Robert Rouse, Managing Director, HE Space Operations GmbH

Bob Rouse is the managing director of HE Space Operations GmbH. Bob joined HE Space in June 2009 to start up its Darmstadt office. Including 15 years as managing director of space companies in Germany, Bob has 30 years of experience in the space business. His expertise covers business management, business development and project management, as well as the development of services and solutions for space mission control and data processing. His experience in space systems engineering ensures that HE Space provides high-quality services to its clients as well as moving the business forward into managed services and projects.

Bob studied electronics at the University of London, achieving a BSc degree with honours.

Which customer or market demands were the biggest drivers of your company's growth during the past three years?

HE Space provides consultancy and services to space agencies and space industry customers in Europe. We have seen growth with both our institutional and commercial customers contributing towards a range of space missions in all phases of development and operation. While maintaining our roots in manned space domain, we have expanded our services into science, astronomy, navigation and earth observation programmes. HE Space employees are also involved in supporting atmospheric remote sensing activities for meteorology and climate monitoring. This enables our company to contribute towards the successful development and operation of systems used to improve weather forecasting, as well as the application of satellite data to long-term climate change analysis.

Do you anticipate that those demands will continue to be your biggest growth drivers for the next three years, or are you anticipating new trends?

The curiosity to explore the unknown has always been the driver for human endeavour and has been key to many discoveries that have fundamentally changed the course of history. Providing expert resources to support space exploration and the application of space technology to improve life on earth will remain the main focus of our activities. This focus has enabled HE Space to grow steadily and consistently, and we intend to retain this focus in future. We will continue to be “Passionate about people and passionate about space”.

What new trends do you anticipate and what market demands do you see evolving/changing over the next five years?

A significant change will be the European labour force that will shrink in the next decade and become the oldest in the world. The growing need for highly educated employees can only be met by a more diverse workforce. HE Space applies the 3 G model (gender, geography and generation). HE Space has proven experience with finding employees from all over the world. Our team includes 29 different nationalities. Our gender balance in the company is 50/50. Our youngest employee is 19 and our oldest is 65.

What would you say are the key challenges and opportunities currently faced by the industry?

It is not only the workforce that is changing, but also technology. Big data, digitalisation and the societal and environmental challenges of today are bringing changes to many areas of space technology.

The acceleration of innovation in technology with early obsolescence presents particular challenges for space programmes with long life cycles.

Space programmes in the future will be increasingly oriented towards creating services to meet these challenges. This creates the need for career profiles that are different from those that the space sector needs today.

What is your company's approach to strategic partnerships or joint ventures, and what kinds of partnerships are you most open to exploring?

To support our current and future customers in the best way, we are looking for long-term relationships. This helps both sides to find the best personnel. The more we know about the goals of projects and the requirements the staff needs to meet, the easier and faster we are able to find the right candidates.

We are hiring the personnel directly and take care about all human resources activities. Released from these extra tasks, our customers can focus explicitly on their projects.

What services will you be featuring at the show this year and what response are you expecting?

We will explain why we are the perfect partner for recruiting the best personnel in the space business. We expect positive responses as we are a reliable partner in the business for more than 30 years.

HE Space Operations GmbH will be exhibiting at Space Tech Expo Europe 2019 at stand L22