Neil Stanbury | CQP MCQI
Chair CQI Defence SIG
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.
Neil Stanbury
What are your roles and responsibilities at work?
I have overall responsibility for the Business Management System and functional competence framework. 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.
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.
