Inside the Defence Industry Group

As all quality professionals are aware, success lies in the planning, so how do we go about planning a DIG event? There are two seeds for any successful event – the theme and venue. 

The venue is the most difficult part. Finding somewhere affordable to fit up to 100 peoplewith an audio visual system is not easy. Delivering an all-day event means adding catering and those costs soon escalate. This is the very reason we couldn’t deliver an event in 2015 as we could not find a venue that ticked all the boxes. Running events in years previous to 2015, we were supported very well by organisations such as the MoD, Thales and BAE Systems, but new venues needed to be sought in 2015.

Fast-forward to 2016 and the Steering Committee decided on a different approach. We took an agonising decision to charge for the event and this gave us the ability to partner with another organisation and split the costs with them. This will probably be the case for future events to ensure success. 

We partnered with BSI, giving us access to their Milton Keynes venue and their support, assistance and speakers, which enabled us, at last, to hold a Defence Industry Group event. The theme is always easier.

Organisations were beginning to recognise that they are not as resilient intheir day to day operations as they would like to be

We ask what are the hot topics in the industry and what are the new trends? ISO 9001 was almost a year old, AS9100D was being released and organisations were beginning to recognise that sometimes they are not as resilient in their day-to-day operations as they would like to be. These themes formed the core for the event and then we added in some of the work we have been doing in the Steering Group throughout 2016 around learning and development. We also added an update from the CQI Next Generation Network (NGN), MoD and the CQI. The agenda was set and we called on people in our professional networks to find speakers.

On the day

The day had arrived and our event at last was here. About 80 people attended and an exciting team of speakers delivered the agreed agenda. All of this was brilliantly hosted by BSI. As stated earlier, the event covered defence industry hot topics.

Brendon Hill gave an excellent talk on the topic of AS9100D and the importanceof leadership. He also gave plenty of transition hints, tips and guidance. Natalie Shoemark–Dyer, chair of the NGN, also spoke about the future of the profession. We heard about the CQI 2020 strategy and hosted a panel discussion on ‘Empowering our Quality Professionals’, this included a talk from Colin Hill, who represented the MoD's Defence Academy.

During the discussion David Greenwood spoke about AQAP (allied quality assurance publications) and DEF STAN (UK defence standards) development. Then, DIG chair Gary Illingworth spoke about the 2017 plan for the DIG, which is focused on competence and learning and development.

The event fostered lively debate and discussions, triggered by the presentations. The agenda was packed but we did find time to encourage the debates, even if that was among the audience and not the speakers.

The updates and transitions to the new standards are always keenly debated, especially as we had a certification body supporting and hosting the event. The updates from the CQI and NGN were also very informative and an insight into the MoD Defence Academy was also well received.

Your views

At the conclusion of the event we took the opportunity to get some feedback via a questionnaire, which has been analysed to understand what went well and what improvement opportunities are available to us that can be incorporated into the event in future.

Delegates asked us to:

• Include some group breakout activities as part of the day
• Improve handout material, including a delegate list
•  Include a microphone for Q&A
•  Find more speakers from Industry
•  Use more case studies.

Overall, the feedback and associated scoring was verygood and extremely positive (receiving a net promoter score of 16) and has definitely energised the DIG Steering Committee to start its planning and preparations for a 2017 event, which will take on board the above feedback. Dates, venues and agenda items are already taking shape.

DIG in 2017

The 2016 and 2017 DIG objectives are focused on developing learning and development assets to make them available for all levels of quality professional looking to enhance their careers within the defence industry. This has fostered the maturing partnership with the MoD Defence Academy which hasbeen providing this focused learning and development within the MoD for a number of years and is fully supportive in expanding this offering into industry.