Tell us about life before ADL Consultancy?

My background is as a qualified Electro-Mechanical Design Engineer having served a 5-year Engineering apprenticeship. Over the years I worked for different companies on the design of Flexitime Units for use in factories, Under-water repeaters for telephone cables under the Atlantic and then the designing of large Electron Microscopes.

I also worked for about 19 years at a telecommunications company in Harlow called Nortel Networks as a Design Engineer working on some of the first Silicon Chips in this country. After managing the Drawing Office there for some time, the company asked me if I would like to help them qualify for a BSI Standard called ISO9001 which I did successfully, learning in detail what was involved in that process. I was then asked to go over to the parent company in Ottawa to audit them to the same Standard and that continued for a couple of years until around the year 2000 when Nortel went downhill, mainly due to sudden drop in the telecommunications market and I, along with many hundreds in the company at Harlow and in the parent company in Ottawa were made redundant.

So, what was it that made you want to be an ISO consultant?

Well, I was on the dole for about a week and absolutely hated it. Then out of the blue I had a call from a BSI auditor who I had interfaced with when he audited Nortel. He knew of my redundancy and asked if I had thought of joining BSI as an auditor, subject to a couple of exams. Subsequently I went to the BSI building at Milton Keynes for an interview and following a successful week qualified for both the Quality (ISO9001) and Environmental (ISO14001) Standards.

I then worked for BSI for about 2 years, but it proved to be a lot of traveling and no Satellite Navigation systems in those days, so you had to drive with one hand and read a map with the other. With a young family at home and driving sometimes into the late evening to get home, I felt it was too much, it was time to leave BSI.

I had always wanted to work for myself and now I had a good knowledge and experience of the ISO Standards I realised that I could help other companies gain the Standards as well, as I felt it was an excellent platform to create and run a successful business. However, it would be a great leap of faith to leave BSI and go out on my own. There were many things to think about and I laid awake some nights wondering if I was making the right decision having a wife and three young children to feed and clothe and buying a house at the same time. I talked it over with my wife Sharon as to whether we could cope without much money especially if I could not get any customers immediately, and she agreed that if that was what I wanted to do she would support me. So, in 2002 I left BSI.

You’d been employed your whole career, what was it like suddenly going out on your own?

I guess that having audited many companies over the years for BSI, I felt confident in going to companies and identifying the procedures and processes and how the Standard applied to them. That gave me confidence when going into a company having minimal knowledge of what they did until you went through their door. You sometimes needed to think on your feet.

How did you build up your customer base from nothing?

The week I left BSI I had no customers of my own and although I had done some postal drops to companies in Harlow, I had had no response and did start to panic if I had done the right thing. Then on the Friday of the last day, one of the previous companies I had audited as BSI, phoned to ask me to help them. A big sigh of relief. The following week I got another customer and then another and the rest is history.

I remember having to talk you into having a website because you really didn’t want one. Why was that?

Looking back, I cannot actually remember why? Perhaps I thought I had enough work for myself alone. It wasn’t till you joined me that you brought a new dimension to the business.

And you didn’t want a company name or a logo either…

True. I didn’t think it as necessary for just two of us. Did not think for one minute that the business would grow to the size it has.

What values would you say ADL are built on?

I would like to think that as a company we have a reputation of being honest and reliable in all our dealings with our many customers across a number of standards.

You decided to retire at the beginning of 2021, was that an easy decision?

Yes. I was ready to retire. With our company growing and the increase in the customer base I knew the business was in good hands.

So, looking at ADL now: The fact we’ve got 6 active consultants, someone managing our admin, someone creating our social media, also we’re about to become a limited business and release our own ISO compliance software… How does that make you feel?

Very proud. From a meagre start, it now provides a livelihood for several related families.

If there are businesses out there contemplating one of the ISO standards, why should they contact ADL Consultancy?

ADL Consultancy is able to provide support and knowledge on many of the ISO Standards including Quality, Environmental and Aerospace. We pride ourselves on being completely honest and transparent as regards all our dealings with our customer base.