Honeywell cuts ribbon at new R&D centre

US-based Honeywell International has opened a new Pacific automation and control solutions headquarters and software research centre in Sydney.

The new 5813 square-metre R&D centre and offices, in the Sydney tech belt of North Ryde, was opened on Friday. Customer support would also be located at the new premises.

Deborah Learoyd, marketing manager at Honeywell, said the purpose-built, larger premises at Riverside Corporate Park on Delhi Road replaced a smaller facility on Waterloo Road, also in North Ryde.

The company had been in the older premises for 11 years.

“The building was getting a bit old,” she said. “We never had a purpose-built environment for our software centre before. This will also allow us to meet a lot of requirements for testing of software before it is exported internationally.”

Some 90 percent of Honeywell software turned out at its R&D centre was exported. Although the company had started up its software centre to serve specific Australasian needs, over time the offerings had proved popular with global customers too, Learoyd said.

“You can’t remove everything offshore to places like India, because if they’re not intimately linked to the customers in the region, they don’t have the domain knowledge,” she said.

Honeywell has 130 software engineers on site and also works with partners, such as Microsoft and local companies, to develop large industrial process control systems and other solutions for sectors such as energy, she said.

“And we have a building management product that we sell to sites with extensive infrastructure, such as airports and Parliament House,” Learoyd said.

Australia-trained engineers were very well educated, she added.

The new customer care centre would support customers in Australasia around the clock and eventually also offer the same service to Singapore and Hong Kong, Learoyd said.

John Watkins, NSW Minister for Transport and Member for Ryde, was on hand to open the site on Friday.

“I understand Honeywell’s R&D work is quite unique,” Watkins said.