Bombardier to expand its engineering service office

Bombardier, the Canada-based aircraft manufacturer and world’s third largest commercial aircraft maker, has started an engineering service office (ESO) in Bangalore with 20 engineers. The company, while refusing to share investment details for the facility, said the Bangalore facility will provide the engineering design, structural analysis and stress tests for the company’s ongoing as well as future projects.

The aerospace company, as part of its expansion plan, plans to hire another 30 highly-skilled engineers by 2013-end, said Jean Seguin, Vice-President (Quality, Engineering and Manufacturing), Bombardier. Without revealing the investment figures, Seguin added that the company was also looking at other areas of work.

The $18-billion Canadian major manufactures business jets and turbo-prop regional aircraft for global corporations and global commercial airlines besides designer coaches for metro and mono rail services, worldwide.

“Our aerospace engineers, presently 20, will undertake complex aircraft structural design, advanced stress analysis and project management services. They will also assist about 400 engineers working on our projects with partners like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Mahindra Satyam, Capgemini, Cades and Quest,” Seguin said on the occasion of unveiling the service centre.

The company plans to assist about 4,000 engineers, including 800 of Indian origin working at its main service centre in Montreal on various aircraft programmes.

“Investment in the region will help us in leveraging the local expertise in a market that is becoming important to us in terms of business and outsourcing our hardware/software requirements,” Seguin noted.

Though the company claimed that it had sold 40 business jets and commercial aircraft in India over the years, it declined to share details on current and prospective orders. “We have delivered four commercial regional jets to Air India so far and had an order from private carrier Spicejet for 15 turboprop aircraft of which eight have been delivered,” Seguin pointed out.

The company also projected that India has potential to buy 1,330 business jets over the next 20 years.

“The Asia-Pacific region, including China will have demand for about 4,000 commercial aircraft in the 20-149-seat capacity during the next two decades,” the company said in a statement here.

Globally, the transportation major has three-year jet orders valued over $22 billion, he said.

In addition to its own engineers in the country, another 870 Indian engineers are working on its projects through five local partners including TCS, Mahindra Satyam, Quest, Cades and CapGemini.

“Locally, the facility will help us increase the level of work we do in the country”, said Seguin. He added that the next step would be tie-ups with universities and colleges.