Job title: Quality Manager
Employer: Dounreay Site Restoration
Qualifications:
- BSc Mechanical Engineering
- IRCA QMS 2000 Lead Auditor
Institutions:
- Institute of Marine Engineers
- Institute of Nuclear Engineers
- Chartered Quality Institute, MCQI CQP
Career path:
- Officer Cadet, Merchant Navy
- Engineer Surveyor, Lloyd's Assurance
- Manufacturing Assurance Engineer, National Power
- Quality Assurance Engineer, Hunterston Nuclear Power Station
- Quality Assurance Engineer, British Energy
- Quality Manager, Dounreay Site Restoration
What does your current role involve?
A bad day at any nuclear site is a bad day for the hemisphere. Getting it right could not be more critical and, as quality manager, it is my responsibility to make sure that all our business performance, safety and environmental systems work together to make the site works efficiently and safely.
What’s great about being a quality professional?
I reckon I have the most interesting job here as I get to work across the organisation as a whole, making sure that all the various specialist roles integrate properly to achieve the best results.
Designing management systems is about making people’s jobs easier for them by changing the way they work. If I am doing my job properly then everyone understands the framework in which they work and will constantly be looking for ways to improve what they do.
The result is a committed and dynamic workforce all focused on the same outcome. Doing my job involves the daily application of quality techniques such as and the skill comes in working out which techniques to apply when and how to adapt them to our specific needs.
How did you get into quality?
Graduating with an engineering degree and working for Lloyd's Assurance was a hugely attractive proposition: there was an immediate satisfaction in getting a job done well combined with really significant levels of responsibility at an early stage.
As a confident 26-year-old, I didn’t really think too hard about the fact that it was up to me to decide whether a ship could put to sea, but in retrospect, the consequences of my decisions were really huge.
When I started my quality career there was very little specific training, so I largely had to teach myself. If I were starting out now I would definitely do the training as soon as possible: having that formal qualification gives the knowledge of a broad range of techniques that you can then adapt to your organisation’s own particular needs.
Any tips for pursuing a quality career?
I can’t say that I intended to spend my career in quality, but that’s largely because I didn’t know it existed. Now that there is a recognised training and qualification route it will be much easier to make a conscious career choice. Which is one, incidentally, that I would thoroughly recommend.