McGuinness and Donaldson celebrate quality awards

Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and Junior Minister Jeffrey Donaldson today praised local organisations for their achievements in various Quality Award Schemes.

The ministers were attending a celebration event in Parliament Buildings which was organised by the Centre for Competitiveness and attended by representatives of the 22 organisations who have achieved recognition at various levels and featuring the four European Excellence Award Winners.

These were St Mary’s College, Creggan; Springfarm Architectural Mouldings Ltd; Cedar Foundation and Tobermore Concrete.

The event was also a celebration of the 120 plus organisations that have been recognised over the 12 years the awards scheme has been in operation.

Emphasising the need for an ethos of delivering quality, particularly within current financial constraints and in an uncertain economic climate, Mr McGuinness said: “It doesn’t matter whether we work within the public sector, the voluntary sector or the private sector – high quality services are what customers rightly expect.”

Underlining this theme Mr Donaldson added: “We want to encourage more organisations to adopt quality management principles. Models, such as the European Foundation for Quality Management Excellence Model, are practical tools which help organisations to measure where they are now, where they want to be in the future and provide a structured method of reducing the gap.”

Notes toEditors:

1. The EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management) Excellence Model was introduced here in 1994 by the Northern Ireland Quality Centre (now the Centre for Competitiveness) and its member organisations.The Excellence Model has been widely accepted as a major tool for identifying areas for improvement across key elements of an organisation.

2. The Centre for Competitiveness is an independent private sector, not for profit, membership organisation endorsed by the Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment. It is funded through membership fees, sponsorship and the delivery of specialised business improvement services. It is the local Partner of the European Foundation for Quality Management, Brussels.

3. Many of the local award winners have progressed through the ‘Steps to Excellence’ scheme, launched in November 2000 to recognise the improvement activities of public sector organisations through a graduated approach.

4. Funding for the highly successful “Steps to Excellence” scheme, which is sponsored by the Department of Finance and Personnel and the Ulster Bank has just been put in place for a further three years.

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