IF James Bond really does have a Q, it would be nice to think he’s a bit like Sir John Chisholm.

“Actually I am not Q,” sighs Chisholm, head of QinetiQ, the government’s part-privatised defence laboratories.

But surely he ought to be — after all, QinetiQ, expected to float next year, does all the hush-hush stuff for the armed forces, and has legions of boffins tucked away on obscure ex-Ministry of Defence sites working on goodness knows what.

And all those capital Qs in that bizarre company name — come on, surely that’s a clue? “We were Dera (Defence Evaluation and Research Agency), and we had to change our name,” explains Chisholm with the weariness that comes of frequent retelling.

“We were given a list. QinetiQ (pronounced kinetic) was actually bottom of my preferences but everyone had a reaction to it — which, I am told, is what you want.”

That was 2001, and since then Chisholm has made a very successful business of QinetiQ, leading some to speculate that flotation may come sooner than expected. Posting £57m profit on £795m turnover last year, debt-free QinetiQ now works in a range of defence and security fields, but is constantly on the lookout for mainstream commercial applications of its more specialised technologies — screening devices, sensor systems, smart surveillance, digital forensics, anti-counterfeiting measures and more.

About 80% of its work is still for the UK government, but the opportunities for expansion are real. Last year QinetiQ started buying small defence contractors in America, hoping to increase its customer base.

Of course, global terror has been good for business, but sitting in his spanking new, high-security compound outside Farnborough in Surrey, Chisholm points out that QinetiQ, with its emphasis on invention and innovation, is going to be great for Britain, too.

“It’s what we are good at in this country. We are 1% of the world’s population but provide 4% of the world’s scientists, 8% of the world’s scientific papers, and 11% of the references to science in the world. We outscore our weight of population in order of magnitude, and the importance of what we are doing here is going to be far more widely recognised.”

And soon, when it floats, the rest of us can buy into it. The government will keep a golden share to prevent an unwelcome foreign takeover — Carlyle Group, the US defence investor brought in to help expansion overseas, already has a 30% stake but is likely to sell down its shares for considerable gain.

Some expect the company to be valued at close to £1 billion. As Carlyle paid only £150m for its stake two years ago, it can expect to double its money, which has already led to sharp intakes of breath from those outside Whitehall.

The government has insisted that any profits raised from selling ex-MoD property will be clawed back but, outside that, QinetiQ is free to make as much money for its shareholders as it likes.

For Chisholm, 58, trained at BP and with nearly two decades of technology consultancy under his belt before he took on the laboratories in 1991, it will be yet another point of dispute in what has become a controversial process.