Training Moves Online for Canada, NATO

Calian, the Canadian cybersecurity, healthcare and training services firm, has announced it delivered more than 10,000 hours of military training in the first 17 months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

From February 2020 to June 2021, the firm delivered a mixture of remote training and exercise development to its clients NATO and the Canadian Armed Forces. The figure reflected increases in demand from client organisations during the pandemic, and an increase in the company’s training development activities.

Training development support was delivered to Canada’s Directorate of Military Training and Co-operation (DMTC) and the Army Simulation Centre. The work for DMTC included the design and development of a civil-military interagency planning seminar. Support to NATO included pre-deployment training, capacity building and training mentors.

In an interview published in September, the company’s Director of Operations in Europe said that a typical training exercise for NATO would take between 10 and 14 12-hour days to complete. The company uses a bespoke, in-house system, called MAESTROEDE, to support the design, development and delivery of training exercises.

“During the pandemic, the Calian team designed a number of fully remote online staff-advisor training programs,” explained Kent Davis, Senior Director of Training as a Service. “Calian built programs combining academic learning with interactive online role-play to replicate current mission COVID-19 realities. We continued to support DND and NATO in the provision of interactive training across 20 countries in 10 different time zones.”