My Journey

My engineering career began in 1997 when I when I walked through the doors of Shearline Precision Engineering as a young apprentice. It was there that I gained my engineering qualifications and gained hands-on experience of CNC machining and fabrication. During my final apprenticeship year, I moved into Quality Assurance, an experience that ignited my passion for standards and compliance. I gained my first experience of maintaining and auditing a ISO 9001 quality management systems, unknowingly laying the foundations for the rest of my career.

Motorsport has always been a huge personal interest of mine, and after five more years at Shearline, I knew I wanted to move into that world. Several speculative letters later my persistence paid off as I joined Lola Cars as a Quality Engineer in 2007. The role gave me invaluable experience managing a quality management system that supported the full race-car build lifecycle and improving reliability for some of the toughest endurance races on the planet, including the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Lola was also where I first developed my skills in supplier quality development, which later became a major part of my career.

In 2015, I took everything I'd learned in automotive manufacturing and moved into auditing with BSI. I qualified to audit ISO/TS 16949, later progressing to full ADP Green status as an IATF 16949 auditor. Alongside I also delivered audits to ISO 9001, BS 10125, and ISO 22301 certified clients averaging 180 audit days per year.

Six years later, I stepped into a leadership role overseeing scheme management and the national audit team delivering the BSI Kitemark for Vehicle Damage Repair. Over the next five years, I guided the team through the transition to the 2022 version of BS 10125 - one of the biggest updates since the standard was created. We delivered more than 1,500 audits a year and achieved zero non-conformities across four consecutive UKAS accreditation audits. That's something I'm incredibly proud of. I was also a member of the SVS20 standards committee and the S.A.G (sector advisory group) supporting the accident repair sector.

I also had the opportunity to work on innovative projects focused on connected and autonomous vehicles, helping design and develop assessment schemes used in deployment pilots such as Project Endeavour, part-funded by the UK's Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV) and RABus Project in Germany. These were exciting projects that gave me experience of future mobility solutions.

And now? It's a new chapter. Today, I'm using everything I've learned from these experiences, to support and develop the vehicle damage repair sector and the wider automotive industry. My goal is simple: Help organisations strengthen quality, drive continual improvement, and meet the standards needed for mobility now and in the future.