Fractional COO · Updated October 2026
A fractional COO is a chief operating officer you take on for part of the month. I offer that role to owner-managed firms in the United Kingdom, the European Union and Malta. It is two to four days a month, and the number is written into the agreement before I start. My specialisms are compliance management and quality assurance, so those are the first things I check in any operation. Who owns each process? What do the law and your customers require of it? Could you prove it was done properly last Tuesday?
I look at six things, in roughly this order. None of them is new. The hard part is keeping all six going in the same month.
01
A weekly operations meeting, a monthly review and a quarterly look at the plan. I chair the monthly one myself. The agenda stays the same every month, and the minutes say who has to do what and when it is due. ISO 9001 requires a management review. So does ISO 37301. I write the agenda so the monthly meeting covers what both ask for, with you or your senior team in the room, and you minute it once.
02
I ask who owns each core process, and I ask to see the written version. Where there are two versions, the process owner picks one and the other is withdrawn. Where the procedure runs to ten pages I cut it down with the process owner, because the people doing the job will not read ten pages. Documents carry a number and a date. Old copies are taken out of use. If the way of working changes, the document is changed in the same week.
03
I keep an obligations register, which lists what the law, your licence and your contracts require of you. Next to it sits one risk register, scored the same way in every department. Every line in both has an owner in operations. I work to ISO 37301 for the first and ISO 31000 for the second.
04
Before a supplier is used, somebody in your firm checks them and writes down what was checked. I set what the check covers, and each month I look at whether it was done. Some work stays your responsibility in the eyes of a regulator even when a supplier does it. For that work I look at whether the contract says so. Where it is silent, I tell you to take it to your lawyer.
05
For each role I draw up a competence matrix. The training plan comes out of the matrix. A new person works alongside someone experienced until the experienced colleague signs them off by name. The signed record is filed with the matrix. An inspector, an auditor or a customer may ask to see it, and it should take you minutes to find.
06
Once a month I send you a report. I do not change the headings. The figures you run the business on. Incidents and complaints. What went wrong, and what was done about it. Audit findings that are still open. Then the decisions I need from you.
Four steps. You can stop after any of them.
Keep, Assure and Assure Plus are set out on the compliance management page and the quality assurance page.
Both are part-time. The difference is how much of the business each one covers.
| Fractional Compliance and Quality Lead | Fractional COO | |
|---|---|---|
| What it covers | One system: compliance or quality | The whole operation, with compliance and quality inside it |
| Days a month | Two | Two to four |
| Meetings | Management review each quarter | Weekly, monthly and quarterly meetings. I chair the monthly review |
| Suppliers and staff competence | Refresher or standardisation sessions as needed | Checked as part of the role |
| Monthly report | On the compliance or quality system | On the whole operation |
| Director or regulated role | No | No |
Swipe sideways to compare the two columns.
There are things this role does not include, and I would rather you knew them now.
I am not appointed as a director of your company. You set the limits. Inside them I run the routine, which means the meetings, the documents, the registers and the report. Hiring, spending and signing commit the company, so those stay with you.
I do not take a role that needs a regulator's approval or a personal licence, such as an FCA senior management function or a Gambling Commission personal management licence. Those stay with you. If your regulator would treat the work itself as one of those roles, we change the scope before I start.
Two to four days a month is not enough to manage your staff day to day, and I do not try. Your managers do that. I agree with you what they are measured on, and each month I check the figures against it.
None of this is legal advice. Where you need a lawyer I will say so.
Who the role is for
The role is set up for owner-managed firms that have outgrown the owner watching everything, and are not yet big enough to carry a full-time operations director. It fits best where somebody outside checks your work. That means licensed gambling operators, FCA-regulated firms, care providers in England, training providers, and manufacturers or contractors who work to ISO 9001.
For ten years, from 2005 to 2015, I owned and ran Vista Group Malta, a packaging and industrial supplies business that sold to FMCG multinationals. Today I run companies in education, property and supply chain. I have lectured in compliance management, governance and internal audit since 2013. That is what I bring to this role: years of running operations as the owner, and the standards I teach. My leadership portfolio and my CV page set out the record. I check every engagement for a conflict of interest with any of my companies before I accept it.
The compliance and risk work, and where the Fractional Compliance and Quality Lead is explained.
The quality side: ISO 9001 systems, and quality assurance for courses and accreditation.
The companies I founded and lead, and the ventures I built earlier.
Projects I have led and delivered, from plan to finished work.
Who I am, how I work, and why compliance and quality sit at the centre of it.
Tell me your organisation and the pressure you are under, and I will come back on fit and scope.
It is a chief operating officer you take on for part of the month. Take a firm of thirty people where the owner does the operations job in the evenings, after the selling and the hiring. A fractional COO does that job with you for a set number of days a month. The decisions stay yours.
I look at six things. The meetings the business is run through. The written processes. The obligations register and the risk register, and who owns each line. Suppliers. Staff competence and the records behind it. The monthly report. Compliance and quality are my specialisms, so I check each of the six against the law, your licence, your contracts and the standard you work to.
Two to four. We agree the number before I start and it goes into the written agreement. If the work needs more than four days a month for long, you probably need a full-time person, and I will tell you so.
The Fractional Lead looks after one system, your compliance system or your quality system, for two days a month. The fractional COO is the wider job. I chair the monthly review. I look at your suppliers and at who is signed off to do what. The monthly report covers the whole operation. If your compliance file is the only thing nobody owns, the Lead will do.
No to both. I am not a director of your company and I do not sign for it. A role that needs the FCA's approval or a Gambling Commission personal licence stays with the person in your firm who holds it.
The practice is run from Malta and takes work in the United Kingdom, across the European Union and in Malta itself. Some days are on site and some are remote. We settle the split when we agree the days. For the national law of another member state I work alongside a local adviser.
Use the contact page to outline your organisation, the pressure you are under and roughly what you need. You will get a straight answer on fit, scope and how the work would run, usually within a couple of working days.
