My name is Mike McKean. I am an Army Veteran, Ex-Royal Corps of Signals, Sergeant Radio Relay Technician. I am our CEO and I’d like to explain how we operate.

Location

Our office is co-located at the UK, Defence, Science & Technology Laboratory (Dstl) research & development site at Porton Down.

Research

We have substantial support from several experienced PhD Research Professors from several UK Universities. To help you confirm this, I can put you in contact with personnel at The Submarine Delivery Agency who worked with them as part of our Charybdis Phase 1 project.

Customer Opinions

I have successfully delivered three projects, and I will be pleased to introduce any potential customer to my past customers. Most of my contacts are technical staff from various MoD organizations. They are most likely to have an open discussion with other MoD contacts. If you are from the MoD, and want me to broker an introduction for you, then please contact me using our contact page.

Transparency & Reducing Risk

I rely on my customers trusting me and my colleagues, and partners. To do that my customers are introduced to my colleagues and partners at the very beginning of any exploratory talks or meetings. This gives customers confidence in as much as it’s not me (Mike McKean) doing the work, but my partners. Similarly my colleagues and partners, get to know customers, and learn what they want done, and by when.

Scoping a Project and Changes

I operate a hybrid Prince2/Agile project methodology. I use Prince2 to measure progress, to make sure we are on track, and for payment purposes. I use an agile/iterative development and frequent practical presentations of the technology, partly to maintain stakeholder involvement, but to also double check that we are all still “in synch”.

Understanding & Commitment

I always build something once I have qualified a customer’s interest. I stress, I do that before a customer sends us a Purchase Order or Contract.

I do that so that I and my team can begin the learning process, about what the customer wants. I see that as an essential step in any “pre-project” process. It helps us all (customer and me and my team) to find out if we are “on the right track”, in terms of what the Project Output(s) are.

The customer may not proceed with us, but anything we have designed/built is seen by me as a good learning/experiential exercise.

My Colleagues?

I use PhD Research Professors from UK Universities. In my most recent project - the Submarine Delivery Agency - Charybdis Project – I worked with ten PhD Research Professors from four UK universities.

I like to think that the SDA were very impressed when they met with them.

I also use self employed technology contractors, military veterans and students, studying for advanced degrees.

Office & Laboratory

We design and build our own systems, starting from board level. We do our own software development, and testing.

Flight Testing

We have access to a large aerodrome. That enables us to perform Radio Controlled and Autonomous flight testing.

Wave & Manoeuvring

We have access (using two different sites) to a wave tank and manoeuvring tank.

Cheap off the Shelf (COTS) Items

We have contractual agreements with several of the world’s largest technology distributors, which gives us global capabilities.

This strategy allows us to scale, to support the largest customer requirements.