What was your highlight of 2024?
The personal highlight is easy – my daughter’s wedding!
The stand-up of DE&S’s new operating model is definitely one of my professional highlights. We are well on the way to delivering the biggest change to DE&S in a decade. So far, we’ve migrated about 7,000 of our 12,000 people into the model. It’s already making us more productive, and we’ll have increased the number of hours we can commit to direct delivery by 10% by the end of the financial year. It is also helping us shift our culture, improve our professionalism, balance our workload better and give better support to our people through new professional people coaches. We will always be adapting and improving, but 2024 has seen a massive step forward.
Another highlight has been our support to Ukraine. From the moment Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022, the pace and scale of the response by the UK and its allies has been astounding. The total value of military aid from the UK to Ukraine has passed £5bn and will reach a staggering £7.6bn by the end of this financial year. At DE&S, we recently delivered our 1,000th equipment project for Ukraine and won’t stop there. Whether we’re training their soldiers or helping Ukraine build crucial partnerships with UK companies to win the war of industrial production, we continue to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them.
What was the hardest part of being a leader in 2024?
This is a tough job, and as part of our transformation I’ve had to make some difficult decisions around our priorities. But I think the toughest was talking to the manager of a factory in Kyiv who had lost 40 friends and colleagues to a missile strike. He had buried his friends, cleaned up the damage and gone back to work. It was heartbreaking and an incredibly poignant reminder of how important the work we all do is.
What are the main challenges facing your organisation in the coming year – and how are you planning to meet them?
The greatest challenge is clearly the increasing threat to our country, and to our allies. But responding to this alongside our NATO allies is our biggest opportunity.
Defence secretary John Healey has made reforming defence a priority. Shortly after the general election, the government announced a root-and-branch Strategic Defence Review (SDR), which is now underway. It will shape MoD strategy by harnessing the best ideas of the nation and our allies to determine what needs to be done to deliver strategic advantage and economic growth.
Defence reform has also been launched, which will provide the structural changes necessary to implement the findings of the SDR and, as part of defence reform, we will create a new National Armaments Director (NAD) post which I will report to as CEO of DE&S. The new NAD will own the end-to-end defence acquisition and support process, and be empowered to change the system to drive faster delivery, more rapid innovation and increased effect for the money we spend.
What was the best Christmas present you’ve ever given or received? And the worst?
My youngest son bought me a “World’s Best Dad” mug a few years ago. It has lots of truisms on it, such as the quality of my jokes and “dad dancing” (both of which are legendary for all the wrong reasons). But I treasure it because he bought it for me, and my family and friends are hugely important to me.