Ever since people have been required to train, it’s mainly been the trainer who has the power to decide whether they pass or fail. But Halifax, Nova Scotia-based Bluedrop Training and Simulation is working to change that dynamic, by introducing objective tools that measure student performance and provide information to both the trainee and trainer to improve learning outcomes.
“We want to provide not just the technology, but also the training environment,” explained Jean-Claude Siew, the company’s executive vice president of technology and simulation.
With 30-plus years of experience working with all three branches of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), search-and-rescue agencies, fire departments, wind farms, and the offshore oil-and-gas sector, Bluedrop has delivered training services and products to support nearly every large Canadian program or procurement. Today, the company has about 180 employees and recently expanded into the U.S. with a branch in Orlando, Florida.
“On the services side, we provide courseware to Canadian Navy, Air Force and Army programs,” Siew said. “This is used during the training of military personnel. On the Air Force side, we work mainly through prime contractors, such as CAE. For the Army, we are working directly with the CAF. For the Navy, we provide both courseware and technical publications services.”
Bluedrop’s products focus mainly on crew training.
“We noticed there is a gap when it comes to rear crew training,” Siew explained. “With the advent of new technology, such as virtual and mixed reality, we have focused on helicopter hoist operators and gunnery operators. We are well known for our hoist mission training system [HMTS] and our multipurpose gunnery mission trainer [MGMT].”
He said Bluedrop has provided training systems for U.S. Air Force Black Hawks, and assisted Boeing with V-22 Osprey tiltrotor and CH-47 Chinook helicopter training systems. It has also delivered two HMTS units to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) for the Firehawk — the civilian firefighting version of the Black Hawk. In Canada, Bluedrop has created training systems for offshore operator Cougar Helicopters, as well as two crew training systems for the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) — one for the East Coast and one for the West.
As a small- to medium-sized enterprise (SME), Bluedrop often contributes to large military procurement programs. For example, the company is part of SkyAlyne, the collaborative team that recently won the contract for the RCAF’s Future Aircrew Training (FAcT) Program. Bluedrop is also contributing to major projects in Canada’s National Shipbuilding Strategy.
“We invest a lot in research and development and innovation. We also invest in other areas to improve the learning management system,” Siew said. “We create courseware that incorporates new technology, and we are advancing our products’ mixed reality capabilities. For example, in the maintenance stream, we are figuring out what we can do to streamline training, before students have to handle physical aircraft parts.”
Siew said careful consideration goes into deciding where to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities.
“We don’t just use AI for the sake of using AI. We use it to create more efficient training content that is more interactive and keeps the trainee engaged. The next track is using AI to create unpredictability in a structured training environment, to integrate multiple unpredictable events. The last part is, we are careful with controlled and restricted data — we must ensure we are very secure and safe in the military domain.”
As important as technology is to the equation, Bluedrop is first and foremost a training company.
Adapting training methodologies
Pilots are used to training in simulators, but when it comes to rear crewmembers, many organizations are still not using simulation. Siew said this presents a big opportunity for Bluedrop.
“We find their training plan does not account for simulation. So, for us, it’s about how do we ensure that from a user perspective, it’s easily adoptable as part of the training plan.”
Currently, Bluedrop is conducting demonstrations and authoring white papers to show the training gains achieved with rear crew training systems. For example, RCAF crews using the company’s HMTS in Comox, British Columbia, reduced in-helicopter training sessions from 12 to seven — saving fuel and money while allowing repeatability of any given scenario.
“On a sim, each moment is focused on training — there’s no time wasted transiting to and from the practice area,” Siew said.
As Bluedrop concentrates on expanding its horizons in the U.S., Siew said any organization that takes training seriously would be their ideal customer.
“We are not an online e-learning company,” he concluded. “We are very good at structured training. For an SME, we are big enough to work with multiple large programs at the same time, and we also have the depth of capabilities to support those programs.
“We are innovators, so that instills a level of confidence — if there are challenges to conquer, we already have a team in place and ready to go.”
