Jason's Journey Into Aerospace

foreign [Music] my name is Lauren Gully I'm our marketing director here at triple helix Corporation and I'm joined in studio today for our Helix Insider podcast by our wonderful CEO Jason Bittner so Jason knowing that you got your start for what you do today based in aerospace engineering what is it that prompted your love for Aerospace what really got you into that industry and made you want to pursue a career in helping clients in the Aerospace and Engineering atmosphere you know my love of Aerospace and airplanes and aircraft it stems from when I was really really young I have an insane amount of interest in the aviation industry starting from when I was a young kid I can remember the very first plane ride I took and you know as a young kid you know you're driving your mom and dad's car and you know it's fast and all that but you know you get into an airplane the very first time you go through that takeoff it's faster than you've ever flown or moved in at all and when I felt that first

movement of the plane and I thought oh we couldn't be going any faster and the plane actually we got even faster and then we took off I was in the back of my head that's it I'm hooked I gotta do this for the rest of my life no matter what it is or whatever my path is going to take me I'm going to go here now what's interesting is I grew up in Edmonton Alberta Canada I'm a Canuck originally and in Alberta the industry primary industry is the oil and gas industry it's basically Canada's Texas and while no disrespect to that industry I mean it's great and you know we we built our lives around uh growing and and learning around the oil and gas industry I went to school in Alberta in the University of Alberta for mechanical engineering um there really is no Aerospace programs or actually in Aerospace industry to speak of in Alberta so I ended up taking a master's program in aeronautical engineer at the University of Toronto and it was pretty unique in fact in Toronto that program is only a

graduate program anyway so for me to actually learn aerospace engineering it was kind of perfect in terms of timing I had my undergrad and I was ready to move on to the next thing so when I moved to Toronto and I did the Aerospace program we learned a lot it was actually something called The Institute for Aerospace studies or called utahus and so the entire Institute is devoted to the Aeronautical Engineering and space sciences and everything it's basically a nerd's paradise as far as learning that industry and ironically or ironically a lot of the students who graduate from that Institute go to work for a very local company called a dehablent so an aerospace company in Canada a bombardier Aerospace which owns a lot of different properties and whatnot they had actually purchased a Haviland and so de Havilland is the aircraft that have the high Wing the propellers they're really loud when they go overhead you cannot mistake that you're looking at a de Havilland aircraft this is the dash

eights basically and so as I graduated de Havilland was actually just starting a certification program for the dash 8400q it's the longest stretch version of the aircraft that they had made and I was able to get into the company and not only that I was hired into the test program the flight test department and oh my God if you can't imagine like the ultimate aircraft nerd's dream is to be able to like right out of college or flying in these airplanes and so I was put on flight crew for the dash 8 400 4001 and we flew that airplane everywhere and you know my job was to sit in the aircraft record test data um basically do everything and anything related to certification of an aircraft so if you tell if you go fight like my very first experience with actually being in Aerospace I got to be in a test aircraft and actually fly for a living it was just a just an absolute dream and the other thing I thought was very interesting was you know I'm this young wet whippersnapper kid out of college

and there are people who have worked in the de Havilland in that test industry forever and they one guy comes up to me one day he's like you know we're really jealous of you and like what why I just got here it's like well we built this airplane but you just showed up get to fly in it like damn I always thought that was very interesting but I was very fortunate I learned a lot from those people and I I definitely um stop my love for for working in the aircraft industry now when I worked on the test program you know test aircraft are very interesting because the whole point is to shake out a new airplane and in the test program everything breaks I mean literally everything breaks and um when you come back from a flight um you have a list of all the problems that happen you get into a debrief and you sit in this room and all of the vendors are eagerly like sitting there wanting to hear what happened um your ahar is broke the lending gear didn't work right something something happened um

and we're asking them like well what do you got and they were like no idea I'm like we'll get back to you it's like okay thank you however and this is the thing that really drove me even further was that um the engines on this aircraft were Pratt and Whitney engines they were actually uh p150s and um a six-bladed propeller just a masterfully uh wonderful piece of engineering and these um Pratt and Whitney folks they were so impressive um whenever we came back from a flight something was wrong long by the time we got to the debrief they had already diagnosed what was wrong they already were able to tell us how what was wrong with it and they were already fixing it in the hangar while we're having the debrief it was just amazing so I said to myself I I got to go work for these guys and I did so in 1999 I actually moved into uh East Hartford Connecticut where we are currently and uh formed a relationship with Pratt and Whitney and I loved this company I mean the great people great product

um but you know here's the thing I'm an entrepreneur at heart and I realized that my path wasn't going to keep me inside of a large car company like Pratt and Whitney I got this urge to go run my own company and in 2006 I left the company and I came into running triple helix and so what I realized that I could actually serve the Aerospace industry by actually doing more and the thing is when I did all the work that I did when I worked in all these various jobs I noticed back then that there wasn't a lot of overlap with uh information and I.T and Technology with engineering and what I did was I took it upon myself to learn what these companies were missing now at Pratt and Whitney I mean they don't give them a lot in terms of data technology tools I think that's changed now but at back in the day they were basically given Microsoft Office so they had Excel spreadsheets he had access databases and whatnot and it was really difficult for them to do with the work they needed to do and then

the external supply chain they had even less but a lot of these companies that service Pratt and Whitney and and the local area they use the software tools called enterprise resource planning software programs and if you're in manufacturing and if you're supporting a company like Pratt in the Aerospace industry at large you're definitely using one of these systems so Erp systems became sort of the Mainstay of the work that we do and helping them and supporting them and growing them making them more efficient with their data and these Erp systems became the major Focus for what triple helix is doing today absolutely so having been so heavily involved in the Aerospace industry tree and and being in that in the day-to-day and really getting to know what those clients pain points are at a very up close and personal level really puts you in a great position to be able to service them in your business currently um really having the chance to have gotten to know what the pain points are in that

industry and be able to service them and provide them with solutions that will make their business operations easier um I know you already touched a little bit on your experience and some of the um different experiences you've had in Aerospace previously can you talk a little bit more specifically about your first job in the Aerospace industry do you remember exactly what it was and what it was like that was the test job that I mentioned with Bombardier that was my very first job in the Aerospace industry being able to get in the airplane and fly it and and learn about the various uh things that the industry needed one thing I actually noted too what was interesting is that all the various systems in the aircraft they're very unique lots of different vendors and suppliers that service them and so because you're in the test program you actually literally got to see every single one of these um it wasn't just one aspect of the aircraft you know we saw the engines the wings the uh the landing

gear the internal systems the electricals and so you know you really learn a lot when you're a program like that and like in a test program it's like drinking from the fire hose like they're giving it to you as fast as you can take it and my ability to work on that program and learn all that thing I think is really what gave me the flexibility to kind of like go out on my own and run triple helix because I had a fundamental understanding of the aircraft and with Pratt even more so with the engines and understanding what it is that they needed my own background I'm a mechanical aeronautical engineer I had a lot of experience in manufacturing but I got it to see it from the product line and so working with Pratt got an even deeper understanding and then so when you leave Pratt and I go to form triple helix I start seeing all these data challenges you know one of the things that I did early on in my career is I realized that you know I.T and information and stuff like this it's completely

intertwined in everything that these guys do and a lot of people made their careers in like one or the other I'm an engineer I'm doing design but um the I.T the programming making software that works with engineering it was always considered to be separate right but I realized it couldn't be it had to be combined and so triple helix's mission was to actually just take the I.T and the data and the understanding of how things work and marry them and actually make it more efficient so the the impact we make in the industry is to actually have a focus in some area and we chose the manufacturing site they have to make the parts they have to make the sub components and they have to do them efficiently with high quality and if they can't do that with good data they're they're sunk so we focus just typically on helping that industry and growing their technical skills and Acumen to be able to do so Aerospace and in different aspects to become pilots and whatnot I can only imagine that the schooling

required to get to that level where you're able to fly an aircraft must be incredibly challenging so if we have any viewers out there who are interested in pursuing a career in Aerospace or becoming more involved in aerospace engineering what are some of the tips and pointers that you would give them going into that kind of a work environment you know Aerospace and Engineering in general is very much of a team environment I think I can say it for a lot of the folks that are Engineers is that no one ever does this themselves no one's ever being an engineer by themselves you're part of a larger team right from when you go to college and you're actually learning engineering you're doing it in a team environment and so much more so when you come into a big company like Pratt and Whitney or even supporting a company like a pratt and Whitney now Raytheon obviously and you know learning how to work as a team learning the the basic skills that you need to do but one thing I can share with anyone

who wants to really cut into this industry is to keep it relevant like when I was first doing my engineering jobs no one was focusing on the data everyone was focusing on the mechanics of say the engine or the maintenance or the repair which are all very very important but the idea is is that if you don't understand the underlying data and making that relevant then you're going to miss something and I was always able to in every position I took since that very first one focus in on something I thought was relevant and for for me it was the data can we make the engineers understand the product better can we help our customers um do better with the product by giving them better data and making better decisions with it so that's kind of where I focused and like in today's world I mean we're hearing a lot about Ai and chat GPT and things like that and you know a lot of this technology is just going to accelerate faster and faster and faster so for you to be able to mark is to make a mark in

this industry or any industry for that matter is to look for what's relevant and for me and for I think the future of Aerospace is to look at these emerging Technologies and stay relevant learn the Technologies learn what's coming ahead and get ahead of them because I can guarantee you the Aerospace industry is going to start using this in a huge way but they're not doing it yet and they're probably not even aware of how the experts are but there's not enough of them so to be experts and to be successful in this area you want to get ahead of it and learn as much as you can up front and then apply that in probably a way and no one's thinking right now very interesting so as always I mean it's very fascinating to me and I'm sure to a lot of our audience members to hear about the career that you've had in your developments in Aerospace and aerospace engineering and really we wanted to do this special bonus podcast segment to really bring light to that and kind of share some insight to anyone

who might be interested in pursuing a career in Aerospace I think you have a lot of really valuable experience and firsthand knowledge that you can share with our audience that's all we have time for today but I want to thank everybody for listening to our Helix Insider podcast and until next time have a great day everybody