The Scottish Quality Management Centre
Anchored in Quality since 1989
A quality training story, built over decades.
Our story begins with Ian W. Hannah: engineer, teacher, Fellow of the Chartered Quality Institute, Senior Member of the American Society for Quality, and one of Scotland’s great quality management pioneers. His belief was simple but powerful: quality is not paperwork for its own sake. It protects people, improves organisations and gives teams the confidence to do work properly. That belief still shapes SQMC today.
1989 — SQMC begins
Ian W. Hannah established SQMC within the Management Sciences faculty of the University of Stirling, to support quality management education and professional development.
1992 — Scotland’s first IRCA-approved Lead Auditor course
SQMC becomes the first organisation in Scotland to gain IRCA approval for Quality Management Systems Lead Auditor training.
1993 — Centre of Excellence status
SQMC is awarded Centre of Excellence status by the Institute of Quality Assurance, now the CQI, to acknowledge Ian W. Hannah's innovation of the UK's first post-graduate degree in Quality Management.
1998 — SQMC becomes independent
The organisation moves beyond its university origins and continues as a specialist provider of auditor training and management systems support.
2020 — Virtual Classroom delivery launches
SQMC expands live online training, keeping courses interactive and tutor-led while making them easier to access across the UK and beyond.
2026 — Easier access, stronger value
SQMC enters its next chapter with a renewed focus on practical, accessible and better-value training. Through our easy-to-reach Scottish locations, live online delivery, and digital course materials accessible wherever, whenever, SQMC helps organisations train their people without unnecessary travel, wasted time or inflated costs.
About SQMC
The Scottish Quality Management Centre began with a clear purpose: to bring serious quality management thinking into practical use for Scottish industry.
In 1989, Ian W. Hannah was engaged by the University of Stirling to develop a Quality Management Centre within its Management Science faculty. Ian had already lived an unusually rich quality career — from engineering work in Canada and the United States to senior quality roles, international lectures, and decades of teaching. His career had taken him across countries and industries, but one conviction had stayed with him: quality only matters when it helps people do better work.
Ian often traced the turning point in his career to January 1967, when he attended an American Society for Quality Control course in Anaheim, California. During that course, news broke of the Apollo 1 fire. Ian later wrote that the reaction of NASA supply-chain engineers in the room changed his view of quality forever. From that moment, quality was no longer just about statistics, inspection or systems; it was about lives, livelihoods and consequences.
That human view of quality became the heartbeat of SQMC.
Under Ian’s leadership, the Quality Management Centre grew into an important source of training, professional development and practical support for Scotland’s manufacturing and engineering sectors. Its work became sufficiently valued that the centre was granted approval to add the designation “Scottish” to its name — becoming The Scottish Quality Management Centre.
In 1992, SQMC became the first organisation in Scotland approved by the International Register of Certificated Auditors to deliver certified Quality Management Systems Lead Auditor training. Ian also developed auditor training programmes that helped shape the wider profession, including QMS internal auditor and lead auditor courses.
But his influence went further than auditor training. Ian developed the UK’s first Master’s Degree in Quality Management at the University of Stirling — a programme so far ahead of its time that it was later emulated by other universities across the United Kingdom, including institutions that would go on to compete in the same field.
That achievement was primarily why the Institute of Quality Assurance, now the Chartered Quality Institute, awarded SQMC Centre of Excellence status. This was not simply a training provider delivering courses. SQMC had become a serious centre of quality management education, shaping how quality professionals were trained, developed and recognised.
Ian’s contribution was not only technical. He had the rare ability to make management systems understandable, useful and human — a teacher as much as a technician.
When funding cuts threatened the centre’s future in 1998, Ian took SQMC independent and established SQMC Ltd in Dunfermline. That decision preserved the centre’s accreditations, its training mission and its service to industry. It also allowed SQMC to support clients more directly through consultancy, in-company training and practical management systems work.
Today, SQMC continues from its training headquarters at Dunfermline Learning Campus, with public courses also delivered in Aberdeen, Glasgow and live online. We support learners and organisations across Scotland, the wider UK and beyond through ISO auditor training, QHSE courses, Virtual Classroom delivery and in-company programmes.
Much has changed since 1989. Standards have changed. Training technology has changed. Organisations face new pressures around quality, safety, environment, risk and value. But the spirit Ian Hannah built into SQMC remains the same: serious standards, plain-English teaching, practical examples, and respect for the people who have to make management systems work.
We're proud of our heritage. But we are not here to preserve history in a glass case.
We're here to carry it forward.
Read our tribute to Ian W. Hannah to learn more about his life, work and influence.
Detailed Timeline
1984
The International Register of Certificated Auditors (IRCA) is formed in London.
1987
Leading Quality Standard, BS 5750, is superseded by ISO 9001:1987.
1989
Stirling University Professor, Brian Moores, forms the concept of what would become the Scottish Quality Management Centre (SQMC).
1990
Ian Hannah is appointed, as Director of Programmes, to 'activate' SQMC; and develop syllabi of short Quality Assurance courses.
1992
SQMC achieve "approved" status with IRCA, and launch Scotland's first IRCA-certified Lead Auditor course.
1993
Ian Hannah drafts the original "180" Internal Quality Auditor programme on IRCA's behalf.
SQMC is awarded 'Centre of Excellence' status by the Institute of Quality Assurance (now the Chartered Quality Institute) to acknowledge Ian Hannah's innovation of the nation's first post-graduate degree in Quality Management.
1994
SQMC debut an IRCA-registered 'Internal Quality Auditor' course at Stirling Management Centre.
SQMC awarded the Joe Bosworth trophy for Excellence in Quality Management training.
1998
SQMC is restructured and transformed into a private limited company, independent of the university; headquartered in Dunfermline. SQMC can now provide consultancy to clients who have long requested it.
1999
'SQMC Online' is launched on the World Wide Web.
2005
SQMC's first overseas office is opened, in Vancouver, Canada; where Ian Hannah began his career in Quality Assurance.
2012
SQMC Operations Manager, Kenny Hannah, along with our longest-serving tutor, the late Ron Rivans, and former Scottish Enterprise business advisor, Karen MacKenzie, are promoted to the Board of Directors.
2013
Karen MacKenzie takes over from Ian Hannah as SQMC's chief course designer. Mr Hannah continues to oversee SQMC's progress in a semi-retired role, as Chairman of the Board.
2014
SQMC celebrates its Silver Jubilee.
2015
SQMC became 'Partners in Excellence' with Quality Scotland, a charitable, membership organisation which provided the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model.
2020
SQMC innovate a specially-designed, online version of the ISO 9001 Internal Auditor course, hosted in our 'Virtual Classroom'.
2023
SQMC moves its Registered Office to our new Glasgow address.
2023
SQMC is granted permission by the CQI and IRCA to launch our specially-designed, virtual ISO 9001 Lead Auditor course, online.
2024
SQMC opens a local, Aberdeen Office, to better serve our North East and offshore clients.
2025
SQMC moves it's national training headquarters, in tandem with Carnegie Conference Centre, to the brand new Fife College facilities on Dunfermline Learning Campus.
2026
Kenny Hannah formally takes on the Managing Director role at SQMC.