Steering Group members
Steering Group members
The CQI DSIG Steering Committee is formed of senior managers from within a wide range of businesses operating in the Defence Sector; the collective vision of this group is to promote quality as a career pathway of choice in the Defence Sector and to provide a voice for that Sector back into the CQI to help shape the future of the profession
Neil Stanbury
Head of Quality, Babcock International Group, Marine Division
My key aim is to help shape the future of the Quality profession, influencing a change in how Quality is perceived across industry by highlighting the value proposition and also encouraging a wider demographic to consider Quality as a career pathway of choice.
Gary Illingworth
Head of Quality, Leonardo
I have been a Quality Professional for over 40 years and I have a genuine desire and passion to ensure the Quality role stays both agile and relevant within today’s ever changing defence business and that we support and develop new talent into our profession to ensure this is maintained for future generations. I am committed within my own business and the extended Quality Professional community to ensure that our value and contribution is maximised and valued as a true business partner.
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What are your roles and responsibilities at work?
I am the Sponsor of the Business Management System for one of the sites within the Marine Division, with overall responsibility for its continued effectiveness, ensuring it maintains alignment with the organisational structure and continues to meet customer and regulatory requirements. I am also responsible for shaping and implementing quality policy as well as being the focal point of engagement on Quality for the Regulator, Certification Bodies and Customer.
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What is your background and how did you get into quality?
Up until the point I joined Babcock International Group in August 2012, my career was spent wholly in the aerospace sector, within complex, customer-focused and service-led businesses. I have held a wide variety of positions within operations, logistics, change management and quality, with my last two roles being European General Manager and Director of European Operations/ Quality for a Canadian aerospace component distribution business.
I saw my initial transition into quality as a natural progression from my previous operational/ commercially focused roles, as they equipped me with an in-depth understanding of the wider business. Since then, I have rotated between senior quality and operational positions, allowing me to balance the need for business growth whilst maintaining compliance with key contractual and legislative requirements.
To achieve the desired aim of making quality a career of choice and to encourage more people to make the leap into the profession, quality needs to become more relevant and widely accepted as a value-adding function, rather than being seen as an overhead and an easy target for cost reduction.
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What are your roles and responsibilities at work?
I’m the Head of Quality across a number of our UK sites and my key role across these sites is to define the company’s quality strategy, grow and develop our assurance team, and ensure we deliver sustainable business improvements within the business winning and contract execution aspects of the business.
I have a team of 30 engineers covering all aspects of assurance, such as design and development, procurement, supply chain and business certification requirements.
What is your background and how did you get into quality?
I have nearly 40 years experience (20 as a quality manager) within the aerospace and defence industries. I’ve worked for some major organisations, namely Lucas Aerospace/TRW and Meggitt Aerospace, and I joined Leonardo nearly 10 years ago.My background and qualifications are in mechanical engineering, albeit the main activities within my role at Selex ES is more focused around risk reduction and business improvement.
To be honest, I drifted into the quality part of the business. On completion of my apprenticeship at Lucas Aerospace, and after having spent a year doing PCB design, an opportunity came up within Lucas Aerospace’s quality department which I took because I had really enjoyed my apprentice placement there. Did I plan to make a career in quality? No. And this is the problem the CQI Defence Industry Group (DIG) are trying to address in order to position quality as a ‘career of choice’.
Paul Barlow
Quality Skills and Development Manager, Ministry of Defence (MoD)
john bullock
Head of Quality Management, Skills and Communications Policy Team Ministry of Defence (MoD)
When Quality really matters the cost of achieving it might sometimes seem high. However, any cost implications will soon be forgotten, and it is Quality that will endure and will be remembered!
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What are your roles and responsibilities at work?
I am the Quality Skills and Development Manager for the whole of the MoD inclusive of the Armed Forces. My role is about delivering competences, training and development to all staff undertaking quality-related activity within the MoD, and promote quality knowledge to the organisation.
I work within a team of four skilled staff specifically on quality but interact with various upskilling teams throughout the MoD and Civil Service, including military regulators. The Quality Skills Team are based in Abbey Wood, Bristol, and form part of the MoD Quality Policy Team.
What is your background and how did you get into quality?
I’ve worked in the Civil Service for nearly 30 years, primarily within the HR environment on both skills and personnel management. I joined the MoD in 1996 as a Personnel Officer, responsible for the MoD Quality Assurance Field Force, and moved into the Quality Skills Team in 2007.
In the time I have been in my current post I have introduced a competence-based licensing scheme that ensures the MoD’s quality practitioners are working to a common competence standard based on the CQI Body of Quality Knowledge.
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What are your roles and responsibilities at work?
I lead a small multi-disciplined team responsible for developing and delivering Quality Management Policy, Quality related Skills and Competences, and associated guidance for MoD personnel involved with Governance, Assurance, and Improvement activity. On behalf of MoD Deputy Head of Profession for Quality and the Defence Authority for Technical and Quality Assurance, we work together with our Quality and Configuration Management Policy team colleagues across MoD, NATO, and Industry to promote and embed policy and skills that will deliver improved ways of working now and in the future.
What is your background and how did you get into quality?
I trained as a mechanical engineer and became car service manager for SAAB and Volvo marques before joining the MOD in 1992. I then worked at RAF St. Athan on a wide range of aircraft ground support equipment until 1998 when I moved to MoD Abbey Wood and first became involved in Quality as a career choice.
I have worked in various Quality Management and Quality Assurance related roles in the MoD since 1998 covering a wide range of activity from policy development, audit, evaluation, and improvement. During 2013/14 I set up an ISO 9001:2008 certificated business management system for Cost Assurance Analysis Services, a MoD organisation of 450 personnel dispersed across the UK. I became a Chartered Quality Professional in 2006, and Lead Auditor (International Register of Certificated Auditors) in 2014.
Without exception, I have enjoyed all of the Quality related roles that I have worked in for the MoD, and in my view the profession is broad, cross-cutting, and value adding. I have the privilege of working with many fantastic people across multiple disciplines and have had the opportunity of being involved with the quality aspects on a wide range of equipment and services throughout my MoD career. Through my current work I want to set the framework and encourage the next generation to join our Quality family.
john entwistle
Quality Capability Manager, BAE Systems Air
Tony Simmonds
Quality Assurance (QA) Manager MBDA
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What are your roles and responsibilities at work?
My role is to ensure that the capability of the quality professional resource supports the company’s business / quality strategies and that quality certification continues to meet multiple customer requirements.
I’m responsible for the quality competency development framework and the business certification requirements. I lead a team to manage the interests of approximately 300 quality personnel across the business that underpins the development, delivery and support of all our products and services.
What is your background and how did you get into quality?
My education and qualifications are in mechanical engineering, control systems and metrology, so I naturally pursued a career within an engineering organisation. I was offered a role in the quality organisation of BAE Systems and have been fortunate to perform a variety of roles since my original appointment.
I didn’t plan to make a career out of quality but the opportunities I’ve encountered have ensured I continue to be challenged and developed, and I want to publicise quality as a ‘career of choice’. Since joining the defence sector in 1997, I have undertaken duties that have brought me into contact with all types of individuals within the core business streams and supply chain. I believe this experience has provided me with a firm understanding of the company.
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What are your roles and responsibilities at work?
As the QA Manager for MBDA Manufacturing UK, my role and responsibilities are the primary focal point for Improvement and Quality related issues, and to provide independent visibility and Quality Assurance are applied across all projects to the Customers’ requirements and expectations, Regulatory requirements and conformity to EN9100, therefore ensuring On Time, On Cost, On Quality (OTOCOQ).
What is your background and how did you get into quality?
My current 33 years+ in the Defence and Aerospace sector began in 1983 with the Royal Air Force (RAF) as an Aircraft Weapons Mechanic then subsequently to Technician status; this was made first real exposure to Quality. In the RAF the development programme is structured to become an effective leader and manager of Operations, Quality, CI, Human Factors, Airworthiness, and HSE along with the facilitation and interpersonal skills. My military service spanned 28 years whereby I held many roles ranging from of Aircraft Operations both in peace and wartime environments to Continuous Airworthiness all-encompassing the entire portfolio of Quality. Voluntarily I left the RAF as a Senior Manager in 2012, spending the next 4 years working with Airbus based at Broughton, Wales within the Quality Conformance Management Team operating transversally across projects and transnationally as both the Foreign Object Debris (FOD) Prevention Leader and the Product Safety Focal Point. Leaving Airbus I then spent the next 2 years as a QA Manager in a high rate production facility whereby I then successfully acquired current role with MBDA.
As a Chartered Quality Professional / Member of the CQI / DIG my aim is to encourage people to become a Quality Professional with a clear development framework, with a rewarding career this can bring along with the variety and scope this provides.
Paul brook
Head of Quality – Avionics Country Business Unit (AVS CBU)
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What are your roles and responsibilities at work?
Reports to the UK Quality Director and with an operational interface to the AVS Operations Director. This encompasses flight Avionics (airborne systems) and Training Solutions (flight simulators and training provision), partitioned as two Domains. It includes the following responsibilities:
- Implement, and ensure the application of the Group Quality, Customer Satisfaction and Quality Assurance policies, the Group Reference System and relevant governance structures and processes.
- Ensure the business maintains the necessary certifications and accreditations, either at a local business or UK Group perimeter.
- Oversee Quality organisation skills and capability, promote the function and represent it both externally and as a UK representative at Group events.
- Ensure the CBU Quality organisation has appropriate and relevant business and domain specific knowledge of applicable design/accreditation standards to meet the on-going requirements.
- Management of QA team – demand (headcount) analysis and allocation, staff development, leadership and associated training.
- Application of the Group Quality Assurance policy, including Supplier QA, in co-ordination with Purchasing / Supply Chain Management
- Review and measure customer satisfaction and address customer complaints and issues including leadership of the CBU elements of the UK Customer Satisfaction network and measurement and reporting of associated KPIs.
- Provide the methodological framework for Continuous Improvement and contribute to the attainment of the objectives of the CBU, Quality and UK performance plans (including the management and reporting of business improvement activities).
What is your background and how did you get into quality?
Paul is a chartered engineering who started his career as a software engineering working on navigation and cockpit management systems. His career progressed thru team and project management before reverting to a functional role as the Software Engineering Manager for Racal Avionics. He then progress to Engineering Manager and Director under Thales, before moving to a business role running the Technical Directorate in a customer facing business unit. He then spent a few years in defence mission systems leading a new business sector exploiting sensors for UAVs and manned platforms. He returned to Avionics to lead business transformation activities including adoption of an Oracle ERP system, Integrated Business Planning and running the project control function. He then moved into his current Quality role early in 2015 and brings the benefits of the wide experience he has gained throughout his career.
Thank You..
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