• DT (Defence Trailblazer) Microcredentials - Dr Susan Close, Deputy Premier, South Australia; Dr Sanjay Mazumdar, executive director, Defence Trailblazer; and Warren McDonald, chief executive, Lockheed Martin Australia and New Zealand, pictured together with graduates of Australia’s first of credit-ready Combat Systems Engineering Micro-credentials, during a ceremony at the University of Adelaide. Credit: Defence Trailblazer
    DT (Defence Trailblazer) Microcredentials - Dr Susan Close, Deputy Premier, South Australia; Dr Sanjay Mazumdar, executive director, Defence Trailblazer; and Warren McDonald, chief executive, Lockheed Martin Australia and New Zealand, pictured together with graduates of Australia’s first of credit-ready Combat Systems Engineering Micro-credentials, during a ceremony at the University of Adelaide. Credit: Defence Trailblazer
  • Shoal Group – FastCAD system. Credit: DTC
    Shoal Group – FastCAD system. Credit: DTC
  • Consunet Team 2 – L-R, Shane Reschke, Emma Crosby, Kuba Kabacinski, Peter Freak. Credit: DTC
    Consunet Team 2 – L-R, Shane Reschke, Emma Crosby, Kuba Kabacinski, Peter Freak. Credit: DTC
  • VPG Oven – (left) Timothy Wilkinson, Head of Integrated Design and Innovation, and (right) Matthew Reimers, Design Engineer. Credit: DTC
    VPG Oven – (left) Timothy Wilkinson, Head of Integrated Design and Innovation, and (right) Matthew Reimers, Design Engineer. Credit: DTC
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DTC announces awards finalists

11 September 2025
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The Defence Teaming Centre (DTC) has announced the finalists in its annual awards reflecting a broad range of innovative projects, initiatives and collaborations that are shaping the future of Defence.  

This year, the awards recognise achievements under categories such as Innovation, Collaboration, and Transformation & Change. The winners will be announced at the DTC’s annual Defence Industry Dinner and Awards Ceremony 2025, Friday, 5 December at the Adelaide Convention Centre and comprise the following shortlisted finalists across the various categories:

Innovation Category

De Stefano & Co:

  • A Defence-focused management and security consultancy nominated for their unique security compliance programs developed for members of the Defence Industry Security Program (DISP). Their Ongoing Compliance Assurance (OCA) and Security Officer Support as a Service (SOSaaS) Programs provide audit support, training, security help-desk - and most of all, peace of mind - all at a fraction of the cost of a full-time security professional.

VPG Innovation:

  • The Starke Advanced Manufacturing Group company's Slow Cook Off Oven (SCOO) also impressed the judging panel with its sovereign innovation. Now at TRL:9, this advanced test chamber evaluates how munitions — including the BLU-111 bomb — react to slow heating, preventing the kind of malfunctions that have caused devastating accidents worldwide. By enabling Australian-made ordnance to meet NATO safety standards, the SCOO strengthens national defence and delivers a scalable, homegrown solution for safer munitions testing.

Shoal Group:

  • The third finalist in the Innovation category, a complex systems design company, has developed an innovative solution to a Defence need for a more effective approach to rapidly assessing warship signatures thereby enabling ‘on-the-fly’ threat analysis and decision-making. Shoal developed FastCAD, using LiDAR and photogrammetry, to capture and generate high-resolution CAD models faster, more cost-effectively and more efficiently than contemporary methods.

SME Transformation and Change Category

Bastion Defence:

  • 100% Veteran-owned Australian engineering and professional services business nominated for their service to the Hydrographic Systems Program Office (HSPO). Bastion led the end-to-end remediation of the Hydrographic Systems Program Office (HSPO) maintenance baseline, addressing longstanding risks to the safety and seaworthiness of the Leeuwin and Fantome Class vessels. 
  • The development and optimisation of over 2,800 Standard Activity Instructions (SAIs), removing redundant activities, optimising schedules, reducing onboard maintenance time and cost, led to more efficient execution at sea and enhanced operational readiness as well as a total estimated saving of $1.28 million per year across the HSPO fleet.

Consunet:

  • Also nominated in this category was this cyber and spectrum security solutions provider, which adopted the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) across their organisation. This includes a structured investment in staff training to embed Lean-Agile principles and practices at all levels, ensuring a consistent and collaborative approach to delivering complex Defence projects. 
  • Their implementation of SAFe has transformed the enterprise and how the teams plan, coordinate, and deliver work. Program Increment (PI) planning has become a key mechanism for aligning priorities, managing dependencies, and delivering value incrementally. This has improved transparency, predictability, and responsiveness across the organisation, driving productivity and pace of Defence capability delivery.

Hellios Information

  • This provider of supplier assurance and risk management solutions was nominated for the success of its flagship platform, JOSCAR. JOSCAR aims to reduce red tape from industry by allowing a single questionnaire submission to satisfy the requirements of multiple major buyers. Since launch in June 2024, JOSCAR has been adopted by the Department of Defence and 14 Prime Contractors in Aerospace & Defence.

Collaboration Award  

Consunet, Lockheed Martin Australia and the School of Information Operations (SOIO)

  • A collaborative effort to form a cohesive, multidisciplinary team that successfully delivered the $61M Electromagnetic Battle Management (EMBM) system was recognised by the award judges.
  • This tool enables the Australian Defence Force (ADF) to achieve Electromagnetic Spectrum (EMS) superiority through mission planning, simulation, execution, and evaluation of EMS usage in contested environments. The result is a sovereign capability that supports Electronic Warfare and other operations, enhances Australia’s defence posture and demonstrated how strategic partnerships across industry can deliver advanced, high-impact solutions for Defence.

Aimpoint and Ares Armaments Australia

  • This collaboration has addressed Australia’s historic reliance on foreign suppliers for GWEO, a critical vulnerability in times of conflict or geopolitical instability. The ADF uses hundreds of different guided weapons and explosive ordnance (GWEO) types, and each type can contain hundreds or even thousands of components. Individual GWEO types are often tightly coupled with specific launch platforms, combat and fire control systems and targeting systems, making substitution to a different GWEO type difficult.
  • This collaboration directly confronts this challenge by pioneering sovereign capacity in precision ammunition manufacturing which was identified as Sovereign defence Industry priority 4.
  • By investing their own resources, the companies are tackling funding, cultural, and industrial barriers head-on and delivering a nationally significant outcome: a veteran-staffed, export-capable SME contributing to sovereign munitions production, GWEO specific workforce development, and growth of intellectual property for Australia.

Defence Trailblazer, the University of Adelaide, UNSW and Lockheed Martin Australia

  • This collaboration addressed a national skills gap in formal qualification pathways for combat systems engineering in Australia. It successfully delivered Australia’s first credit-ready micro-credential program in Combat Systems Engineering—bolstering Australia’s national security capability in an area of growing strategic importance. The program consists of six stackable micro-credentials that develop practical skills in systems engineering, radar systems and theory, command and control, military effectors and mission engineering. Each course is aligned to award-level academic standards, creating potential credit pathways into future qualifications.

The DTC’s annual Defence Industry Dinner and Awards Ceremony 2025 will be held on Friday, 5 December, Adelaide Convention Centre. To book your seat, visit: https://dtc.org.au/events/2025-defence-industry-dinner-awardsceremony  

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