This is a two-part series with Ian Dalling of the United Kingdom. These pieces discuss a wide range of issues. The first piece discusses the idea of quality and the impact of the Bretix on the quality profession in the United Kingdom. The second will discuss the impact of Quality 4.0 and the future of the quality profession. Ian Dalling is the Director of the “Unified Management Solutions”. It specializes in integrated approaches to quality and risk management.

He is a Chartered Mechanical and Electrical Engineer, a fellow of the Charter Quality Institute, a fellow of the International Institute of Safety and Risk Management. He holds degrees in engineering and physics. From 2007 to 2020 he chaired the Chartered Quality Institute Integrated Management Special Interest Group. He led the development of the world’s first universal system standard (MSS1000).

Ian Dalling’s career commenced in 1962 working for the Central Electricity Generating Board in various posts within nuclear power plants embracing operations, planning, management service, and quality management. In 1989 he moved to the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority Safety and Reliability Directorate as a risk management analyst and consultant. In 1999 he started his own consulting firm. His clients include companies in the United Kingdom, Eastern Europe, India, and China.

Q1 With the United Kingdom separating from the European Union, what impact will it have on the quality of life and the quality profession in the United Kingdom.

The UK is leaving the EU but not Europe. Economic, political, and social relationships will continue but with a changed and evolving dynamics. The future fortunes of all European and indeed World nations will evolve socially and through interdependent trade inevitably subject to uncertainties that have been experienced throughout history. Even when the forecasters turn out to be right it is usually by chance and not wisdom, like winning of the lottery. Chaos theory supports this truth.

No matter who you ask in the UK about any aspect of Brexit you will get a spectrum of opinions, so I can only offer my personal view with a little unease. In the UK Brexit is generally avoided in polite conversation like religion and how much you earn. My views expressed here may offend some colleagues, friends, and family and potentially open wounds that were beginning to heal.

My personal experience of the EU includes participating in several EU multi-nation projects leading to the making of valued European colleagues. I was also a European Notified Body Quality Manager regulating EU product compliance, so I have experience and understanding of how the EU operates including the application of quality and risk management, and its upsides and downsides.

In recent years, I became persuaded that the benefits of UK membership were outweighed by the costs and that Brexit was in the best long-term interests of the British people despite the transition and short-term potentially being bumpy. Despite its flaws, my great respect for democracy and national empowerment also influenced my decision. The dilemma in the making of great national decisions like Brexit made at any time in history, is that they impact future generations of stakeholders yet to be born. I do not believe that any generation sets out to deliberately harm another, unless overwhelmed by fear or through ignorance, suggesting that we must respect the perspectives of our ancestors who in good faith made decisions that contributed to our current situation.

Brexit has been extremely discordant dividing economists, industry leaders, academics, political parties, families, and friends not forgetting the nations that make up the UK. There have been fierce and emotional passionate debates about future consequences that are unknowable. Most post Brexit vote doom and gloom predictions have not materialised. The debates have often been UK centric ignoring the future of the EU which is grappling with major intractable problems. For sure, future predictions are notoriously unreliable.

Leaving the EU has severely tested our democratic processes and in the last election the opposition political parties were severely punished for not honouring the people’s wishes to leave the EU previously verified by the Brexit referendum, and the paralysis created by their Brexit blocking and delaying tactics in the UK parliament. Many UK citizens, and particularly those who’s experience is limited to life in EU, had a fear based mothership dependency perception that the UK is not big enough to exist on its own despite the UK’s long ‘can do’ history. The UK entered the European experiment following its citizens having voted to join a free trade partnership, but not a federal European state which became the future vision and direction of the EU.

The EU is naturally nervous about having the sixths largest economy on its doorstep unincumbered by non-value adding bureaucracy which the EU argues ensures a level playing field. An example of an EU member successfully leaving is another threat to the EU. The EU was designed to facilitate joining while deterring members from leaving the club. A dilemma for the EU has been how to punish the UK for leaving, as an example to others, without harming itself.

Brexit is inevitably a major disruptive innovation which I believe demonstrates the UK’s foresight, courage, and the regaining of national self-confidence. Others of course take contrary views and only the passing of time will confirm the wisdom of Brexit or otherwise, if indeed such things can be known when it is not possible to make comparisons with alternative histories. Short term disruption and that which does not threaten the basics of survival is irrelevant to judging the long-term strategic success of Brexit. Ironically, it is the younger generation who whinge most about Brexit that will enjoy its fruits.

Since the Second World War the UK has been going through a major transformation attempting to adjust and develop a new global identity and role. Commentators constantly write off the UK with gloom and doom predictions. However, the UK has punched well above its weight throughout most of its modern history and often in extraordinarily challenging times when the odds were stacked against it. History demonstrates that the UK was often at its best when severely challenged.

Brexit will I believe create exciting and fulfilling opportunities for competent quality professionals but not necessarily for the feint hearted and inflexible. Brexit can only provide additional stimulus to rekindle its people’s creative intelligence, innovation and entrepreneurial energy that has punctuated so much of UK history. Many examples of this have occurred since Brexit in this COVID19 era such as the consortium of engineering companies that was quickly assembled to build 2000 patient ventilators and was the UK’s most ambitious collaborative engineering project since the Second World War. This challenge was led by Dick Elsy CEO of High Value Manufacturing Catapult (HVMC) who put his retirement on hold to drive the project. Interestingly it was the first time GKN, Rolls-Royce and Smiths had worked on a collaborative engineering project since the 1940s when they produced the Spitfire Aircraft which together with the Hurricane and the pilots who flew them won the Battle of Britain in 1940. Dick Elsy said the way the consortium performed was a landmark moment for British engineering and so successful that it will leave a rich legacy  of lessons that will influence future decades of engineering and will no doubt be applied to other emergencies such as climate change. Why should forward thinking quality professionals not flourish in such an environment?

Irrespective of Brexit, quality professionals have existed for at least a century and most thrive on challenge and facilitating continual improvement. The industrial revolution started in the UK in the early 18^th century followed by many other notable innovations up to the present day and have included digital computation and many other major scientific and technological breakthroughs. Many quality standards were born in the UK eventually becoming ISO standards. The concepts and methodologies of risk management pioneered in the UK spread internationally and were subsequently adopted by the EU. The UK is a magnet and lighthouse for global talent to flourish. The UK is at the forefront in developing COVID19 vaccines and other cutting-edge development. All this demonstrates the rich and fertile business environment that will enable competent quality professionals to flourish in the UK.

I believe the impacts of Brexit on the quality profession in the UK has been and will continue to be just as mixed as before Brexit. Brexit has created exciting and fulfilling ongoing work opportunities and challenges related to managing and implementing change as the UK morphs into an enhanced independent sovereign nation again. However, the pace of change has accelerated under COVID19 and the big global threats such as planetary warming, toxic emission, and abnormal acceleration in biodiversity etc make the big quality problems increasingly complicated needing urgent attention. While this may be grist to the mill for competent quality professionals able to apply integrated management principles, others will feel threatened by not only change but its accelerating pace. This is a natural human psychological trait that is experienced during all organisation and behavioural change processes. There is always a tension between those who seek change and continual improvement and those preferring to stay in their comfort zone and preserve the status quo. While the former increases the dynamics, the latter contributes to stability. It is my view that human diversity produces optimal group synergy following thousands of years of evolution. Hence the impact of Brexit on any individual or group will be varied according their circumstances and personal psychologies. Considering Brexit, COVID19 and all the other threats, never has there been a more important time to apply the principles of integrated management but sadly this is not widely understood by many in the quality and other management professions and the leaders of their  professional bodies who are not demonstrating the enlightened vision and leadership which is so urgently needed.

Overall, I believe Brexit is good for the UK and the quality profession generating work and new opportunities. Like all change some quality professionals will thrive while others will experience difficulties and challenges beyond their competence. However, I believe this was going to happen in any case and is only being accelerated by Brexit and COVID19 etc. What is desperately needed is vision, leadership, and enhanced education and training initiatives to ensure the collective competence of the quality profession empowers the UK to fully exploit the Brexit and post COVID19 opportunities. Those in influential positions including governments, the management professional bodies and academia must do their duty.

Q2 What do you understand by the concept of quality?

I have a universal unbounded concept of quality which is as far from the early concepts of widget quality as you can get. It embraces the quality of management and the whole organisation and its interaction with others without boundaries or exception. Quality can apply to any aspect of life and is used legitimately by the ordinary person in a myriad of circumstances despite the quality professions and their bodies applying it more narrowly. In my view there are no no-go areas for quality nor is it possible for any profession to exclusively own it.

Quality is relativistic according to the stakeholder except when applied to the fulfilment of universal eternal values i.e. higher values that we may associate with an ultimate stakeholder.

For an organisation quality is about equitably satisfying stakeholder needs, expectations and aspirations while making the best use of resources. This contrasts with the historic rather narrow customer satisfaction definition which some quality professionals still use.

The Universal Management System Standard MSS1000 defines Quality as the degree that the totality of the characteristics of a structure or process satisfies the needs and expectations of a customer or other stakeholder. This definition facilitates quality being delivered continuously, continually or occasionally and at uneven rates depending on the aspect impacting the stakeholder.

Prospect and/or risk controls may be required to assure the continuity of quality when operating under uncertainty. Structures and processes include tangible and intangible goods and services supplied internally or externally and not preclude conscious organisms of which an organisation is just a special case.

To me, quality is simply a measure of satisfaction, and ‘quality management’ is only the systematic approaches and formal arrangements to achieve it. Satisfaction or its absence will be experienced by conscious humans irrespective of geography and time if they don’t become extinct, and that critically depends on an unbounded concept of quality management.

Bio Ian Dalling

Ian Dalling is the Director of ‘Unified Management Solutions’, that specialises in integrated approaches to quality and risk management. He is a Chartered Mechanical and Electrical Engineer, a fellow of the Chartered Quality Institute, a fellow of the International Institute of Safety and Risk Management and holds degrees in engineering and physics. He is a retired management consultant and chair of the Integrated Management Community.

Ian’s career commenced in 1962 working for the Central_Electricity_Generating_Board in various posts within nuclear power plants embracing operations, planning, management services, quality management. In 1989 he moved to the United_Kingdom_Atomic_Energy_Authority Safety and Reliability Directorate (SRD) as a risk management analyst and consultant.

His career has spanned the design, construction, commissioning, operation, and decommissioning of conventional and nuclear power plants, as well as providing a wide range of quality/risk management consultancy in other major hazard industries including oil and gas, electrical power distribution, rail, construction and medical devices. He started his own management consultancy in 1999 delivering services for clients in the UK and internationally in Eastern Europe, India, and China for national and international clients. He chaired the Chartered Quality Institute Integrated Management Special Interest Group  from 2007 until 2020 when it was morphed into the Integrated Management Community. Ian led the international team that created the world’s first universal management system standard without boundaries (MSS1000). He has published many integrated management papers and articles.

His roles have included:

• Leading operational planning team during the construction and commissioning of the Dungeness B Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor nuclear power plant.
• European Notified Body Quality Manager certifying machinery and medical devices under European Product Directives.
• Serving on the European Process Safety Centre Committee, and the British Standards  steering committee for BS 8800:1996, a guide on the management of occupational health and safety. BS8800 informed OHSAS18001 which informed ISO45001.
• Leading a team assessing the 120-year decommissioning programme for the Winfrith Steam Generating Heavy Water Reactor in the UK.
• Assessing UK nuclear weapons assembly and maintenance safety culture.
• Developing crisis and emergency plans for a regional electricity company.
• Member of international team that assessed the safety of the Lithuanian Ignalina RBMK nuclear power plant following the Chernobyl_disaster.
• Providing systems analyst support during the development of safety critical software.

Publications

Ian Dalling has published many articles on integrated management and the universal management system standard MSS1000 in a range of publications including CERM Risk Insights, the International Institute of Risk Management (IIRSM), the Chartered Quality Institute (CQI), and the International Register of Certified Auditors (IRCA) Journals.

Publishing a book on integrated management is still on Ian ‘s to-do list. The closest to fulfilling this aspiration has been the drafting of the 300 page universal management system standard MSS1000  which he intensely focused on between 2011 and 2014. It was based on a set of mutually consistent unified management principles, concepts and definitions. MSS1000 had been demonstrated to be possible in his article ‘Order from Chaos’ published in the April 2011 edition of Quality World which explained a full scope boundless hierarchical management topic taxonomy. In essence, the taxonomy defined a logical place for everything that can potentially be needed in a management system, standard, regulation, license etc. and was informed by his quality and risk management consultancy experience and the creation of proven full scope boundless integrated management systems created with his clients.

Ian has published the following notable papers on various aspects of integrated management:

2000. Research into relationships and correlations between plant safety performance and occupational safety performance for British_Energy and BNFL Magnox in conjunction with DNV, 2000.
2001. Understanding and assessing safety culture, Society for Radiological Protection meeting, Saint Catherine’s College Oxford, 9 April 1997, published in the December 1997 Journal of Radiological Protection. Includes the ‘Dalling Model’ of organisational performance.
2002. The Future is Unified – a Model for Integrated Management, Quality World, April 2000.
2003. Integrated Management Definition, CQI Integrated Management SIG, 2002, reissued 2007.
2004. Eyes and Ears (integrated monitoring), Quality World, April 2004 – subsequently translated and published into Chinese and Japanese in the ‘Global Sources’ journal.
2005. Integrated Management System Definition and Structuring Guidance, CQI Integrated Management SIG, 2007.
2006. Order from Chaos (management topic taxonomy), Quality World, April 2011.
2007. Drafting of Universal Management System Standard MSS1000. 2011-2014.
2008. Management Integration: Benefits, Challenges and Solutions, International Institute of Risk and Safety Management (IIRSM) Technical Paper, March 2012.
2009. Managing Data in an Evolving World – A guide for good data governance, International Institute of Risk and Safety Management (IIRSM) Technical Paper, August 2016.
2010. Using MSS 1000 to Boost Performance, CQI Integrated Management, October 2016.