Integrity
We will tell you when your schedule is wrong, when a part is unsuitable, and when the honest answer is that somebody else is a better fit.
Company
About
Founded in Chantilly in 1998 by four avionics engineers who were tired of watching good designs get certified late. About 140 people, ten sites, one way of working.
01 — Company
We started because good designs were being certified late.
Vanguard was founded in 1998 by four avionics engineers who kept watching the same failure. The hardware worked. The software worked. And then the programme lost a year assembling evidence that should have been produced alongside the design.
So the company was organised around that problem rather than around a product. Requirements, code, hardware and the argument for why it is acceptable are produced together. It is slower for the first six months of a programme and considerably faster for the following two years.
Twenty-eight years later we are about 140 people across ten sites, and that is still the thing that makes us different from a larger supplier who will quote you a lower hourly rate.
Approvals & standards
Every programme is designed, built and evidenced against these.
AS9100DDO-178C DAL-ADO-254 DAL-AMIL-STD-461GMIL-STD-1553BARINC 429 / 664IEC 61508 SIL 3NADCAP ElectronicsMIL-STD-883 TM 1019ISO 9001:2015
02 — History
Four moments that changed what we do.
Not a complete history. These are the points where the company became something different from what it had been.
1998
Five engineers and a rented unit
Vanguard is founded in Chantilly by four avionics engineers and a test technician, around one idea: build the qualification argument at the same time as the box.
2005
First commercial certification
The first Vanguard-designed line-replaceable unit is certified for commercial service. Fifteen months from kick-off, which at the time we thought was slow.
2012
Across the Atlantic
Farnborough opens to support European operators, followed by the first nuclear instrumentation contract — a market we entered because a customer asked, not because we planned it.
2020
Orbit
The first Vanguard-derived avionics stack reaches sun-synchronous orbit. It is still operating, which is the only metric that counts.
03 — Vision
Where we are going
To be the supplier that customers call when the environment is hostile, the evidence requirements are severe, and the thing has to work for twenty years.
Not the largest engineering firm. The one that gets called for the difficult third of the work.
04 — Mission
What we hold ourselves to
- Deliver engineering solutions that hold up under scrutiny.
- Build partnerships measured in decades, not contract terms.
- Maintain the highest standards of quality and safety, including when nobody is auditing.
- Improve continuously, and write down what we learn so it survives staff turnover.
- Create durable value for customers and for the people who build the work.
05 — Values
What drives us forward.
Six words that would be worthless on their own, so each one has the behaviour it commits us to written next to it.
Excellence
Rigorous standards on every project, and a willingness to be slower at the start in exchange for being faster for the following two years.
Innovation
New approaches where they earn their place. Novelty for its own sake is a risk we are paid not to take.
Collaboration
Strong partnerships produce better outcomes than strong specifications. We work inside our customers' teams, not across a table from them.
Reliability
Consistent delivery against timeline and quality, on programmes measured in decades rather than quarters.
Openness
The evidence, the test data and the things that went wrong. Customers get the document index, not a brochure.
06 — Where we are
Close to the hardware.
Chantilly is headquarters and systems integration. Huntsville is next to the propulsion test stands. Wichita is where the iron bird lives. Cape Canaveral supports launch campaigns. Farnborough and Toulouse cover European operations and certification.
Ottawa runs independent software verification, deliberately separate from the developers. Singapore, Nagoya and Adelaide cover Asia-Pacific support, partner integration and ground systems.
The pattern is not market coverage. Every site is within reach of the hardware it is responsible for, because engineering at a distance is engineering full of assumptions.
Find the right office“They were the only supplier who told us our schedule was wrong before we signed. Everyone else agreed with us and then missed it.”
Work with us
Tell us what you are trying to fly.
Send the requirement, the environment and the date it has to work by. An engineer will read it — not a form handler.
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