Kevin has over 30 years experience in the IT Industry, with particular involvement in software development, quality assurance and quality management (especially ISO9001/TickIT), and more recently in software process improvement using models such as the Capability Maturity Model (CMMi) and SPICE (ISO15504).
Kevin has provided professional services relating to quality management, capability assessment and process improvement to a variety of organisations. These have included:
Kevin is Chairman and Meetings officer of the British Computer Society's Quality Specialist Group in North West England, and arranges a programme of workshops and seminars to ensure that IT professionals are updated with the latest developments and experience in quality management and process improvement.
Kevin's career started in 1975 as a systems engineer at British Aerospace and then team leader/project manager in airborne software development at Marconi Avionics, before moving in 1982 to the UK's National Computing Centre as a trainer/consultant specialising in software project management and quality assurance. In 1991 he moved to Admiral Management Services as a software quality management consultant then in 1994 to Brameur Ltd, specialising in the technology transfer to the IT industry of the latest methods and approaches in software quality and process improvement (especially for EC-supported programmes).
In 1998, Kevin formed his own company Improve QPI Ltd to develop these interests in capability assessment, process improvement and best practice for software development and IT acquisition, usually based on the ISO9001 and ISO15504/SPICE models.
Kevin is a Lead ISO9001/TickIT Auditor registered with the International Register of Certificated Assessors (IRCA). He has performed formal ISO9001 audits for UK Certification Bodies (EAQA, BSI QA and currently SGS) for a wide variety of information systems and software development companies. He has acted an internal auditor for the Business Systems Group of the UK Post Office. (ISO9001/TickIT certificated). More recently, he has provided consultancy and support for software houses in Sweden and Portugal, preparing them to successfully obtain ISO9001:2000 Certification for their Quality Systems.
Kevin has tutored on formal TickIT Auditor training courses in the UK, Europe and Canada (American Society for Quality). He is a visiting lecturer on the Business Management MSc course at the International Institute of Management at CNAM Paris.
Kevin has B Sc and Ph D degrees in Physics from Manchester (UMIST) and Durham Universities. He is a Member of the British Computer Society (MBCS) and Chartered Engineer (C Eng).