Thales Australia has received awards recognising its design and project management achievements with respect to its Bushmaster and Hawkei vehicles.
The company won the ‘Project of the Year’ and ‘Best Small Project’ gongs at the recent Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM) Victoria Chapter’s Project Management Achievement Awards.
The awards were for the company’s Bushmaster export to Jamaica project, which has seen 12 of the life-saving vehicles delivered to the Jamaica Defence Force.
The ‘Project of the Year’ award is decided by a panel of industry judges, with the winner deemed to best represent outstanding achievement in project management across a number of areas including integration, scope, time, cost, quality, human resources, communication, risk, procurement and stakeholder management.
The Victorian Chapter Winner of the Project of the Year Award will go into the National AIPM awards to be held in October at the National AIPM Conference.
In addition, the company has won the award for 2016 Defence Science and Technology Eureka Prize for Outstanding Science in Safeguarding Australia. The award recognised Thales development of the Hawkei light infantry vehicle for Army.
The Australian Museum, which conducts the annual event said: "Traditional light weight military vehicles are susceptible to battlefield damage from Improvised Explosive Devices and small arms fire. The innovative new Hawkei, developed by Thales, provides Australian soldiers with potentially life-saving protection against roadside bombs and other threats by combining several existing technologies to produce a novel design".