DMO and on a whole bunch of various communications projects and a little bit of work on the Collins Class submarine project. All those things just created a reputation for us, which in a way it was a little bit of a battle because people used to think this was the Warren and Scott show. It was a long time before we were able to convince people that when you’re buying services from Codarra, you’ve got the backing of Warren and Scott but Warren and Scott don’t do every project.”
Professional services
The projects have since become larger and more complex. For the new Headquarters Joint Operations Command (Joint Project 8001 Phase 2) at Bungendore outside Canberra, Codarra provided most of the project management office and managed delivery of the C4I capability for the Department of Defence.
“Professional services has always been our main business, doing engineering and project management and software development for customers.
“Things like ELA and various other products we’ve developed, they all came about as a result of us inventing things to do using people that weren’t busy; people on the bench.
“It led to us being committed to R&D and enjoying it, and coming up with some really, really good ideas. Not everything that we produce is a success, there’s been plenty of failures on the way, but there’s some stuff here that I think sometimes we’re a little bit ahead of our time and so I think that it’s good for us because it’s just fun to do.”
Codarra has designed its own UAV, and is now developing a counter-UAV system called Talion. It is also working on a system of remote controlled weapons. But again, while these projects exercise the mind and may well turn in to a marketed product, Codarra’s major push for the future will still be in providing brains to solve and manage problems for customers.
When not innovating for customers, Codarra's designers have created various electronic products, including remotely operated weapons. Credit: Codarra
“The next phase of Codarra is a huge growth phase in our professional services,” Williams said. “That’s going to be the main driver. We are planning on doing that through working in consortia with a whole bunch of other like-minded companies. And I think given the right opportunity we can use that as a launching pad to build up the capabilities of the Australian defence industry, not only for Codarra but for all the people that are coming along in the consortium.
“It’s not about Codarra, it’s about Australian indigenous companies and that’s our end game.”