Finally, after several months delay due to Covid, the BQF 2020 UK Excellence Awards virtual ceremony is being held on the 17th December.
MSC R&D has a very active involvement in the awards this year, as we are both a sponsor of the Excellence in Innovation award AND a finalist in the SME category.
The British Quality Foundation (BQF) is the premier membership organisation representing excellence and performance improvement in the UK. It is independent and not-for-profit and has an extensive track record of helping organisations learn from best practice, improve their performance and achieve sustainable excellence.
MSC R&D has been a long-term member of the BQF, and in 2017 embarked on the next step in our Business Excellence journey by adopting the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model for us to benchmark ourselves against industry best practice.
Following a stringent and robust assessment carried out by the BQF in 2017, MSC R&D achieved Committed to Excellence, one of the first companies of its size to achieve this recognition.
Not one to rest on our laurels, we have continued to progress and, at the start of this year, despite the assessment process being within 1 week of full lockdown and having to be held “virtually” over a 3-day period, MSC R&D was successfully awarded the 5-star EFQM Recognised for Excellence (R4E) status, the next step on our quality journey. R4E recognises the level of maturity of an organisation when assessed using the full EFQM Excellence Model Framework – further proof of our commitment to our staff, associates and customers.
Being involved throughout a client’s innovation life cycle, MSC R&D has experienced first-hand the impact a commitment to excellence can have on achieving successful innovation – reducing risk, cost and time through application of best practice and reduction in non-conformances. That is why we jumped at the opportunity to sponsor the Excellence in Innovation Award and apply our expertise in grant funding applications to help with the judging.
The virtual ceremony is a bit like the BAFTAs in that “nominees” are required to provide a video “acceptance speech” in case they win – but the winners are not announced until the ceremony itself. So, fingers crossed that we get to use our acceptance speech for our entry in the SME category!
