Director wins European Quality Award

Steve Burnell, Director of Business Transformation at VT Flagship, is celebrating after being named as ‘European Quality Leader of the Year’ by the European Organisation for Quality (EOQ). This accolade - Europe’s highest award for Quality Leadership - was presented to Steve at the European Quality Congress in Vienna by the industry’s leading professional body.

The award builds upon Steve’s earlier success last year when he won the UK’s top accolade for Quality Leadership - the Chartered Quality Institute’s ‘UK Quality Leader of the Year’ award, enabling him to move forward to the European stage.

Both awards recognises Steve’s leadership of successful business transformation programmes and commitment to continuous improvement during his employment with Portsmouth based, VT Flagship and with his previous employer, AgustaWestland Ltd in Yeovil.

As part of the selection process for the European award, Steve gave a presentation regarding VT Flagship’s business transformation programme and the continuous improvement activities that the company’s employees are engaged in to improve business processes and culture, in order to deliver a better service to their customers. The panel were impressed by the focused way in which the programme engaged employees, suppliers and customers alike to move the business forward.

Says Steve; “It is a great honour to receive this award from the EOQ, recognising the work we’ve undertaken over the last six months to establish VT Flagship’s business transformation programme and local continuous improvement activities.

“I put our success down to building a programme around the three factors which are critical to the success of any business transformation programme; leadership from the top, the ability to focus on the key business issues and finally empowering people to work in small teams, using simple tools and techniques to improve what they do.”

Steve has a strong track record in the field of business transformation and continuous improvement. In 2006 he was named as one of the CQI’s Quality Leaders and in the same year finished as runner-up in the European Quality awards. Prior to this, he also led the AgustaWestland Transmission team which won the 2005 IBM Change Management Award in the UK Institute of Manufacturing’s Excellence Awards programme.