“We help with the compliance stuff, so you can focus on what matters to you.”
Lawrence Vellam
BEng (Hons) CEng MICE
Managing Director
I have worked for 14 years as a Chartered Engineer and 9 years as a Quality and Compliance Manager. I love the technical stuff, getting to grips with requirements and making them work in business, through people. Dry subjects for sure, but your best work comes from enjoying what you do.
Why Neocirrus?
I set Neocirrus up in 2023 to provide accessible multi-disciplinary consulting services to all businesses- ranging from individuals and sole traders, up to larger companies and multinationals.
My reason for this was the result of a lot of soul searching. What do I want out of my life? What makes me tick? What gives me enjoyment and professional fulfillment? The answers all came over time, usually whilst walking our dog Poppy on the moorland above our house:
I can happily read standards and regulations cover to cover and make sense of them.
I thrive on solving problems and getting into the operational nitty-gritty.
I love helping people.
Then it dawned on me- everyone has a passion for something. A business can turn this passion into a way to make a living, and in a lot of cases standards, regulations and procedures are not at the top of people's interests (or maybe even skill set). I should use my own passions and skills to help other people realise theirs!
Poppy
Our purpose
Neocirrus specialises in the compliance and operational areas of business:
Remember the old Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times”. If your compliance is getting “interesting”, it could mean that you’re flying by the seat of your pants (very risky), or something has already happened (very scary)! Our focus is in helping to ensure that the compliance side of your business is as robust and uneventful as possible, so these worries are removed.
In addition, our passion is in helping businesses improve what they do operationally so they can grow and be better- for example environmental and social responsibility, reliability and effectiveness, safety, satisfying requirements and red tape, etc.
Our four main areas of expertise are Health and Safety, Regulatory Compliance, Quality Management, and Environmental / Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
My background
I spent 14 years as a Chartered Engineer, building, training and leading civil and structural design teams in two large engineering companies. My teams and I worked to deliver large projects alongside other specialists such as Architects, Mechanical, Electrical and Process Engineers.
Engineering design has a multitude of standards, regulations and quality requirements- not to mention the stringent requirements for professional conduct, sound judgement and integrity. I used these transferable skills to land a role at Bruichladdich Distillery, which allowed the lifestyle change my wife and I were looking for- to live and work on Islay full time.
Over the next 9 years, I built and led the Quality and Compliance function at Bruichladdich Distillery, in collaboration with the Directors and other Departmental Managers. Alongside Quality Control, some notable projects are as follows:
Implementation of a compliant Health and Safety system.
Compliance with COMAH and DSEAR regulations to satisfy the periodic inspections by the HSE and SEPA.
Implementing from scratch a food safety HACCP regime, and also a fully compliant ISO9001 Quality Management System, which was accredited first time with no nonconformances to the new 2015 edition.
A bulk vatting facility and new gin bottling line at the distillery. I was involved from the start on the project, and this introduced me to some very involved process safety design in collaboration with external process engineering and instrumentation specialists.
Technical design of new product packaging, which involved eco-design, whole life cycle assessment/comparison, design for manufacture efficiencies, etc. I had always been involved in market regulatory compliance for our whisky and gin products, and this added another dimension for me with full supplier technical engagements.
2020 and 2023 heralded Bruichladdich’s BCorp accreditation and re-accreditation; both of which involved a lot of technical and operational input on my part. Environmental and sustainability measuring, recording, reporting and reviewing were all vastly improved over this period, including the use of ESG scorecards and new dashboards for quality, health and safety. I am really proud that Bruichladdich achieved BCorp accreditation on the first try, and also managed to increase the score by 21% to 100.7 points in 2023. 98 of these points came from operational areas, which is phenomenal.
The experiences above reinforced how important it is to be able to rely on a network of trusted, brilliant and knowledgeable people to create a tailored team of experts. I carry this approach through to my new engagements wherever required.