Alderley Edge, England, United Kingdom
An enthusiastic and knowledgeable IT & Infrastructure Project Manager with a proven track record across a breadth of industry. Accustomed to working at all levels either singly or as part of multi-disciplinary teams. Capable of rapidly adapting to new challenges, with an ability to quickly build strong working relationships. Has a broad range of technical, leadership and business skills with extensive risk management experience. A skilled analyzer of business systems, processes and procedures with practical experience of applying business and process improvement techniques. A keen appraiser and disseminator of new ideas, technologies and techniques. Experienced in the use of Linux and Open Source solutions for IT infrastructure to provide benefits including licence cost savings, enhanced security, reliability/stability, and commercial and technical independence. Security Clearance • Security Clearance - Granted Feb. 2013. Specialties: • Project management and contingency planning expertise • IT and project risk management • Business continuity management • Facilitation and chairing of workshops • Proficient in a range of client/server OS and application software – Linux/Open Source, Unix, MS Windows and Office software
KDAB, the Qt experts, provides consulting and mentoring for developing Qt applications from scratch and in porting from all popular and legacy frameworks to Qt. Our software products increase Qt productivity and our Qt trainers have trained 50% of commercial Qt developers globally.
Hitachi Consulting is a recognised leader in delivering business and IT strategies and solutions to global companies across many industries. The Managed Services practice provides support services including functional, technical, DBA and infrastructure remote and on-site support for large enterprise scale solutions. As Infrastructure Manager I took the lead role in the management of the infrastructure capability (networking infrastructure, physical server, virtualisation, storage, Windows and Linux operating systems) with responsibility for: • Managing the delivery of infrastructure services and projects into a portfolio of clients - estimating and scheduling resources against service and project requirements. • Line management of a mixed technical team of infrastructure and network specialists, located across multiple sites. • Scoping, planning and managing technical projects. • Budgeting and evaluating suppliers and provisioning of data centre hosting • Managing licensing, support contract purchases & renewals, procurement and management of enterprise hardware and software including: o Cisco & Juniper firewalls and switches, o Dell, Compellent and EMC servers, SANs and tape libraries, o VMware vSphere ESX 4/5, vCenter, SRM, o Microsoft Server 2003, 2008 & 2008 R2 and Oracle Linux, o Symantec Endpoint protection v.12, Symantec Backup Exec 2010, 2012. • Working to ISO27001 standards within a service management organisation utilising ITIL practices • Utilising Hitachi Consulting’s HFusion project management and delivery methodology.
Draig produce and supply Enterprise Billing software solutions based upon Microsoft Dynamics CRM and SQL Server to energy suppliers in the UK. As Client Delivery/Project Manager I had responsibility for the successful, timely delivery of Draig's software solutions to customers. The role included: • Software implementation project management including planning, reporting, tracking and management of project costs. • Externally facing customer relationship management and consultancy - identification, specification and agreement of customer change requests, collection of purchase orders and timely invoicing. • Responsibility for the business analysis and testing function • Liaison with internal Development and Service Desk teams for planning and scheduling purposes • Creation and update of product descriptions and documentation
Responsible for maintaining corporate IT infrastructure in the UK & Middle East offices. Included: • Alignment of IT strategy with business objectives of the organization. Reporting to the board. • Management of infrastructure hardware & software projects. • Fostering close links with senior staff in the organization to understand requirements and deliver appropriate solutions. • Ensuring end-users were supported and supplied with hardware & software required for their role. • Monitoring, review, & management of IT security. • Producing & managing the IT budget. • Management of relationship with IT suppliers & outsourced functions. • Management and control of telecoms contracts. • Recruitment and retention of IT support staff and related contractors. • Line management of the helpdesk and IT support function - setting objectives, conducting performance appraisals & pay reviews of support staff. • Implementing improvements in IT systems, business process & procedures including planning, change management, audit, procurement, implementation, & training. • Service level monitoring, measuring and reporting. • Implementing improvements in IT systems, business process & procedures where necessary including planning, change management, audit, procurement, implementation, and staff training. • Production of corporate policies, procedures and documentation surrounding the IT Infrastructure, including IT acceptable use policy, IT security policy, IT disaster recovery and business continuity plans. • Managing day to day running of infrastructure distributed across sites for services including; identity management, email, network shares, printing, secure backup, internet access, web sites, instant messaging & virtualization. • Utilising Debian Linux, Mac OSX, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, 2008/R2, Microsoft Nav Dynamics 4/2009, Solidworks Enterprise PDM, Spiceworks, VMWare, VirtualBox, Microsoft Windows XP, Vista, 7, Microsoft Office 2003/7/10.
Senior Consultant on team tasked with devising, implementing and supporting replacement of IT infrastructure following acquisition of business. The company was divested from its parent organisation in 2005/6. As part of the transitional service agreement, major elements of the IT infrastructure needed to be replaced, including cabling, server racks, switches, servers, software and internet connectivity. All client PCs were to be upgraded with new software and joined to the new domain. The timescale to identify, design & cost, construct and deploy a complete infrastructure to support users distributed across multiple locations throughout the UK and the Middle East was less than 5 months. A solution was identified that would save money, scale with the ambitions for growth and enable the management team to take control of the IT strategy. To better manage on-going costs and for a faster, more secure, stable network performance the company decided to utilise a predominantly Open Source network infrastructure. This achieved significant cost savings to the business whilst allowing greater flexibility for all staff. The use of Open Source software solutions on the server side married to proprietary solutions where appropriate contributed a reduction of the immediate IT spend by over 50% in the first year alone and to on-going savings for the business (over alternative solutions) of over £100,000 per year. Server uptime/reliability was enhanced, storage and e-mail capacities were improved by an order of magnitude and redundancy and backup were significantly enhanced. This project was completed on time, on budget and to the specified quality working in conjunction with suppliers.
Seconded to group software business as Business Analyst and tasked with managing a variety of internal and external projects including: • Management of project teams on software development projects, production of functional specifications for software modules, revision and updating of software change logs. • Produced reports on client’s business processes and procedures and outlined accompanying guidelines, recommendations and actions. • Chairing workshops to identify requirements of client organizations. • Identification of core processes and production of a series of quality procedures for areas including software development, testing and release, implementation, and bid and proposal management to achieve compliance with quality audits. • Review of markets and report highlighting limitations in current software solution. • Gap analysis between existing software product and third party software house as part of merger of products, including recommendations and actions. • Managing the planned closure of a small regional office, the subsequent staff relocation and introduction of home-working.
Consultancy activities included a variety of short and long-term secondments to client businesses in the UK and Europe, undertaking: • Workshop facilitation and chairing • Project Risk Management Studies • Reviews of Risk Management Audit Programmes • Reviews and Analyses of Operational Safety and Standards • Management and Expedition of Hazard Logs