Richard Holgate

CEO, Richard Holgate, said that basing the company in Canberra was a strategic decision.

"As well as the fact that I like Canberra, it was the logical base to set up as most of the company's existing and potential clients are based here."

The company started in 2000 when Richard took on the role of Operations Manager for security for the Olympics."From then the business just took off , once you're in and people see you do a good job then the contracts roll in," he said.

After receiving requests to "package" the program with a software solution, Richard decided to investigate the possibility of moving from a pure consultancy business to producing and marketing a product.They took the risk and the result was ResolveÔ, a state-of-the-art crisis and incident management and notification system that automatically notifies and initiates contingency plans.

"One of the major principles of contingency planning and response is getting ,the right information to the right people at the right time' which is one of the main outcomes of this tool," said Richard.

The product , which includes optional features such as an Incident Management System, Transport Security Program, and Crisis Management Plans , brings together the techniques that the company previously employed manually.

Richard said that being a recipient of an ACT Government Knowledge Fund Grant allowed the company to first get the product to the proof of concept stage and then to fast-track the development of the product to the commercialisation stage.

"The grant helped enormously , we now have additional staff and have managed to roll out the product to a couple of clients," he said.

Richard HolgatePresident and CEO richard@dcitowers.com