Gillies Crichton

Currently Managing Director and chair of Resilire Assure Ltd, consulting on many aspects of assurance, having previously held a senior leadership position as Assurance Director for AGS Airports Limited, based at Glasgow Airport. With over 36 years’ experience in the Aviation industry, including 17 years in the Airport Rescue and Firefighting Service, with seven years as the Chief Fire Officer at Glasgow Airport. Also served as Station Commander within Lothian & Borders Fire Brigade within their Retained Fire Service for nine years.

Accountable for the delivery of Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Environmental Compliance; Enterprise Risk Management; Group Internal Audit; Fire Safety; Business Continuity/Emergency Planning for the AGS Airports Group. Additionally, a member of the multi-agency West of Scotland Regional Resilience Partnership Business Coordinating Group and chaired the Transport Functional Group since its inception in 2009.

A founding member of the International Aviation Fire Protection Association (IAFPA) and still serve on the Board of Directors as vice chair and chair the World Aviation Fire Chief’s Meeting and have presented many papers at IAFPA conferences worldwide.

Had several papers on risk, resilience, crisis management and business continuity published, including Singapore Aviation Academy’s Journal of Aviation Management, Journal of Business Continuity & Emergency Planning, Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and Crisis Response Journal.

The key architect of AGS Airports Limited emergency, crisis and business recovery plans with a wealth of experience in their implementation; most notably, leading the Crisis Management Team during the terrorist attack on Glasgow Airport in June 2007 and at numerous events since.

I was a major driver, in conjunction with the UK Civil Aviation Authority, in implementing a new modularisation procedure for testing emergency plans as an alternative means of compliance with EASA rules which has now been taken on board by all the major airports in the UK. This is also being considered in other countries and is now recognised in the ACI Handbook “Emergency Preparedness and Contingency Planning”.

I was an invited speaker at the exclusive “Safer Cities” Colloquium by the University of Chicago in conjunction with the United Nations Security Council in Chicago in November 2019. I am also a guest speaker at Glasgow Caledonian University on Enterprise Risk Management where I am also an external examiner for their BSc Risk programme. I am also a guest lecturer at the Singapore Aviation Academy on their Senior Airport Fire Officers’ course and have lectured at the Emirates Ministry of Interior National Security Institute and Emirates Airlines Centre of Aviation & Security Studies. I was honoured to receive a highly commended recognition by IOSH Scotland for Outstanding Individual and Leadership in health, safety and wellbeing at their inaugural awards ceremony in 2024.