A new CEO

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Simon Feary has become the new CEO of the CQI as the interim CEO, John Frame, heads back to retirement. We ask Simon about his vision for the CQI

Congratulations on your new role as CEO. Could you give us some background on how your career has developed?

Thank you. I started out life as a chartered biologist and was first involved with quality as part of my role in safety testing within the pharmaceutical sector. I made the move to the IQA, as it was in those days, in 1994 to run the organisation's personnel certification body IRCA.

The UK has led the world in standards development and accredited certification and this provided an excellent basis to develop IRCA into a major global player in terms of auditor training and certification.This is something of which the CQI should be very proud.

Influencing industry and promoting the CQI's certification side has meant a lot of time on planes during my role on ISO and IAF development committees, as well as speaking at conferences. In 2007 I took over the operational side of the CQI and worked with the board and executive team to develop a business plan to achieve the CQI's vision.

What is your vision for the CQI?

The CQI's vision is 'to place quality at the heart of every organisation' and I recognise that the way we need do this is through CQI members. The members reflect the competencies within the Body of Quality Knowledge and are in positions to deploy the quality approaches that all organisations need to succeed. If our members succeed, then the CQI as a whole succeeds and of course UK plc benefits. It is clear that we - and I mean the members and the CQI executive - need to work together in a number of ways to progress our vision.

It is equally clear that we must interact more closely at an organisational level with business and industry. Firstly, this means communicating the value of quality approaches and competent qualityprofessionals to business and industry in ways they understand. This is, quite rightly, defined by fundamentals such as the bottom line, customer satisfaction and the management of risk.

With the challenges that organisations are currently facing, our contribution has the potential to be enormous and wide ranging. Just think about the issues in the news recently such as Terminal 5, Shell's outsourced distribution problems and the government's bungles with data: quality approaches are the solution.

Within the UK and maybe internationally we have been lulled into accepting that the mantra 'quality is everyone's business' means that because it is everyone's business there is no longer a need for professionals that are competent in quality. The fallacy of that assumption is now evident and encouragingly there is clear evidence of resurgence in interest in quality from those sectors that historically have been strong advocates for the concept.

Secondly, it means influencing the factors relevant to quality, such as government policy, education, standards and conformity assessment. In other words, we need to be much more externally focused.

What plans do you have in this respect?

The CQI Board of Trustees recently approved a new five-year plan. This plan identifies six agendas (see box) that set out broadly what we need to do over the coming years if we are to move towards our vision and fulfill the intent of our royal charter. Essentially, we need to:

• become relevant to business
• provide the quality knowledge that business needs
• get employees competent in quality approaches
• lead employees to CQI membership and the professional recognition afforded by Chartered Quality Professional status

It is clear to me that the last step, growing the membership, is not an aim in itself, but a measure of our success and I have to reiterate that the CQI executive cannot do this in isolation. We need members to contribute. We need members to provide input to issues such as policy, standards and knowledge creation. We need members to promote quality, education and membership in their own organisations, suppliers and industry bodies.

So, finally, where do you see the CQI in five years' time?

The CQI in 2012 will be a very different organisation: we will be a recognised and valued presence in government and industry, we will have more people made competent in quality through our qualifications and training, we will have a comprehensive suite of knowledge services and, as a consequence of the CQI being central to industry and business's agenda, we will see membership at a level which reflects the importance of the competent quality professional. In short, the CQI will be relevant and accepted as relevant.