Posted by Emmeline Gracedale on
DTC Award Finalists Highlight Defence Industry Innovation and Collaboration
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, 5th of December at the Adelaide Convention Centre and comprise the following shortlisted finalists across the various categories:
Innovation Category
Defence-focused management and security consultancy De Stefano & Co were 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.
Starke Advanced Manufacturing Group company VPG Innovation’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.
The third finalist in the Innovation category, complex systems design company Shoal Group, 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
100% Veteran-owned Australian engineering and professional services business Bastion Defence was 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.
Also nominated in this category were cyber and spectrum security solutions provider Consunet. Consunet 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.
Leading provider of supplier assurance and risk management solutions Hellios Information Pty Ltd 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
A collaborative effort led by Consunet with Lockheed Martin Australia and the School of Information Operations (SOIO) to form a cohesive, multidisciplinary team that successfully delivered the $61M Electromagnetic Battle Management (EMBM) system was recognised by the award judges. This strategic tool enables the 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.
Bringing together two South Australian, Defence-embedded SMEs, Aimpoint and Ares Armaments Australia, has addressed Australia’s historic reliance on foreign suppliers for GWEO, a critical vulnerability in times of conflict or geopolitical instability. The Australian Defence Force 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, Aimpoint and Ares 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.
Also nominated were Defence Trailblazer in collaboration with the University of Adelaide, UNSW and Lockheed Martin Australia to address a national skills gap in formal qualification pathways for combat systems engineering in Australia. The collaboration 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 high-quality, 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, 5th of December, Adelaide Convention Centre.
The event is considered the defence industry’s most prestigious and typically attracts more than 700 guests from across Australia including senior representatives from the Department of Defence, representatives from State and Federal Government, Defence Primes, and Australian industry. To book your seat, visit - https://dtc.org.au/events/2025-defence-industry-dinner-awards-ceremony
About the Defence Teaming Centre
Based in Adelaide, South Australia, the Defence Teaming Centre is a leading not-for-profit member-based industry association that invests 100% of its earnings into maturing the Australian defence sector through a variety of services, educational initiatives, events, networking and advocacy. We bring together Defence Primes, SMEs, academia and professional service providers to grow and develop the sector and to support Australia’s strategic defence interests. The DTC’s role is to represent South Australian defence industry, and national defence industry that has an interest in SA-based business and we do this by connecting our members, developing opportunities for growth and advocating for our industry.
Media Contact | Grant Law | Grant Law Public Relations |grant@grantlaw.com.au
Shoal Group - Fast CAD Trials (below)
Starke Advanced Manufacturing Group | VPG Innovation’s Slow Cook Off Oven (SCOO) (below)
