Retired Early

Chief Executive, Director, Manager and general Dogs-body

2014 - present
Working flat out for myself and answering to nobody.

The work is totally unpaid, it's a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week occupation with no letup, and the only person who thanks you is yourself.

Steria (formerly Integris, formerly Bull Information Systems). Latterly Sopra Steria

Senior Project Manager

2010 - 2014
Deployment of a Business Portfolio Management solution across a European organisational structure.
Leading requirements gathering, analysis, solution and process definition. Prompting business changes, training development and deployment and support services to underpin the deployed solution.
Leading ongoing evolution of the technology and processes in order to maximise the benefits from the deployment.

2008 - 2010
Management of a multi-national Oracle Financial Systems upgrade, introducing new functional modules.
This includes the migration of two businesses into a single entity, and the introduction of new and changed practices for thousands of staff.
The project was time-critical.

2005 - 2008
Project managed further web-enablement of Lending and Savings functionality for a major UK Bank. These enterprise-level, mission critical applications were developed on new technologies, and architectured to operate on new infrastructure. The project scope encompassed requirements definition through design and development, with testing and user-acceptance support through to transitioning into a managed service.
The programme was delivered by a number of interdependent and disparate teams, remotely working over an extended time period. Complex contractual arrangements governed the programme.
Hundreds of change controls were assessed and implemented, but the project delivered to agreed time and budget, and applications went live and were upgraded on an ongoing basis using an Agile development approach.

2004 - 2005
Project management responsibility for a time-critical project for a UK Bank, upgrading their web-based mortgage applications to meet FSA compliancy by a defined date. This project had many interdependencies with both internal and external systems, and of course had to meet stringent Security and Performance criteria. Project completion ontime and to budget

2001 - 2003
Undertook a major upgrade programme for a central government department within the Home Office encompassing over 18,000 users. The solution provided a combination of locally and data-centre hosted applications in a secure environment.
Project managed the definition and proving of a new a multiple data-centre architecture; the definition of the planning processes for user and application surveying, datacentre installations, user training, desktop rollout, application migration, network installations. Undertook client-side project management working with regional teams preparing for the deployment and supporting regions during the deployment processes.

2000 - 2001
Project managed the scoping, requirements definition, design, build and implementation of a fully functional website for a major UK building society client. The website integrated with existing back-end systems and has realised a major growth in business for the client, whilst providing an infrastructure for ongoing web-based offerings to be developed.
Implemented by a combination of inhouse and 3^rd party sub-contract organisations. Scope covered all aspects from graphics concepts / branding through to technical design and interfacing, leading to full acceptance testing and performance verification prior to launch.
Responsibilities ranged across requirements definition, quality & configuration management, change management, procurement as well as management of all 3^rd party suppliers.

Unisys

Project Manager

1998 - 1999
Project managed a Geographical Information System development and implementation for a UK Utility. 5 existing sets of regional assets data had to be migrated onto a common platform as well as the consolidation of existing functionality, definition and implementation of new functionality and finally integration with customer contact and works order management systems to provide an integrated solution.

1997 - 1998
Project managed an in-house development for a Land Registration system. The system manages the spatial and textual attributes of the ownership of parcels of land.
Responsible for requirements definition, project administration, quality, configuration management, testing strategy, change control management. Procured hardware, software, the development environment and established the development team.
Reported both internally and to the client project board.

1996 - 1997
Project managed the Generated Graphics sub-system within a Geographical Information System solution for a major UK Utility.
Responsible for coordinating independent 3^rd party software development with in-house development teams and the rollout programme whilst the sub-system underwent a major redesign, retest and integration before implementation.

1995 - 1996
Worked as the prime contractor's Design Authority for a suite of independent, predominantly financial applications for a major Construction Industry company. Responsible for the overall integrity, integration and performance of 5 independently operating divisions systems.

Major enhancements were undertaken to the system architecture, resiliency and networks whilst simultaneously integrating new applications and maintaining the performance of the existing elements.

A benchmark was undertaken on a new application to validate it's scalability. Another new application underwent a major change in architecture and operation coincident with it's implementation, for which Unisys were required to underwrite the performance.

Digital Equipment Co (a.k.a. DEC, became Compaq, became HP)

Solutions Architect

1986 - 1995
Responsible for establishing Requirements and Functional Specifications for a Dispensing System for a major pharmaceutical company. Solution involved the integration of an in-house legacy system with enhanced 3rd party applications.

Led a benchmark to prove the scaleability of an 8 fold increase to a 2,500 user application. Coordinating Digital's team, overseas 3rd party software vendor and the client's own team.

Responsible for the architecture of a company-wide Data Management System for a UK Defence company, integrating the 3rd party software to PC-based word processing products, to CAD applications and to existing databases.
Overall solution encompassed a multitude of operating systems and client platforms accessing it.

Responsible for the overall technical architecture of a Manufacturing Planning & Control System for the Process Industries.

Racal Redac

Project Leader

1981 - 1985
Software House Project Leader for the Customer Support Team providing UK front-line software support and backup support to world-wide Sales/Support offices. The team delivered software updates, disseminated pre-sales technical information, and liaised with customers and sales offices.

Project Leader for teams of programmers writing Mechanical & Electrical CAD/CAM applications. Responsible for establishing the specifications with customers then scheduling the work and test procedures.

Dowty Hydraulic Units Ltd

Applications Engineer

1978 - 1981
Applications Engineer for Electro-Hydraulic Servo Systems.
Responsible for pre- and post sales technical queries and for specifying designs for servo systems.
Wrote software to both simulate hydraulic systems' behaviour and to assist in production control.

Education

Impoverished Student

1973 - 1978
University of Bath, sponsored as an Mechanical Engineering Student Apprentice by Dowty Group

• M.Sc. Fluid Power Design
• B.Sc. Mechanical Engineering