“This was a role almost a year in the making,” said Ron Angelo, president of the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology. He’s speaking of the man across the table from him at the organization’s East Hartford headquarters. Andrew Bond has just joined CCAT as its first-ever executive director. “Before Andrew even agreed to come here, […]
“This was a role almost a year in the making,” said
Ron Angelo, president of the
Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology.
He’s speaking of the man across the table from him at the organization’s East Hartford headquarters.
Andrew Bond has just joined CCAT as its first-ever
executive director.
“Before Andrew even agreed to come here, we were able to really think this through and understand, how do we make this the most impactful role, not just at CCAT, but for our customers, for the Connecticut industrial base and for the New England industrial base,” Angelo said.
The industrial base is a subject that Bond has thought a lot about. That’s because his most recent role was as vice president of planning at Electric Boat in Groton.
“I bring an industry perspective to the team that may be a little bit unique,” he said. “Obviously, my area of expertise is shipbuilding, but I think it’s translatable to the entire supply chain.”
In fact, Bond has spent his career to this point with EB’s parent company General Dynamics, including 22 years at Bath Ironworks, and then the last five at the Groton shipyard. It’s given him a perspective on what’s needed to revive the country’s manufacturing capacity.
“Whether it be the workforce challenge or the supply chain challenge, I think EB has been not only a good advocate, but quite vocal about those being challenges to growth,” he said. “I think that’s where CCAT is really well positioned to help the supply chain that exists, but needs to accelerate to be successful.”
Expansion plans
CCAT defines its mission as leading the advancement of applied technologies, powering the workforce of the future and inspiring change. To this end, it has implemented federal and state grants to help manufacturing companies in Connecticut and beyond understand and incorporate new technologies into their workflows, and train their employees to implement those upgrades.
Its offerings include additive manufacturing, robotics and automation, model-based definition, digital thread and generative AI design. Many of these changes are being driven by the large original equipment manufacturers in Connecticut, including Pratt & Whitney and Sikorsky.
CCAT works in tandem with those larger shops to upskill their workforce and make sure the smaller supply chain companies spread around the state and region also come along for the ride.
CCAT oversees several state programs, helping companies to deploy funding from Connecticut’s Manufacturing Innovation Fund to purchase new technology.
Bond’s initial remit will be to help CCAT itself grow, by expanding into new training courses, new technology and anticipating the future needs of industry.
“I’ve lived some of those hard lessons,” he said. “Growth is one of the hardest things to do, bringing on new people, new talents, technologies, changes in culture and motivation.”
The type of growth CCAT is aiming for requires the organization to keep delivering the technology adoption and training courses it has in hand, while also scaling up its offerings. Bond sees maintaining that mix as his most immediate challenge.
“There are some long-standing programs, but then there are some that are short-burst, high-performance programs. There’s some that require coordination both with industry partners — small businesses, large businesses,” he said. “How do we manage that overall portfolio?”
The organization — which has 53 employees and reported $18 million in revenue in 2023, including $16.3 million in contributions and grants — has already been expanding physically, last year implementing a $7 million federal grant to open a new talent and training accelerator in its East Hartford headquarters on Pitkin Street. The expansion included a new Digital Thread Lab that offers training on technology that allows companies to follow individual parts through their manufacturing process entirely digitally, collecting data to create continuous improvements.
CCAT is also planning a new $57 million headquarters building. It has secured most of the funding for that project, including state bonding, and has identified a site, but not yet publicly announced it.
Bond says the organization will be hiring to meet increased demand, and thinking about how to take its formula beyond Connecticut.
“What we’re trying to achieve is bigger than any one state or region. It’s really a more regional or national effort,” Bond said. “CCAT comes to the table with those lessons learned; here’s why these programs have been successful in Connecticut, and how do you scale them more broadly.”
Anticipating future needs
Angelo, a former state Department of Economic and Community Development deputy commissioner who took over at CCAT in 2018, is hoping that he and Bond can work together to help the organization prepare for coming challenges, including quantum computing and future iterations of AI.
“These are things that we’re growing into that are still quite a ways away,” he said. “So, how are we planning for growth in these two-year time frames, and also where do we need to be five years or longer out?”
Often CCAT may get an insight into the future direction for industry through its partnerships with the defense department, which sets the technological direction for its largest contractors — who then need the supply chain to keep up.
“We have to make sure that we’ve got the skill sets and the team that are constantly moving and pivoting in those directions to make sure that we’re meeting industry where they need us to meet — years down the road,” Angelo said.
Ironically, the federal government itself is turning out to be a source of instability and uncertainty in recent months as the Trump administration has challenged all types of federal spending. But Angelo is confident that CCAT remains a good value proposition for the government.
“It’s been confusing, but any change of administration brings that anyway,” he said. “It’s just business as usual for us. We have to roll with the punches, look at the change, and understand, how do we bring the best that we can back to our industrial base.”
