The first Corporate Management Systems Auditor: Tim O’Hanlon
Background
Tim has been involved in quality since 1977 having first embarked on the IQA training courses in 1977. Since then his experience has taken him around the world preaching the quality message including delivery of the IRCA lead auditor course to nearly 1,000 people from the UK to Sweden, the USA and Brazil. |
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Tim's qualifications include FCQI, Senior Member ASQ, PhD, MBA as well as internationally recognised qualifications in health and safety, and marketing. He was awarded the "Best speaker" award at the 2004 International ISO conference in Florida for his breakthrough paper on "Quantum auditing". Tim is also the author of one of the world's leading selling books on auditing published by ASQ Press.
Current work profile
Tim has spent the last couple of years supporting organisations, including BMW and Pertemps People Development Group to prepare for assessments for regional and national excellence awards. He continues to audit and support organizations in implementing effective quality management systems and audit programmes.
Assessment Centre Experience
"I was a little hesitant about going to the assessment centre to be honest. After more than 20 years working within quality I was not sure how much benefit I would get. However, I found preparing the pre-course material a stimulating challenge because it made me reassess whether I had fallen into the trap of compliance thinking instead of value added thinking. I looked at the report and there were real opportunities to improve its structure and content - to use less jargon and place what the findings really meant within the context of the overall business objectives.
The first task at the assessment centre was a case study that challenged one's capacity to assimilate business information and present data-driven feedback to the management team. When a calculator was included in the exam material, I knew it was not just about clause numbers! This was a great exercise and really challenged me to look at the information through the eyes of an MD and not an ISO auditor.
The personal interview combined the pre-course report submission and the output from a profiling questionnaire and is conducted on a one-to-one basis in a relaxed, yet challenging environment. I thoroughly enjoyed this experience and received feedback which I was able to implement immediately on my return to the audit world and it was feedback for which I was humbly grateful.
The last exercise was the team session, which was not a meaningless role play, as can so often be the case, but a real test of how to work together quickly as a team, assimilate data and come up with some value adding feedback for an organization.
All this in a day and a really enjoyable day with competent examiners who were respectful of my experience but yet were quite prepared to challenge me and help me improve as an auditor. I would not hesitate to recommend this experience to other similarly experienced people who want to move on to the next level as auditors and I am unbelievably proud to be the first person to be awarded this qualification."
23rd July2007