Quality Live 2024: Conference and awards

Ross Powlesland, Chief Operating Officer of our headline partner AWE, sets the scene for this year's Quality Live.

The Ethics of AI (Digital)
In this keynote speech, Julie Dawson will provide an industry view of the value and risk associated with AI. Julie will examine how organisations should approach navigating policy and regulation while creating strategic value for organisations and customers.

Speaker: Julie Dawson, Chief Policy and Regulation Officer at Yoti

Culture Conundrums: Can We Make Complex Simple? (Culture)
In this session, Dr Ruth Hartley will discuss the influence of culture on behaviour.  This keynote will explore how culture is created and how the mindsets that people have influence decisions and actions.  It will look at the distinctions between organisational culture and quality culture, and question if it's possible to have a one-size-fits-all approach to achieving the behaviours we need within organisations.

Speaker: Dr. Ruth Hartley (CPsychol), Culture and Wellbeing Specialist at Rolls-Royce SMR

Regulating AI for Performance and Compliance (Digital)
Our panel of industry, quality professional, standards and conformity assessment experts will examine the extent to which AI can be regulated and the role of voluntary conformity assessment, including the new ISO 42001 standard. The panel will discuss what challenges lie ahead as society designs lines of defence to mitigate risk, while releasing the benefits of AI at pace.

Speakers: 

• Julie Dawson, Chief Policy and Regulation Officer at Yoti
• Vince Desmond, CEO at the Chartered Quality Institute (Chair)
• Tim McGarr, AI Market Development Lead (Regulatory Services) at BSI
• Lorraine Turner, Accreditation Director, UKAS

Setting the Tone for Quality, Safety and Compliance (Culture)
This panel will discuss how organisations across different sectors – aerospace, construction, and nuclear – set the tone for delivering quality, safe, compliant products and services. Each of these sectors provide critical value for society with severe consequences of failure. This session will examine how organisations and sectors develop the right cultures and behaviours, while navigating strict compliance, high consequence of failure and often complex and increasingly fragile supply chains.

Speakers: 

• Colin Campbell, Associate Director - Improving Project Delivery at Scottish Futures Trust
• Paul Cruise, VP Quality at GKN Aerospace
• Dr. Ruth Hartley, Culture and Wellbeing Specialist at Rolls-Royce SMR 
• Karine Rackham, Head of Quality at Sellafield Ltd.
• Mike Turner, Head of Profession at the Chartered Quality Institute (Chair)

AI in Action (Digital)
In this session, we will hear from expert practitioners outlining how AI has been adopted in the construction and rail industries. These case studies demonstrate how AI has helped manage and improve quality and performance shaping the direction of travel for the future.

Speakers: 

• Richard Corderoy, CEO at Oakland
• Glen Lane, Area Handover Manager at Costain
• Rashad Issa, Chair of the CQI (Chair)

Is Your Quality Function Driving Poor Quality Culture? (Culture)
Quality is managed and improved in the wider business. The quality function exists to help the wider organisation work together to deliver and improve what - and how - it delivers value to customers and stakeholders. This panel session will discuss the extent to which quality functions are viewed as supporting appropriate cultures and capabilities within their organisations and how quality professionals should be approaching this.

Speakers:

• Roxann Dawson, Business Assurance Director at Tilbury Douglas (Chair)
• Mark Eydman, Founder and Lead Consultant at Six Pillars Consulting
• Ryan Renard, SQMS Manager at Ontic Engineering and Manufacturing Ltd.

Sustainable Quality: from talk to action (ESG)
In recent years, much of the focus of ESG has been on climate change and the need for industry to become part of the solution through innovation in how they create products and services. In this session, our panel will look at the wider ESG agenda and consider the extent to which the quality profession has moved from taking about sustainability to making a concrete contribution and what we need to do next.

Speakers:

• Peter Anderson, Managing Partner at Troup, Bywaters + Anders
• Christopher Chinapoo, Managing Director at Five Star Quality and Justice Associates (Chair)
• Silvie Coutuer, Founder and Consultant at KDENZA
• Tim La Touche, Director at La Touche Consulting

Beyond the Accidental Quality Manager (Skills)
CQI surveys have highlighted the ongoing challenge of attracting new talent into the quality profession. This is part of a wider skills problem impacting many other professional domains, made more difficult by the need to attract more diverse skill sets and backgrounds into quality as we deal with digital and sustainability agendas. In this session, our panel will consider progress in terms of making quality management an aspirational career choice, what works, and what is still left to do.

Speakers:

• Charlotte Bradley, Governance, Compliance and Quality Manager at BT Business
• James Nelis, Senior Quality Manager at BOS-SHELF
• Jessica Plested, Managing Consultant (Quality) at Shirley Parsons
• Judith Ward, Programme Director (Quality) at Mott MacDonald (Chair)

AI is Everyone’s Business (Digital)
This session will examine how professionals should be thinking about AI within their domains of expertise and scopes of activity. In this session, we will be discussing the opportunity AI presents for continuous improvement, and how to use it responsibly and securely within your organisation.

Speaker: Kevin Newey, Global Head of Quality at Graphcore

The Culture of Leadership and Continuous Improvement (Culture)
This session will explore the culture of leadership – creating different leadership styles, embracing diversity, inclusion, and collaboration, and most importantly, understanding what makes those that you work with tick, in order to enhance productivity and achieve common goals.

Speaker: David Anderson, Director Business Assurance, Quality and Systems at BAM UK&NI

Empowering Quality Professionals to make a Difference (ESG)
In this session, hear from two established quality leaders about how they’ve used quality skills, tools, and approaches to develop, deploy, and implement an ESG strategy. Understand how you can influence – and lead - your own organisation to identify and achieve sustainability goals, relating to its environmental impact, social value and governance.

Speakers:

• Jamie Bowen, Head of ESG and Improvement at Chevron Group
• Victoria Yates, Head of Change & Transformation at Mabey Hire

Developing Organisation-Wide Quality Capability (Skills)
If quality is everyone’s business, everyone needs some level of competence in quality management principles, methods, and tools. This session will examine why and how quality professionals can help develop competence and capability to manage and improve the quality of product, service and process in the wider organisation.

Speakers 

• Chris Achillea, Head of Quality and Compliance at Sodexo
• Lee Major, Deputy Director, Quality and Regulatory Assurance Division at UKHSA
• Fiona Payne, Senior Quality Manager at CapGemini
• Alexander Woods, Policy Manager at CQI (Chair)

Closing remarks and the end of Quality Live 2024.