Sarah Heffernan, our Quality Assurance Specialist, gives an insight into her role in this month’s Q&A
How long have you worked at Aspect and what’s involved with your day-to-day role?
I’ve worked as a Quality Specialist at Aspect Scientific for a year now. As an ISO 9001:2015-accredited company, the challenge for the Quality department is to oversee documentation, manage non-conformance, and make sure we satisfy the requirements in every way possible. We spend a lot of our time reviewing, auditing and documenting data generated by the business. Being quite fresh to the organisation is an advantage as you can view things objectively and see where improvements can be made.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
I love making things look and sound good, helping reflect Aspect in the best possible light. Quality Specialist is quite a privileged position to hold as it allows for insight across most areas of the business and as we’re responsible for guiding continuous improvement, there’s plenty of scope to affect change.
We’re a small company, but we’re experienced, and it’s always a joy to sound out ideas with colleagues. We’re a tight-knit team.
Tell us about any changes within the company that affect your role?
It’s a really collaborative environment to work in, and as we grow as a business, there are inevitably new challenges and endless decisions to be made. We have no problem coming up with new ideas and we welcome the challenge to ensure our expansion is as controlled as possible and in compliance with the quality standard.
Do you feel the company’s services / products and your role have an impact on healthcare, why and how does this make you feel?
Absolutely. In previous lab management roles, I’ve been the one to request servicing and liaise with field service engineers, so I know how critical it is to have planned and predictable downtime for instrumentation. Our aim is to enable the laboratories to keep to their testing schedules and maximise their potential.