Dartmouth Company Expanding, Becoming More Globally Competitive

The province is helping a homegrown training company expand and become more globally competitive, ensuring more businesses and people can access life-saving safety and survival training programs.

The province's Productivity Investment Program (PIP) is helping Dartmouth's Survival Systems Training Limited outfit a new, larger, state-of-the-art facility with training and simulation equipment.

"With this new facility, Survival Systems Training can provide more companies and workers the skills they need to safely deal with emergencies while working in potentially dangerous industries," said Economic and Rural Development and Tourism Minister Graham Steele. "It's important to help Nova Scotia businesses stay competitive, and supporting them to become even more successful is exactly what the jobsHere plan is designed to do."

Survival Systems Training is a world leader in delivering high-quality safety and survival training programs for the aviation, marine, land-based industrial, military and offshore industries. The company employs about 25 people.

The company will use $450,117 from PIP's Capital Investment Incentive to buy new training equipment, including a rescue hoist, dynamic moving ship hull and capsize simulator. The new, larger training facility will have a specialized pool, with a wave system, to simulate a range of marine emergencies. Construction will begin next month.

"This provincial funding plays a big part in Survival Systems Training's success, and means our business growth will be accelerated," said company CEO John Swain. "We provide training to companies and people from all over the country, and around the world. With our new facility, we'll develop new training programs, and advance our R and D, and simulation design and production efforts."

The company recently provided offshore safety training to geophysical services company WesternGeco to help its crew prepare for Shell Canada seismic work. Pilots from Canadian Helicopters Ltd., which operates Emergency Health Services' LifeFlight, have also received training.

"Our pilots need to be prepared to deal with all kinds of unexpected situations, and Survival Systems Training has provided our team with realistic simulation and emergency training," said Canadian Helicopters Limited pilot manager Scott Morton. "With the new, larger facility, even more people will benefit from the company's world-class safety and survival training."

The Productivity Investment Program encourages Nova Scotia businesses to become more productive, innovative and globally competitive through two financial incentives, the Capital Investment Incentive and the Workplace Innovation and Productivity Skills Incentive.

Since its launch in 2010, PIP has helped nearly 400 Nova Scotia companies, most of which are small businesses like Survival Systems Training.