About Us

John McClelland CBE, Chairman

With 30 years of international executive experience in the high technology sector, John has held senior board level positions in the world’s leading electronics companies including, IBM, Philips, Digital and 3Com.

He has been appointed Chairman of the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council. He is Chairman of Technology Ventures Scotland, a company associated with promoting the commercialisation of Scotland’s research and innovation. He reviewed on behalf of the Scotland Executive the effectiveness of public procurement in Scotland. He is a former Chairman of the CBI’s Technology and Innovation Committee. In 1994 he was appointed a Commander of the Order of The British Empire for his services to Industry and Education.

John’s core competencies are in the areas of supply chain management and procurement although during his career he has managed the complete spectrum of functional and operational activities associated with large corporations. In these roles he provided strong leadership in the identification of future technologies, product development and the successful launch of new offerings to the market place.

Charles Morrison, Managing Director

Charles is a principal consultant with over eighteen years of consultancy experience. A Masters Graduate with excellent communication skills and a natural ability to new environments, he has undertaken many assignments which include service management, contract management, strategy management, technical management, project leadership, systems development, systems design and consultancy. He has a wealth of knowledge of the public sector having worked with both large Central Government organisations and numerous Local Government organisations on significant capital hungry projects and has developed his procurement and project management skills from these experiences.

Charles has also had much experience in dealing with the cultural, technical, and environmental impact that major change programmes can have on surrounding resources. He has recently developed a programme of supplier awareness, education and assessment in the area of CSR considering the influential role that public sector procurement has with private sector. 

Helen Capstick, Director of Resources

Helen is a principal consultant at NQC and has extensive and proven experience of procurement, contract and commercial management within the public sector. Helen has held integral positions within several prestigious central government organisations and has provided bespoke consultancy services to numerous other government organisations including local government and police authorities. She is a well respected and proven consultant with a special focus on the procurement, management and application of contracts for ICT solutions and professional services in the public sector space. Helen has spent much of her career to date establishing and managing high value and complex IT contracts and procurement exercises and developing and maintaining robust supplier relationships.

Helen's experience of delivery of major procurement exercises and her understanding of the ever increasing demand on public services has enabled her to consistently maximise the value driven from procurement operations to produce improved outcomes and efficiency gains. In her most recent assignment she has negotiated and reported several million pounds of efficiency savings.

Claire Russell, Commercial Director

Claire is an established and well recognised principal consultant specialising in the areas of procurement, contract and supplier management. Claire has extensive knowledge of government procurement processes including OJEU procedures, government purchasing frameworks such as Catalist and implementing e-Procurement solutions. She has had significant experience of managing procurement exercises for large scale programmes of change. Claire is also experienced in delivering procurement review services and assessing the capability of an organisations procurement function. She is also able to develop and implement improvement programmes to support the achievement of commercial benefit from procurement within an organisation.

Claire’s experience is from both a customer and service provider perspective, and this enables her to have a unique understanding of the challenges that new partnerships can face. Her skills have been used by organisations developing new partnerships to ensure that potential commercial issues are identified in advance and their risks minimised. Claire has had commercial responsibility within all her positions to date, and has practical experience in developing successful contracts through her understanding of how projects can fail and how appropriate terms can be developed to protect the associated parties.