“We’ve been in defence for 20+ years. Civil aerospace should be straightforward”

The MD of a $35m (£26m) precision engineering supplier told me this at a conference last year.

Strong defence reputation. AS9100 certification. Complex, high-consequence work. They were eyeing civil aerospace. Boeing and Airbus order books were growing, post-COVID air travel bounced back, and volume looked attractive.

I asked what would need to change operationally.

“Not much. We already do aircraft work.”

That assumption will cost them.

Defence aircraft and civil aerospace supply are structurally different businesses.

In defence: low rate, high complexity, schedule elasticity wins. Risk is shared.

In civil aerospace:high rate, binary delivery, almost no schedule tolerance. You’re a cost input.

The firms that survive market expansion redesign their systems before chasing the work.

This MD had 20+ years of credibility. But credibility in one market doesn’t equal readiness for another, even when the markets look similar.

Growth here is not about sales. It’s about having the right internal alignment. Without it, the contract you celebrated six months earlier will become the one destroying your margin and your reputation.