About Norcat

History
NORCAT was created by a team of business and academic visionaries from the Greater Sudbury Area, led by Glenn Crombie and Darryl Lake, two Cambrian College employees that recognized the need for an organization to support and promote local entrepreneurship, innovation, and commercialization to nurture and retain talent and ultimately provide a foundation to enable sustained economic and social prosperity for the Greater Sudbury Area.

 

Inspired by the burgeoning innovation centre models in Finland, Lake and Crombie adapted a model that was designed to meet the needs of entrepreneurs and small / medium business enterprises in Northern Ontario. The Northern Centre for Advanced Technology opened its doors in 1995 inside Cambrian College, offering small and medium enterprises access to labs, office space and expert resources in order to further develop their own initiatives. Shortly there afterwards, NORCAT received its own building and operated on campus until 2009.

 

Given the focus on nurturing and retaining talent and the booming mining sector in the Greater Sudbury Area, NORCAT built on the foundation of Cambrian’s health and safety programs and developed a series of world class training and development programs to serve the mining, manufacturing, oil/gas, healthcare, and construction sectors with an array of top-tier supervisory, productivity, and health and safety programs and services. These programs, including Contractor Orientation, Common Core Underground, Fall Arrest, and Supervisor Training, are recognized as global standards in quality and achieving sustained learning outcomes.

 

As part of its celebrated mantra of “listen, learn, build, measure, repeat” NORCAT has become a leader in on-line training and development to complement its diverse in-person programs and services. The educational and training curriculums have been developed on customer feedback, government regulations, and proven pedagogy models to enhance desired learning outcomes.

 

In 2009 NORCAT moved to its new home on Maley Drive. The NORCAT Centre, a marvel of architectural ingenuity, stands at approximately 70,000 square feet and is home to NORCAT’s training and development centre, entrepreneurial and innovation services, and our incubator and event centre.

Our Strategic Priorities

NORCAT is a leading private, non-profit organization that empowers our clients, our staff, and our community partners to drive a culture of productivity, innovation, and life-long learning.

To deliver on our mandate, NORCAT is focused on three core priorities:

• As part of the Ontario Network of Entrepreneurs, NORCAT serves as Sudbury’s Regional Innovation Centre partnering with community stakeholders to help start and accelerate the growth of innovative companies

• Develop and provide world-class programs, services, and resources to reduce injuries, save lives, and enhance productivity in the workplace and beyond

• Operate a vibrant innovation hub to engage our clients, community, and key stakeholders by providing an environment that celebrates a culture of productivity, innovation, and life-long learning

Values

Our values embody the calibre, charisma, and characteristics of our team and our organization. The people that work here demonstrate and celebrate these values all day, every day.

• Results and Impact

Our impact is measured by the success of our customers, partners, and community stakeholders. Achieving excellence demands we define a path of continuous improvement. We listen, learn, build, measure, and repeat.

• Entrepreneurial Spirit

We celebrate creativity, innovation, and challenging constraints. We are bold. We move fast. We are open. Many people dislike change, but remember – change is the only thing that has brought progress.

• Trust and Integrity

Trust is the belief and confidence in integrity, reliability and fairness. Without integrity, nothing else matters.

• Teamwork and Collaboration

We must collaborate to compete and winning must always be celebrated as a team. We can do hard things and we must do them together.

• Community Engagement

We engage our colleagues, our customers, our partners, and community stakeholders to collectively work together to make our communities stronger, safer, and healthier. We focus on solving important problems and building true and lasting value.

• NORCAT has an operating mine used for training, demonstrating projects, testing and new product development.

• NORCAT operates industrial shops with high security.

• NORCAT offers Residency Programs to start up technology related businesses with small and medium sized businesses requiring technology assistance.

• NORCAT operates a full multi-media production house to support both the training and product development.

• NORCAT provides resource people and facilities for Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety training, testing and consulting.