Established in 2021 and located in the prestigious Cody Technology Park near Farnborough Airport, Tactical Support Solutions Ltd is a team of dedicated professionals with a vision to be the supplier of choice for outsourced services and equipment support.Since its conception and along with other support activities, Tactical Support Solutions has grown to become a strategic partner of Leonardo-DRS. Tactical Support Solutions now provides Leonardo-DRS (based in the USA) with a UK-based service and support facility. This facility offers unrivalled value to Leonardo-DRS and their customers in terms of value and rapid support.

I have experience in the supply and delivery of quality management and environmental management systems, achieving ISO9001 and ISO14001 certification, system auditing, solving product quality issues and implementing process improvements.My experience in change management and approach to consultancy helps clients to build teams and a company culture focused on achieving results.

As a part-time lecturer at the university's business school, I have been given the opportunity to help educate the next wave of quality professionals. This role is a very rewarding with a mixture of teaching theory and the opportunity to share real life experiences.

In the role of Quality Manager and active member of the Management Team, I helped ESL Defence create world class business processes and enhance customer satisfaction by increasing our right first time delivery capability.My responsibilities included the successful management of ESL's Quality Management System and leading ESL’s Lean Six Sigma continuous improvement programme. The role was extremely varied in a high technology environment working within the defence sector .During my time as Quality Manager I successfully completed a Masters Degree in Strategic Quality Management. My final year’s study allowed me to pursue my passion for continuous improvement and titled my research dissertation on ‘Critical success factors for Six Sigma in small and medium sized organisations within the UK defence industry’.

Responsible for running and developing Talley’s Quality Management System. During this perios we gained ISO9001-2000 registration and co-ordinated the update of their products from UL544 to UL60601-1. Some of the highlights from my time at Talley was the transfer of process ownership from the Quality department to the responsible departments and the implementation of Key Performance Indicators.

A critical role sitting between Engineering and Production to coordinate the effectivity of Engineering Change Requests. This role brought many challenges to ensure that Engineering Changes were implemented with the minimum cost to the business whilst maintaining customer requirements and configuration management. To perform this role the ability to multitask and coordinate the impact on the manufacturing database including Bill of materials and item master, product build files, purchase requirements, current stock, work in progress and product configuration structures was essential. The role also included the reporting of current product costs vs actual to use as an input to product budgets. The budgeting process was essential to set future material cost targets in-line with predicted marketed trends. In many cases these cost targets were used by procurement and improvement teams to drive cost savings. During his time in the role Neil was a key member of numerous successful award winning project teams including the OR100 MFO and OR120 HFO programmes.

As a Quality Technician I was responsible for the control of all calibration, providing support to Magnet Assembly and maintaining the monthly quality report with the aim to improve quality and reduce costs. Assisting with the selection of vendors was another important role within the job. As a trained auditor I carried out internal audits in line with the company schedule.

I was initially employed as a Trainee Engineer and subsequently promoted to a Quality Engineer. As a Quality Engineer my responsibilities included investigating and reporting Quality Issues, procedure writing, updating product manuals and general administration of the Quality System. Prior to promotion, I spent 2 years working in each of the company’s departments to gain valuable business knowledge.