Catalyst Consulting - Dr Vince Grant and John Morgan

Catalyst Consulting is Europe's leading provider of Lean Six Sigma solutions. Catalyst's mission is to ‘enable results’ for clients by accelerating the rate of performance improvements, and extending the deployment of world-class best business practice.

At the heart of the Catalyst service is the experience of its people - practical, real world experience gained in senior management positions in a range of industries. Catalyst Consultants have worked with small, medium and large organisations, in the public and private sector, from start-up companies to multi-nationals in the UK, Europe and beyond.

Catalyst's style of delivery is focused very much on people values and this is strongly rooted in all our team members.

Dr Vince Grant is an expert in Lean Six Sigma methodologies, and regularly trains Black Belt and Master Black Belt programmes. He is a graduate from Cambridge University, and obtained his PhD in Physics from Manchester University. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. Vince had international senior executive experience at Hewlett Packard before forming Catalyst in 1995.

John Morgan is a Chartered Insurer and Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Insurance. He is the author of 'The Lean Six Sigma Improvement Journey' and co-author of 'SPC in the Office - A Practical Guide to Continuous Improvement’. John has been interviewed on Radio 4 about the potential of Six Sigma in the UK, especially in the public sector. John's background is in Aviation Reinsurance and the Financial Services Industry, generally. He has been a Director of Catalyst for 10 years. His primary responsibilities are in the areas of product design and development. Much of Catalyst’s highly acclaimed material has been created by him, including tailored work for a wide range of organisations. jam@catalystconsulting.co.uk

Argenti – Glen Ford

The Argenti Organisation was formed 28 years ago to launch the highly successful strategic planning process developed by John Argenti. John has written several highly acclaimed books on corporate topics and was co-founder of The Strategic Planning Society, based in London. Since the initial launch in the early 1980’s, over two thousand organisations spread around the globe have purchased The Argenti System.

Argenti Associates was formed six years ago to re-launch the system worldwide. The system was updated and changed from a booklet format to an Html document that can be downloaded from the Internet. Independent consultants based around the world have been recruited to provide facilitation services to those organisations that want to benefit from the expertise of a professional facilitator.

Glen Ford who presents the Introduction to Strategic Planning workshop is one of the UK based Argenti Facilitators. Glen joined Tarmac as a management trainee, qualified in Quarry Engineering in 1987 and gained an MBA in 1997. He became the Development Manager for Tarmac Concrete Products and left in 2005 to form his own consultancy practice. He has just completed a facilitation assignment for one of the UK’s top manufacturing companies and will be facilitating a project in the USA for the same group. glen.ford@argentiassociates.com

Furneux Consulting - Dr Stephen Bratt

Furneux Consulting helps organisations to improve. Their approach is practical rather than theoretical, and its effects are rapid and long-lasting.

Dr Steve Bratt, has 30 years experience in research, management and consultancy. His management career included spells with ICI, Glaxo and Astra. In each of these, Steve has had to balance the ongoing responsibility for quality management with the responsibility for delivering major performance improvement programmes. He is only too aware of the challenges facing leaders today. He has 15 years’ experience of successfully applying the EFQM Excellence Model to organisations in Europe, the USA, Africa, the Middle East, and China. Steve is delighted to have had a long, and continuing, relationship with the BQF, dating back to 1994, as senior assessor, assessor trainer, workshop leader, and consultant.

In addition to helping establish and drive improvement programmes, Furneux Consulting also assists organisations to compete effectively for awards. Several of their clients have won Excellence Awards at European, UK and regional levels.

Furneux Consulting is a flexible and fast-moving organisation, small enough to take on new challenges at short notice. To broaden their range and flexibility, they are a founder member of the BQC-Network, a group of experienced consultants with a wide portfolio of experience in organisations large and small, public and private. steve@bqc-network.com

Munro Global - Glyn Lucket

Munro Global comprises a number of market research businesses focused on providing customer insight, satisfaction and employee engagement research. Two portfolio businesses, FDS International and Maven Research are full service research agencies focusing on customer satisfaction measurement and provision of actionable insight for a range of blue chip clients in the private and public sectors.

Glyn joined Maven in 1996 as Business Development Manager from the engineering sector and is familiar with many of the challenges in the business management environment. Glyn is a Member of the MRS and has extensive experience in managing research projects containing both qualitative and quantitative research elements. He has also broad and successful experience in managing business-to-business and end-customer satisfaction programmes across a breadth of business sectors. Glyn manages client accounts across business sectors including Manufacturing, Construction, Public Services and Rail and is responsible for Business Development activities at Maven.gluckett@maven.co.uk

Oakland Consulting - Robin Walker

Oakland Consulting is one of Europe's leading management consultancies, helping managers across a diverse range of private and public sector organisations to improve performance. They work with the board, managers and employees at all levels to solve complex business problems and transform organisational performance. Oakland’s support includes strategy development, strategic alignment and performance management systems, business process management, creative thinking and innovative process re-design, and change management.

Robin Walker is an enthusiastic and experienced performance improvement practitioner, recognised as a leading exponent of benchmarking in both private and public sectors. He is an assessor for the UK Excellence Awards, and led a series of consortium benchmarking studies for the BQF to identify best practice in topics including customer satisfaction, performance measurement and process management. With Dr Steve Tanner he led the development of the European Benchmarking Code of Conduct, now adopted by leading benchmarking organisations and professionals throughout Europe. contactus@oaklandconsulting.com

Red Island Consulting - Neil Lunniss

Red Island Consulting is a global leader in the provision of Management System solutions specialising in Information Security, Risk Assessment, Business Continuity and ITIL services. Based in London, they assist their worldwide client base to benchmark against ISO27001, BS25999 (BCP), ISO20000 (ITIL), and PCI DSS amongst others. Their information security and risk professionals have a deep technical knowledge across a wide range of IT systems and supporting infrastructure as well as strong expertise in Operational Risk, IT Governance and linkage to Corporate Governance.

They were responsible for 25% of all ISO27001 certificates issued in the UK, are engaged on two of the biggest global ISMS implementations and work across a truly diverse client base. Much of their success is down to three key differentiators:

• All of their projects are fixed cost
• They 100% guarantee each project
• They offer no-obligation health checks/gap assessments prior to any engagement

Neil is a Senior Management Consultant and Lead Auditor with Red Island Consulting with 20 years experience in developing, implementing, managing and improving Business Continuity Plans as an internal resource and external consultant in numerous business types including public and private sector organisations, in well established businesses and start up companies. Major accomplishments include developing risk assessment methodologies for a major international telecommunications company that have been used to identify technical and security risks of hundreds of business critical systems and services and to develop appropriate business continuity plans and technical security improvement plans. He has also helped build business continuity plans for a number of public sector organisations inline with ISO27001:2005 equirements and the specific requirements of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. neil.lunniss@redisland.co.uk

S8 Business Improvement - David Smith

S8 Business Improvement provides consultancy services on continuous improvement to public sector organisations and private sector companies. In working with client companies S8 has developed a range of solutions to help clients fill the gaps they have when they come to align their plans, strategies, processes and results. A gap commonly encountered is the proper planning of the business, so S8 developed a short, simple Business Planning Toolkit that is used as a guide and framework to producing a business plan.

David Smith has over 20 years experience in both public and private sector organisations, including at strategic planning and operational management levels. His direct involvement in business planning includes top level corporate plans through to service plans for small front-line teams. davids8bi@fsmail.net

TEAL Consulting - Eirian Lewis

TEAL Consulting help a range of private and public sector organisations to develop, improve performance and achieve better results. Their services include Performance Management, EFQM Excellence Model and Balanced Scorecard, Change and Organisation Development, Lean Management and Systems Thinking, Leadership and Strategy, Management Development and Coaching.

Eirian Lewis is a Director of TEAL Consulting specialising in the delivery of improved business performance to achieve competitive advantage. His focus includes applying solutions that are directed at business needs in leading private and public sector organisations. His experience includes business and performance reviews, using Lean Management to transform service delivery, and using the Excellence Model as a framework for improving business performance. Eirian is a Senior Assessor and Master Practitioner with the Wales Quality Centre, and has worked as an assessor on the Wales Quality Award since 1998. eirian@tealconsulting.co.uk

The Leadership Trust - Dr Gareth Edwards

Gareth is Senior Researcher in the Centre for Applied Leadership Research at the Leadership Trust Foundation and Visiting Research Fellow at Portsmouth Business School. Gareth is a chartered psychologist with over ten years of experience in researching leadership and facilitating leadership development programmes. He regularly runs the leadership development programmes at The Leadership Trust and has facilitated international leadership development programmes in Bangladesh and Singapore.

Gareth has co-written, ‘Leadership in Management’, published in 2002 and co-developed The Leadership Trust’s ‘Leadership Audit’ an instrument for measuring behaviours associated with effective leadership. Gareth also contributed chapters to The Leadership Trust’s booklet ‘Leadership under the Microscope’. Gareth is actively involved in academia and has presented papers on leadership at numerous conferences in the UK, Europe and the US. garethedwards@leadership.org.uk

Renault-Nissan Consulting - Gary Pargeter

Renault-Nissan Consulting is the global business improvement arm of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, and works with a variety of industries and organisations, both in Service and Manufacturing, to enable them to effectively implement their Business Improvement programmes.

The phenomenal success of the alliance between Renault and Nissan has become a legend of effective strategy deployment and business improvement. Through the implementation of improvement approaches such as Lean and Six Sigma, the Alliance has shown consistent growth and has become one of the most respected Benchmarks in improvement activity, and a pioneer of approaches such as Lean Sigma.

Having worked with numerous organisations to help them both define and implement their strategic plans, Gary Pargeter will draw on a combination of ‘Lean Thinking’ and best practice from a number of sources to help you define and deploy management and measurement approaches that focus your people on the achievement of your goals. gary.pargeter@rnconsulting.co.uk

TQMI - Peter Hillman, Jill Johnston and Gail Tutcher

Formed in 1987, TQMI is a consultancy specialising in performance improvement. Their core business involves providing advice and guidance to boards, management teams and operational staff, as well as hands-on support for improvement projects and transformational activities. TQMI’s style is results orientated and based on a need to transfer skills to our clients.

Peter Hillman is a Founder Member of TQMI and has supported an extensive range of organisations in the selection and delivery of improvements. He has facilitated many teams in defining and delivering sustainable performance improvement, including acting as an external adviser to major change programmes in both the private and public sectors. One of these programmes designed and delivered for a specific client was recognised with a prestigious training and development award. peterh@tqmi.co.uk

Jill Johnston has over 20 years consulting experience, across a wide range of consulting disciplines in the UK and Europe. Prior to this she held a number of senior management positions in the telecoms industry including HR, and Business Improvement and the Management of Change. She has extensive experience of helping organisations in the public and private sectors to develop their strategies for change and then align their business processes, people’s talents and organisational culture to achieve business goals. She also acts as a coach for individual senior managers wishing to develop their personal effectiveness. jillj@tqmi.co.uk

Gail Tutcher has been in the consultancy business for 20 years and has been with TQMI since 1991. She has extensive experience of helping public and private sector organisations to change their culture and to improve performance. In particular, she supports clients who want to align their people, processes and performance measures with their strategic goals. She has also worked with the EFQM Excellence Model for the last 15 years and has been a Senior Assessor for the EFQM. gailt@tqmi.co.uk

SBQ - Steve Bispham

Steve Bispham is the Managing Director of SBQ Limited, a successful consultancy and training business based in Kent. SBQ has an impressive client list Including Computercenter, the Global Training Consultancy, the London Business School, the Metropolitan Police, P&O and Vector International.

Steve has worked closely with the BQF since 1996. He has been an active member of its Sponsor Member Steering Group for ten years, eight of which he was Chair.

He works internationally in connection with a number of quality and management initiatives and has carried out training assignments in Africa and the USA as well as in the UK.steve.bispham@sbqltd.comk