Season 1 | Episode 3

Rich Gravel:

Know. So yeah. Can we can the ship sail away? You know? But we would do all the we would progression of trials, right, so.

Speaker

Yeah. OK.

Rich Gravel:

You know what was called the installation inspections right up to operational trials and we would actually, I would go to see. I went to see in a couple of their aircraft carriers, the old invincible and you know, those glasses ships, which was really cool with the jump jet Harriers, you know, yeah, vertical takeoff and.

Ben Garvey:

So what? What years? What would this be?

Rich Gravel:

That was 94 to 98 when I was in England.

Ben Garvey:

Post Falklands, clearly and and some lessons from that still floating around the Royal Navy that must have been kind of.

Speaker

Yep, Yep, Yep.

Rich Gravel:

Absolutely, yeah.

Ben Garvey:

Poignant to.

Rich Gravel:

Yeah, absolutely. Was very much a front and centre. So I really I really enjoyed that. And then I came back to Canada and you know I I was trying to decide what to do and believe it or not, it was. It was kind of funny I ended. But doing I looked after the Navy’s Y2K problem of all things, because I came back in that.

Ben Garvey:

Computer engineer course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rich Gravel:

Hit. Well, that’s why and and so I took that program and we, we did really well. We were very ready and and and then after that I went off and did what’s called Staff College. So I went to Toronto and did a year of staff college and then I got promoted the commander and I came down here and that’s really where I think I kind of took off. I was the technical program manager for the. Here on the East Coast, so and during that time there was something going on called Apollo. We had five ships deployed to the Persian Gulf during the I think it’s the Gulf War 2 I.

Ben Garvey:

OK.

Rich Gravel:

Believe. Right. And. And so that was kind of my responsibility was to keep those ships technically ready. And then after that I went back to the fleet and I was, I was going to see as the fleet. Technical officer. So I was going. From now, now I was going to see in the frigates, which I didn’t really know, which is great. I got to learn them right and then after that I got.

Speaker 4

Promoted to captain and we were shipping out on the on the frigates. Yeah. Yeah. And. And as the technical officer, yes.

Speaker

You.

Ben Garvey:

So what? What? What does your day look like? I mean, you’re you’re offshore, you’re you’re running through trials or you’re on. Are you on active duty?

Rich Gravel:

Ohh yeah yeah, so so you go to sea with usually with the fleet commander. So you belong to the fleet Commander staff. So you only go when he goes or he or she goes. Which is normally when like a bunch of ships deploy together like you know say so.

Ben Garvey:

Yeah.

Speaker

Yes.

Rich Gravel:

It’s about operations as a task group, you know a number of ships working together as an exercise, so typically, so we wouldn’t go if a ship was going out and just doing trials typically, but we would go if 3 or 4 ships were deploying with a submarine or that kind of thing or we were going on an operation like a an OP Caribe, you know, we would go down and participate in that. Sometimes I was involved in.

Ben Garvey:

The exercise.

Speaker

Yeah.

Rich Gravel:

In fact, I was. I was sent to shore and left to. Were to look after the team after Hurricane Katrina. So ohh because we deployed 3 frigates. Sorry 2 frigates and A and a Iroquois class plus a Coast Guard ship. So right I ended up participating in that and the Commodore left me behind as a commander and I was there for another eight or nine weeks. I think it was.

Ben Garvey:

OK.

Speaker 4

Yes.

Ben Garvey:

And directing the technical response. To the to. The to the operation.

Rich Gravel:

Yeah, we well actually, was that an operational response. So I went from being a technical lead to left behind as the operational piece. And I looked after divers and construction engineers, all kinds of people that were providing relief effort.

Speaker

OK.

Rich Gravel:

As long as we were kind of asked to stay there and so we stayed there until we were done our bit and then we came home. So that was really interesting for me because it was not engineering at all. It was it was, it was operational feeding, which I really enjoyed. And then and then I came back and then not long after that, I was promoted the captain and then he was commanding officer of the dockyard here in Halifax.

Ben Garvey:

Fantastic. Yeah.

Rich Gravel:

So the fleet maintenance facility, right? And then after that my last job in the Navy was naval attache down in Washington, DC. So I was basically Canada’s Rep naval Rep.

Ben Garvey:

Back to Washington again. Wow. Wow. Full circle moment.

Rich Gravel:

Back to Washington, yeah, so. It was. It was pretty. Yeah, it was kind of interesting.

Ben Garvey:

And now you’ve entered private private industry?

Rich Gravel:

Yeah. So I, I, I retired from the Navy in 2014. That was 35 years for me. And then I I started my own little consulting thing and I was helping with business development with a couple of companies in fact, where I am now with Taos Canada, they called me up and asked me to help with with their bid on the the ages.

Ben Garvey:

Program, right? Yeah, yeah.

Rich Gravel:

So the Arctic and offshore patrol ships and the joint support ships in service support, which is we’re doing it right. You know when Talis had me in for the bid, they didn’t think they were going to win and I said no, I think you’re gonna win. And they called me back a year and a half later and said we were wrong. You were right. We won. And would you like to start the Halifax office? So I was employee one for the ages program, and now we’ve just rolled over the 90 people mark here in Halifax. So it’s really good, actually. Yeah. Really quite proud of what?

Ben Garvey:

That would. Wow, fantastic. Fantastic. Yeah, I think we’re.

Rich Gravel:

What’s happened there and yeah now Taurus with the win of the M wave, the minor warships and auxiliary vessel. Program really in Canada, you know if if for the Royal Canadian Navy, if it’s not a submarine or a frigate, Talis is looking after. So yeah, we’re learning a lot and really making big improvements. We’re, you know, it takes a while to get these programs going, but I will tell you that I’ve I’ve noticed a change even in the last two months. Like, we seem to sort of come over that.

Ben Garvey:

It’s talus. Yeah, it’s fantastic.

Rich Gravel:

That hump of, you know, learning and now we’re now we’re making real positive changes and trying to, you know make things move much more quickly and.

Ben Garvey:

Awesome, yeah.

Rich Gravel:

It’s it’s, it’s these are tough programs like every day is hard work, making sure that these ships are technically ready for their next mission managing docking work periods, everything.

Ben Garvey:

Yeah, I mean it’s and and it’s a changing environment. I mean that that it’s it’s a brave new world out there, right where the for naval demands in particular, right, like like I think I was at a a presentation in in Newport where where it was pretty, they were pretty blunt. They’re like we’re in a situation where we’ve got a country without a Navy.

Speaker 4

Yeah.

Rich Gravel:

It’s it’s.

Ben Garvey:

Or an effective Navy anyway, who has defeated the Russian Navy in a certain region and at the same time, we’re where we’ve got an A group, not even a country that has defeated essentially the Western navies in their ability to maintain open passage of navigation. You know, the hoodies have have done this in the Red Sea and so traditional navies are facing an incredible upheaval, right?

Rich Gravel:

Well and and huge changes quickly, you know, like like drones, you know, and and how to deal with drones and swarming tactics and, you know, autonomous vehicles, you know, so.

Ben Garvey:

Massive changes, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yes. Autonomous vehicles. Yeah, yeah.

Rich Gravel:

You know, there’s you going through the Suez Canal these days like you’re worried, and rightly so. And it’s. Yeah. And and even like, you know, being involved in business development at Talas. Just watching the pace of change, you know government procurement systems don’t move at the pace of change. So you know we’re trying to get a bit innovative in how we look at that and how we try and actually.

Ben Garvey:

Yeah.

Speaker

Yes.

Rich Gravel:

You know, help and get ahead of things and come up with ideas.

Ben Garvey:

Yeah, that’s that’s what I want to get to the to the core of here.

Rich Gravel:

Yeah. OK.

Ben Garvey:

This this is mean. We we all know about government contracting and the pace that it that it moves at and and yet we know that companies like Talus have the ability to to, you know, innovate quickly. And your challenge, I know there’s a conflict here because you you, you’re working to a contract. Right. But you’re, you know, we all know the goal here is to is to make the Navy ready for whatever faces it. So how do, how do you, how do you reconcile that? And as as a?

Rich Gravel:

That’s right. I mean, that’s that’s been tough, but again I’m pretty, you know, one of the things I like about Telus is. You know, it’s kind of like the Think Global Act, local kind of thing. Tell us I’m impressed in that in that they they act strategically as a big company but they also think how can we act, you know how can we be agile and flexible and innovative and you know work with companies like like ingenuity and others you know. Yeah.

Speaker

Yeah.

Rich Gravel:

That. And and one of our biggest things in in through the ages and enwave programs is actually how do we partner with small to medium sized businesses, how do we leverage their ability to move much quicker than us, right? Our trick is how do we how do we know what’s going on? How do we know what we what, what need what the needs are. And even sort of anticipate and maybe even bring ideas that some of the naval requirements, folks you know, haven’t fully thought of because at the end of the day, you know, they’re they’re limited in their resources. Yeah, it’s a Navy or it’s a Royal Canadian Navy. So they’re posted in and out every, you know, they need to get their breadth of experience as operators and as engineers. So they move around fairly like I. Like I did, I think they count on companies like us like you like, you know, like, tell us to come and say. Well, you know, we understand, you know, the tactical challenges you have or even the strategic ones, but let’s concentrate on the tactical ones. So you might not even know that you need this. And by the way, Tallis has this or is going down the path to get this. And by the way, we’re going to work with a couple of small to medium sized companies that you know. Really can innovate quickly and you know, and can bring ideas that you know, even we’re not as quick to to get on. So we’re, you know, we’ve stood up things like a digital champion, you know, an innovation group. We’re really pushing hard to make sure that our business develop. And our current delivery folks and our innovation group, you know in our engineering group. And then of course our our whole supply chain are really integrated well because the bigger the company, the harder it is. You know, what’s the old saying about communications, right? The only problem with communications is the illusion that it’s happening, right? So So what I like about Taurus is they work really hard.

Ben Garvey:

Yes.

Rich Gravel:

He worked really hard to. Break down those silos and make sure that we’re communicating well. It’s not perfect, but you know, we’re we find ourselves looking at the current environment and saying to ourselves, we got to keep those silos broken. We got to keep the communications going. We got to stay on top of what one we can do and two, what are our customers really need and maybe give them ideas on what we think could help them think better about what they need. So that’s how we look at it, if that makes sense.

Ben Garvey:

Yeah. Yeah, that’s. That’s, that’s marvelous. I mean, are are you finding reception to that in in government in procurement and there’s traditionally there’s you know there’s like no, no we got it, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Rich Gravel:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like. Yeah, we we got. It right, there’s a. Little bit of that but but, but no. I mean look at the end of the day and and I I think I’ve known this for a long time and I’m sure that you do, I know that you do you know it’s about relationships and about trust, right. So you know the speed of trust is is huge.

Ben Garvey:

Yeah.

Rich Gravel:

Which so and what does that come down to? Again, what we talked about before, communication. So not only what do you communicate about, but how do you communicate? How do you treat people you know and again you have to build that relationship, build that trust and say, hey, look, I’m not. I’m not out in this for me. I’m out in this for the bigger picture what’s important to the Navy. What’s important to Canada. What’s important to Canada as an ally. And NATO and with the US and everything, you know all to do with that kind of thing. So we we act that way, we we you know we we try not to dare I say we try not to act selfishly. Right. We just want to do the right thing.

Ben Garvey:

Right.

Speaker

Yeah.

Ben Garvey:

Right. Fantastic. Well, we, we we need it, right. See it every, every, every time I go to have a conversation with somebody in the states, particularly in the defence industry, it’s like, OK, we need you guys, we need, we need to beef up this supply chain. We need to be able to move faster. We need to innovate. We need to, you know, we need 1000 drones here. We need 1000 drones there. We need 1000 above the water. But on the water below the water. And it ain’t moving fast enough. Right. And and and our our systems are clogged, they’re clogged and we need to move. We need to kind of sweep stuff aside without losing sight of the reason we have procedures and. And requirements and test procedures and you know we have to get things in the hands of the of the users of the war fighters of the of the Navy and of the the airmen and the and the soldiers to try. And let’s not be afraid of failure. Take it out, break it. Find out where it breaks. Go to break somewhere.

Rich Gravel:

That’s right. Get good tires.

Speaker

Yeah.

Ben Garvey:

And and don’t be afraid of that. Just use it. Use it. Bring it to the, bring it to the field. Dual use. You know what it takes? Every service. This is the thing, right? Get it out there and learn the limitations. And this is what they’re doing every day in Ukraine. Of course. Right. Because their life depends on it. But we can we don’t. We can do that now without our lives depending on which is, which is so great to hear. And and it’s it’s great to hear that the.

Rich Gravel:

Dual use is often. Need to be in that kind of position where we.

Ben Garvey:

Yeah, that we that we can exactly you know and and have a bit of a jump on this because there are you know.

Rich Gravel:

Can right now, yeah.

Ben Garvey:

Scenarios in the world right now there are some not so nice people and it’s a dark place at times, and so it it seems like we need to pay attention to this. To me anyway, it feels like there’s.

Rich Gravel:

2. There’s an urgency now. Yeah, I agree. I guess from my perspective as a former. Naval officer is. I feel more than ever that you have to be able to do a little bit of everything and you have to concentrate on somethings really well. Yeah, but you there’s you almost can’t ignore any area now you know. And and you know, Canada used to specialize as an anti submarine warfare Navy and that was fine in World War 2. And then they, you know, in the days after in the Cold War and everything else. But now if you’re going to see in, in, in the frigate sized platform or or even a submarine to be honest, you have to be able to do so much more across, you know, the the quote UN quote. Spectrum of operations you really do have. To do way more than in previous days, you know. So yeah, yeah. And you could take any kind of threat. Right. So, you know, even. But, but. But then some of the some of the technology now is very cool. You know, I’ve been hearing lately about, like, the mothership concept, you know, where a mothership goes out and doesn’t have to go in harm’s way. But.

Ben Garvey:

It can come from anywhere. It takes symmetrical you got.

Daniel

Yeah, yeah.

Rich Gravel:

And deploy, you know, autonomous vehicles like you said in the air on the surface or under the surface.

Speaker

Yeah.

Rich Gravel:

Even things like mine countermeasures, you know, for navies, you know, you used to have to have, you know, a wooden ship and, you know, to for magnetic reasons, you know everything else. Yeah. And go right where the mines might be. Well, now mothership can deploy autonomous vessels to go and deal with, you know, you know, the the problem of mine.

Ben Garvey:

Yeah. Exploding. So.

Rich Gravel:

We’re fair, right? And you know that’s another area. You know, I think can potentially boom and and frankly you can even take existing naval platforms and by modularity. Make them capable of doing that sort of a mission, and if you want to do that mission for a while, if you’ve got a modularity capability, yeah. Then when you’re done that mission, you just remove that modularity Commission and and you you add another capability. That’s what I mean by having a long range of of of of capabilities. But you can’t take it all with you sometimes. So you need to be able to switch it out.

Speaker 4

Yeah

Rich Gravel:

When you want to change it and, but you don’t need to necessarily come home, maybe you can switch it out in Mayport, Florida. You can right switch it out in. I don’t know, Italy. You know, if you’re, if you’re in the Mediterranean or you.

Ben Garvey:

Yeah. Yeah, we’re yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rich Gravel:

Know or or. Hawaii. Or you want anything? There’s there’s ways of. Doing this and and what what blows my mind is I get a little bit older. Is is the innovative ways people are saying well we could do it like this. You know, even even other things I was looking at a concept where it’s almost a Lily pad concept where you know you’ve got a floating barge with no people on board but it acts as a as a surf surface to surface. You know, defence platform, you know, and it can do everything autonomously or it can be done remotely. You know where there’s no people on board this floating birds. But it’s got, I don’t know.

Ben Garvey:

Right.

Rich Gravel:

Harpoon, for example, that can do surface to surface missile operations and and be able to do the whole detect to engage sequence and be be more somewhere offshore or you know somewhere like that. So these kinds of concepts I think are it’s exciting, it’s it’s really cool to watch and I’m excited about it.

Ben Garvey:

That I mean, you’ve just answered three of my questions that I had it. This is fantastic. You know one of the one of the questions that you’ve you’ve dived in dive into here partially is is you know where do you see the opportunities, where do you see the?

Speaker

Alright.

Ben Garvey:

The real kind of areas for innovation, where’s the growth? Where’s the? What are the things that get you excited? And obviously you’ve identified some of them. Are there any others that that you’re thinking that are open to?

Rich Gravel:

Off the top of my head, I think I covered most of them there. You know, there’s I think there’s always a way to get better situational awareness. Again, that is kind of my background, command and control, better situational awareness for platforms that see better capability to be able to share that. And there’s lots of systems going right back.

Speaker

Right.

Rich Gravel:

I mean, information sharing has been going on at C for a long time. You know, in the link 11, like 22, like 16 kind of programs, but that’s going to get better and faster. I mean now with the with the technology and communications and satellite communications and the larger bandwidth, you know in my day you have to be very careful about you know bandwidth you know. Jewish now. Days at the same time that you’re able to to really have good situational awareness through larger products because the the pipes are so much bigger at the same time. So is the quality of life and the crews on they’re doing e-mail and having phone calls to satellite. In my day, you couldn’t do any of that because the the pipe wasn’t big enough. So with the pipes.

Ben Garvey:

Yeah.

Speaker

Right.

Rich Gravel:

Getting bigger, you’re getting. You’re able to transmit much more information and faster. So I think situational awareness in a networked way and a more automated way I think is an area where I think. You could do more, and especially as we start to look at automated or sorry, autonomous. Vehicles. Because I think you’re also going to see larger autonomous vehicles, you’re going to see, you know, coastal defence, vessel sized, autonomous vehicles and they have to be able to not only be situationally aware, but be connected, you know, have all their safeguards and safeties in place so that they can operate autonomously and then do real things autonomously. And that’s a complicated.

Ben Garvey:

Of course, yeah. Size vessels, yeah, yeah.

Rich Gravel:

Team so.

Ben Garvey:

Yeah, yeah. But you’re also a recreational sailor. Yeah. And so you’ve been out there. In a small boat, seeing an MCV come over the horizon. If that was unmanned.

Rich Gravel:

He’d be a little worried.

Ben Garvey:

You’d be a little. You’d be a little worried. Right, you’d be. Like, I hope they’ve got the, you know, they’ve got the sensors working today, you know, is there’s somebody on the other end of that or what you know. So there’s a lot of work to do there I think just.

Rich Gravel:

Little squirming in your gut. One. Yeah, yeah. Hope they got their act together. Yeah.

Speaker 4

Yeah, exactly.

Rich Gravel:

Even even I think there’s a lot of work to do just on on, on the policy side, honestly, on on how autonomous vehicles. And I know there’s a lot of places around Canada that are that are are looking at that and how how to put help, how to help the Government of Canada put those policies in.

Ben Garvey:

Exactly, yeah.

Rich Gravel:

So that you know the technical safeguards are there to make them operationally viable and safe and safe to all Mariners. And quite frankly, you know, shorelines and themselves and themselves and the environment, absolutely and the environment.

Ben Garvey:

Sure. Yeah. And the environment.

Rich Gravel:

I guess the fun for me is, you know my horizons. Have really opened. Up as well and and I’m loving it. Actually it’s it’s exciting.

Ben Garvey:

Much more broad. Yeah, yeah. You would have loved the SM trade show for that reason too. Lots of lots of kind of.

Rich Gravel:

Oh yeah.

Ben Garvey:

You know, autonomous enabling technologies that allow you know exactly that, you know, timing of ships, arrival of you know use of use of winds, use of alternate propulsion methods, you know routing inter interface with the ports to time those sorts of things. So some fascinating stuff. I mean it’s it’s great to hear you.

Speaker

Yeah.

Rich Gravel:

There is the software in the AI there that’s again cause my background is computer engineering. You know, I I’m I’m drawn to it. But you know, I don’t know any really very much about AI yet but.

Ben Garvey:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Rich Gravel:

But my brain can get around it a little bit, enough to know that if it’s, if it’s used right. Boy, we there can be some real differences made, and especially as we, you know we we ensure our ESG part right our our our sustainability and our and our environmental pieces are are are really looked at a lot harder so that we’re doing things efficiently.

Ben Garvey:

The the right way, yeah.

Rich Gravel:

Yeah, and the right way and start to move towards you know, technologies that are not carbon heavy. So that’s going to take some time I think in our in our space here in the maritime era. But I think it can be gotten to. It’s just got to be and I don’t know if you’re aware of our innovation challenge that we’ve done with Cove. So OK, because Tao is, so I actually sure. OK. So I connected. I connected us with Cove. I was a big fan of Cove, you know, I knew I knew the the original CEO. And then.

Ben Garvey:

Yes. Yep, Yep. But tell us about it, you know. Jim. Yep. Yep.

Rich Gravel:

You know? Yeah, exactly. And I, I’m friends with Melanie that over there. And so yeah, one day I just got talking to Melanie and we were thinking, how can we how can we make this work? So I had the CEO, Chris Poe, come down and we went in and we talked about some ideas, took it back again. We have a digital champion, Francois. You super nice guy, smart guy, quietly works away and yet moves mountains and and he came up with the idea and he and a few others came up with the idea of, well, well, why don’t we start up a an innovation.

Ben Garvey:

Yep.

Rich Gravel:

Challenge. So this is the idea of small to medium business. We put the challenge ID out. They come in with their perspective ideas. They don’t have to have the whole problem solved, just, you know, a little bit of we do this business we, you know, and they have to prove that they have a way forward and then we give them a little award which helps them to get going. Cove helps us run it and. And obviously in some cases they get a spotted Cove, or they use Cove and we encourage that. And then so. And when when somebody wins one of these challenges.

Speaker

Right.

Rich Gravel:

They get $175,000 to, you know, to to take off. So this has all come out of the Aegis program. Yeah. The aegis, the Aegis contract was innovative or, or rather it was groundbreaking. And that incentivized these kinds of innovative ideas. So, you know, that is and and look got to give credit to the government and you know, even when I was in uniform.

Ben Garvey:

Fantastic.

Rich Gravel:

We talked about having to change the way we did, right? Did you know Navy contracts and others in order to encourage and incentivize this kind of innovation? So I’m really, really pleased about the innovation challenge. We’ve had four winners, so. We’re just signing up with Cove for another five years to keep this thing going. I’d like to see it go to two a year instead of 1A year, but the hard part is coming up with the ideas and having the horsepower to really think it through, you know, and we’re open to that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We got to be careful because we don’t have ideas. And then.

Ben Garvey:

Fantastic. OK. Yeah, we might be able to. Help you with that. We have some horsepower here and. And some. Yeah.

R

ich Gravel:

And then have you know like self licking ice cream here. But but but no, I mean, you know, we’re opening all kinds of ideas and. And you know, this year was more like, I think our two ideas were clean air and ships and and reducing greenhouse gases. So it was about quality of life for sailors in our Navy.

Ben Garvey:

Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Here he is. Yeah. Yeah.

Rich Gravel:

Because yeah, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but the the frigates actually have something called the the Canadian Patrol frigate hack. It’s a cough from having, you know, you know, having some air, air, air quality problems. Yeah. I mean that, you know, it’s been publicized about about mold and things like that, though. It’s tough in that environment. So.

Ben Garvey:

No way. Well.

Speaker 4

And that’s.

Rich Gravel:

Been addressed and but now it’s going to continue to be addressed and now we’re doing it again through the ages program. So it’s going to start with the with the NOPV and then we’ll move that into.

Speaker 4

Yeah.

Rich Gravel:

Into, well, we’ll see if the Navy is wants to take it to the next level. If it bears fruit, you know, back into the frigates, you know, and who knows, maybe even into the submarines. You know? So first of all, you gotta, you know what the problem is? So right they’re trying to analyze the problem 1st and be able to collect data and then move into solutions and make things better. So.

Ben Garvey:

Go from there, yeah.

Rich Gravel:

But and then, GHG’s probably seems like a funny one in navies with navies. Worry about, you know, their greenhouse gases. But honestly they are and then, you know, we we want to do that so.

Ben Garvey:

But they burn a lot of fuel. Absolutely a heck of a lot of fuel, so it’s it’s, you know, I can see it. It makes sense. It’s a it’s an easy target, right? Yeah.

Rich Gravel:

A heck of a love.

Ben Garvey:

Makes a. It’s it’s. That’s all fascinating. And you know it’s it’s great to it’s it’s great background. One of one of the things I wanted to ask you about was something I I think I read in some of the comments maybe from from the discussions you had with the team here before. I read the phrase servant leadership as being your kind of you practice.

Rich Gravel:

Oh yeah.

Ben Garvey:

Servant leadership. Can you can you kind of expand on that a little bit and tell me where that comes from? And how you how you you.

Rich Gravel:

Oh, I don’t think I’ve done anything magical there, but yeah. No, I’ve always liked the term servant leadership. You know, I I, I, I’d like to live with a with a sense of humility. I mean, I actually under under play, I think some of the things I’ve done in my in my, in my past, in my history. And and, but I always believe that you can learn more and you can learn from anybody. You know, I grew up with a father who was a, again, a a fighter pilot, but went on into industry and went into sales and marketing, right, and then went on and and ran the Canadian part of a large American firm. And he used to always tell me he said, you know. You can learn from the janitor if you if you listen and you pay attention, and in fact he had a really neat he was a morning person, he would leave home. This is kind of funny. He would leave home at 628 because he wanted to be on the highway listening to the news at 6:30 and he would get to the office and he didn’t go to his office. He went and had breakfast with the outgoing janitors who were coming off the night shift.

Ben Garvey:

Right, right.

Rich Gravel:

And I just I guess I learned from that that you know the the servant leadership piece to me is important. I believe that I’m here to lead or I’ve been here to lead in some of the jobs that I’ve had including at Talas and and especially in the Navy. As I’ve got up to the sort of commander, captain level. But I was here for them, not the other way around, you know? And and I always believe that that I was here to enable and empower and encourage, you know, the people that were under my command when I was in the Navy or, you know, that that were working either for me or even just around me. Atalis, my view is anytime that. And I I like people I like. Getting people you know. And so I I my view was enable them, empower them, give them the chance to make mistakes and then help them correct it and move forward, you know, and don’t dwell on. Mistake. How do we how do we move on to the to the next thing I got. I’m. I’m not breaking any new ground here, but I just tried to embody that and live that way. It’s just the kind of person I think that I was brought up to be. So that that’s my view of servant leadership. But it’s really that simple. I’m here for you, right. Not you’re here to work for me. And and I treat. I try to treat people that way I guess. My my view on it if that.

Ben Garvey:

Seems to have done well for you.

Rich Gravel:

Yeah, I think I did OK, we’ve done alright, I think. But I like to do that and I like to. I. Like to encourage others to live that way too.

Ben Garvey:

Yeah, yeah. You know, it’s it’s it’s a great way to live, huh? I appreciate that. Yeah, it’s really good. So what? What gets you excited these days? I mean, you’re in a, you’re in a hell of a role. You’ve got, you’ve got some great challenges in front of you, and those are the things that get.

Rich Gravel:

You up each day or they? I’m always amazed as what Talis is working on. You know, I went over to Holland and yeah, I saw some of their new radar technology, the communications capabilities tell us has are huge. You know, in the UK there’s lots, you know, mine countermeasures lots to do on on the sonar side and anti submarine warfare. And then how do you take all that? And this is where I like to operate that kind of strategy. Level and tie it all together. Take a look at what’s happening in the world and what does a Navy need and how can I do my part again with help from other people that I that I connect with all the time in terms of their operate more operational experience than mine, married up with my engineering and support. You know, experiences. And how do we get out ahead and come up with ideas? It would help Canada. It would help would it would help the Navy and would help you know, the Navy within Canada and and within allies working with allies. And so how do I get? That’s what excites me is how do I if I can see something, you know that I’ve that I’ve learned about here and then see it having a path in order to be implemented and make you know a sailors. Life better make the Admirals life better in terms of being able to. Do the missions for Canada in a better way than I? Then I’m going to feel good. That’s the. Kind of stuff. That makes me feel good every day.

Ben Garvey:

It’s not specifically the people, but it’s enabling the people to to solve.

Rich Gravel:

That’s right. The problem right and and and enabling the Navy to do do the missions to the best ability that they can with hopefully the latest technology. You know as soon as possible and that’s always a challenge.

Ben Garvey:

Right. Right.

Daniel

This episode was produced by Me Daniel at Enginuity Studios. If you have a story to tell about life within the marine sector or have an engineering challenge, you want to share with one. Of. Our experts please reach out to info@enginuityinc.ca. And to learn how you can overcome your organization’s harsh environment challenges, please visit our website, enginuityinc.ca. We’d love to hear from you until next time Fairwinds and following see.