STEVE LYNCH (IEng MBCS CITP)

Contact Details:

T:   (02) 9401 4080  

E:   lynch.stephen@yahoo.com.au
A:   19 Gilles Crescent, Beacon Hill, Sydney, NSW, 2100

M:  0410 177 725

Career Summary:

Steve has more than thirty (30) years experience, solid technical, business and commercial acumen combined with a proven track record in delivering multi-million dollar projects while ensuring delivery of tangible business results within tight deadlines.

Early in Steve’s career foundation skills in team management, customer relationship management, financial control, workforce planning, procurement & supplier management, as well as logistics & stock control were acquired. Moving industries these skills were further enhanced with the demands of managing components of the extended manufacturing supply chain and included among others; unit cost control, quality management, standards & procedure documentation, certification, compliance and safety. Transitioning to Information Technology, Steve covered a gambit of roles including data processing, business analysis, technical writing, testing, system design, technical authority, training and account management.

These roles and skills provided the strong foundation needed to successfully assume increasingly senior roles in project and program management. In the early years, this included grounding in applications development, applications maintenance, business change management and service delivery. In latter years, Steve switched focus to computer and network operations where he was accountable for production services and systems availability. In addition, Steve assumed management responsibility for many infrastructure change projects needed to support significant business transformation, including one of the largest SAP Billing solutions (ISU-CCS) and Siebel CRM implementations in the world.

This mix of skills, experience, track record and ability to work at all levels within an organisation, provides Steve with the essential backdrop, needed to successfully manage and deliver “end-to-end” solutions that fully support IT integration with the Business strategy and supporting operations plan.

Career History:

ACCENTURE (Australia Ltd - CANBERRA) – 2004 to Current

Working as part of the Canberra based Accenture team at the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) on the Change Program which has as its goal “The Change Program (with a budget of $342 million) is all about making the revenue experience Easier, Cheaper & More Personalised (ECMP) for our clients”. Although engaged in the capacity of Project Manager, over the years, a diverse set of roles were assigned.

With the experience gained from the previous Change Program Releases, the initial work was in assisting the CPOSE (Change Program Operations Support Enablement) Manager with the establishment of the team across the multiple streams of work in advance of the new team arrivals and the start of the detail task activities. With a specific role in support of the Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), the middleware (IBM Messaging & Queuing – WMB / WMQ / MBFE) used to achieve the necessary cross platform / cross application communications, the EAI scope of work touched all streams under the CPOSE ‘umbrella’:

·     STREAM 1: Operations Architecture - Defining end-to-end strategies and the operations framework

·     STREAM 2: Systems Management - Application and Solution Critical Path and Operations Management

·     STREAM 3: Monitoring - Event, Fault, Performance. Message Queuing (EAI) and status monitoring

·     STREAM 4: Supporting Tools - Scheduling and operations integration support

·     STREAM 5: EDS mobilisation - Ensures EDS teams have access and fully implemented the toolsets

·     STREAM 6: Operations Enablement - Implementation and service introduction activities for CPSF

Roles & Responsibilities

Reporting directly to the CPOSE Stream 2 Team Leader in a specialist technical role, with the virtual Change Program team to assist and contribute:

·     EAI OPERATIONS & DR RUNBOOKS - With an initial Release 2 baseline of the EAI Operations Runbook (detail configuration and operations procedures) already available, through a series of workshops, walk-through’s, 1:1 discussions, investigation, meetings, informal review, the formal review process and the support of test execution… to extend the Operations Procedures to support the Change Program Release 3 Production environment changes of:

o        Ensure the Release 2 baseline content is converted to a current level of operation (nothing assumed)

o        Version 5 to 6 upgrade of IBM WebSphere Messaging & Queuing (WMQ)

o        Version 5 to 6 upgrade of IBM WebSphere Message Broker (WMB)

o        The introduction of IBM Message Broker File Extender (MBFE)

o        With the inclusion of the new Integrated Core Processing (ICP), ATO Portal and satellite site applications, to extend the previously midrange (Wintel) only document structure, to accommodate the mainframe (z/OS) and UNIX (HP/UX) platforms

o        Generate (not included in the previous releases) the supporting and necessary Error & Trouble-shooting procedures, many in support of the resolution of Omegamon XE monitored and alerted situations

o        Additionally (based on the Production set) deliver the same set of procedures for operations support in the event of a declared disaster

·     ‘OUTBOUND’ & DR RUNBOOKS – Inherit the two Operations Runbook procedures and bring them into line with the current release through working with the technical support, application support, fix and development teams (Canberra & Brisbane)

·     TECHNICAL RECOVERY (DR) – OVERVIEW – Against a backdrop of many years experience and a breadth of knowledge across the ATO Change Program, work with the newly appointed ATO DR Manager to critique the covering 3^rd party developed Project Plan and to in turn develop an Change Program specific overview document clearly bring all elements into a single view. 

·     DROP MONITORING - On behalf of CPOSE to monitor ALL Program Change Requests to identify the sub-set that impacts on the CPOSE operations focussed work scope. For the identified sub-set, to report and provide a centralised record for detailed review, assignment and follow-up

·     TEMPLATE STANDARDS - With each new release, the changes encountered and the lessons learnt, to maintain the master procedure template documents (MS Word format), in readiness for the next application (Operations Runbook document) or capability (Critical Path document) added into the Change Program library

·     PEER RREVIEW & SUPPORT – To provide general support to the CPOSE team in the role of undertaking Peer reviews of the multiple technical documents produced    

Achievements

·     The EAI Operations Runbook is the only Runbook with a cross-platform scope and its extension to deal with midrange, mainframe and UNIX was a significant task, as the format had to be consistent with each of the other Operations Runbook formats

·     The EAI Operations Runbook was delivered into the published phase 1 testing schedule on the day required, with the subsequent successful phase 1 testing

·     Having inherited the Change Request (CR) Drop Monitoring task form the CPOSE Manager with an impossible 950+ review backlog, to review the manner of monitoring and employ a simple extract to spreadsheet with a pivot table, to identify the ‘likely’ sub-set of interest. The review of the sub-set CR’s, confirmation of those of interest and the recording into a CPOSE centralised register brought the task back on track within two days. Moving forward, an ‘alert me’ action was placed on the CR register, with a daily review ensuring a current understanding and no backlog

·     Continue to maintain the standard template documents in line with the ever changing demands / needs of each of the supported applications, always considering the impact on work already undertaken

·     With the benefit and experience of the previous CP release activities, act as a ‘sounding board’ to the rest of the team on matters such as document peer review, who to talk to, how best to achieve, what next, general MS Word and the use of MS SharePoint… always lots of questions to be answered

·     Run a series of ‘new starter’ induction sessions for each new CPOSE team member

·     Working with the Release 3 build EAI configuration team, identified a number of small changes for them, that significantly reduced the level of detail (100’s of pages) within the CPOSE document deliverables with the exact same outcome being achieved through cross-reference not replication

The Change Program Environment Management (CPEM) team provides technical support for the Change Program midrange and middleware development and test environments. The Environment Management Infrastructure Team manages the provision and support of server infrastructure for these environments which involves work in such areas as Change Management, Incident Management, Configuration Management and Environment Management.

Roles & Responsibilities

Report directly to the CPEM-Infrastructure Manager as Incident & Change Management Analyst.

·     Raise, track, monitor and report on infrastructure changes required by and/or impacting Change Program development and test environments.

·     Log, track, resolve and report on incidents and service requests related to Change Program development and test environments.

·     Maintain and report on the team’s server Configuration Management Database (CMDB) and Environment Usage Schedule.

·     Provide technical guidance to less experienced staff

·     Promote and apply Tax Office and APS policy in the areas of Workplace Relations, Occupational Health and Safety, Employment Equity and Diversity, Privacy, the Taxpayer’s Charter and the Compliance Model

Achievements

·     Within one day of joining the team, successfully represent the team at a meeting with ATO Change Management and provide significant contribution

·     The planned four week transition / handover phase to take control of the role was cut to one week allowing the previous person in the role to accept his new assignment three weeks ahead of schedule. This was only made possible due to the experience, exposure and understanding of the Change Program built up over the previous releases. 

·     Applied significant amounts of judgment, intelligence and common sense to the necessary administration tasks which previously occupied the bulk of the weeks efforts and through cooperation with the CPEM teams and ATO Change Management, reduced these tasks to two days work, freeing up valuable time to engage with the rest of the CPEM teams to coordinate, get involved in the detail and really contribute

·     Significantly improved the level of Management visibility regards the ‘real’ position of change, across the breadth of the CPEM support teams through weekly reporting both in words and detailed spreadsheets

·     Built a greater network of peer support across the ATO CP Incident & Change community

·     Developed a series of suggestions aimed at the end to end improvement around the very complex control of ATO Incident & Change Management and establish a weekly meeting with the ATO Incident & Change Manager to progress how delivery might best be achieved

·     Further enhanced an existing reputation of ‘getting things done’

·     The assignment concluded with the identification of an ATO full-time staff person being identified to take on the role. Once identified an eight week transition / handover was agreed. The handover was achieved two weeks ahead of schedule and was only possible as each of the essential tasks had been resolved through clear procedures... it would not have been possible to hand over what was ‘handed’ to me  

Roles & Responsibilities

Reporting directly to the ATO CPOSE (Change Program Operations & Support Establishment) Manager with direct responsibility of a team of eleven (11) people and the Program matrix teams, to develop, test (pre-production and production environments) and obtain acceptance of handover to the ATO teams, of the essential technical Operational Procedures and Monitoring requirements of the applications and associated mid-range servers, as delivered by the Change Program Release 1 teams:

·     At the beginning of this assignment there was a specific request to provide insight and support to the responsible CPOSE2 Project Manager

·     Towards the end of this assignment to assume the task of selecting and mentoring one of my CPOSE2 Accenture team, to take on the role of leading the development of the CPOSE2 Disaster Recovery operations procedures against a worked through  strategy and approach

·     Maintain the accuracy, completeness and alignment of the total set of Operations Procedures prior to handover for acceptance by the EDS Operations and Change Program Support Function (CPSF) teams

·     Coordinate any necessary testing / re-testing of the Operations Procedures

·     Based on the previous Release 1 and DR experiences to refine and streamline the process of developing for the new Release 2 procedures with consideration to the already available Release 1 documents.

Achievements

·     Ensured a level of uniformity and a common approach to the information required, through development and acceptance of evolved procedure document templates which combined what was previously, sixteen documents, into just two.
 

·     With predominantly only ‘junior’ analysts with little / no previous operations experience being assigned by Accenture Management to the team, it was great to see them provide significant contribution (with help and guidance) to what was a real team effort

·     By adopting a flexible / pragmatic approach, being able to manage the changing needs of the project including, due to restricted access, the need to test with minimum impact on the project or ATO business Production service, meaning some out of hours and weekend testing   

·     100% Delivery of the agreed set of Operations Runbook, Monitoring and Critical Path documents through formal review and presented as ‘Available for Testing’ by the EDS Operations Support team, all managed through the structured SharePoint repository. The initial number of deliverables being 64, reducing to 60 (growth of -6.25%) through managed change control

·     Leading a team that played a key role in the Release 2 'go live' – May / June 2006 - with this success being celebrated across each of the contributing key / prime organisations of ATO, Accenture, EDS and IBM. 

·     With an accepted nomination of a junior but capable member of the team to continue and lead the CPOSE2 Disaster Recovery work, mentored this individual and provided a worked through strategy / approach, ensuring him every chance of success of delivery… ‘nothing succeeds like succession planning’

Working as part of the Canberra based Accenture team at the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) on the Change Program and seconded to the EDS owned / managed Disaster Recovery (DR) Project for the Release 1 applications. The goal of the DR project being “Aim is to have Burwood operational within four (4) hours of a Disaster being declared, with a maximum of fifteen (15) minutes data loss”

Roles & Responsibilities

Reporting directly to the joint ATO & EDS Disaster Recovery Project Manager/s with a team of four (4) direct reports (combined Accenture and ATO) and the support of the matrix project teams to:

·     Deliver a set of Operations Procedures in support of the Burwood (Sydney) Disaster Recovery site in the event of a declared disaster at the Bruce (Canberra) ATO primary production operations site. The initial number of deliverables being 84, growing to 91(+3.98%) through managed change control

·     Document the detailed steps for each application, necessary to invoke the Burwood DR configuration, with ‘hooks’ to align with the project Master Recovery Schedule (MRS) and the ATO DR Plan

·     Coordinate the initial installation of the Change Program applications onto the Burwood DR infrastructure

Achievements

·     100% delivery of the SOW agreed set of reviewed DR procedures, with a status of ‘Available for Testing’ by the EDS Operations Support teams. The procedures detailed both the steps necessary to invoke DR at the Burwood (Sydney) data centre and the procedures necessary for the continued ATO production operations, in the event of a Bruce disaster.

·     Even though almost all of the upfront assumptions proved to be incorrect, still managed to deliver within the spirit of the agreed Statement Of Work (not just the letter)

·     Rather than double the number of deliverables with the delivery of test plans, developed a combined Operations Procedure & Test Plan document, allowing delivery to be accelerated and team members to ‘roll-off’ ahead of schedule

·     The Change Program Release 1applications, were successfully installed on the Burwood Disaster Recovery infrastructure, to the same configuration as for Bruce (1:1) and where necessary the associated installation procedures were modified to reflect latest experience.

Roles & Responsibilities

Reporting directly to the Change Program Environment & Infrastructure Manager with direct responsibility of a team of twelve (12) people from EDS, ATO, Accenture, Avanade, Microsoft and IBM, to develop, test (pre-production and production environments) and obtain acceptance of handover to the ATO teams, for the essential technical Operational Procedures and Monitoring requirements of the applications and associated mid-range servers, delivered through the Change Program Release 1. In addition, a number of specialist utility programs were developed to automate the otherwise intensive manual procedures related to start-up, shutdown and backup.

Achievements

·     To ensure a level of uniformity and a common approach to the information required, through development and acceptance of a set of template Operations Procedures

·     Two members of the team were Graduate recruits, (one from ATO and one from Accenture) with this assignment being their first and without any previous operations experience, it was great to see them provide significant contribution as part of a coordinated team effort

·     By adopting a flexible / pragmatic approach, being able to manage the changing needs of the project including, due to restricted access, the need to test against approved change controls with minimum impact on the project or business, meaning some out of hours and weekend testing   

·     100% signed-off (c/w signatures) delivery of the agreed set of tested operations procedures and monitoring documents, in support of the ATO production environment Change Program Release 1 applications, all managed through the structured SharePoint managed repository. The initial number of deliverables being 106, growing to 169 (+35.80%) through managed change control

·     Leading a team that played a key role in the Release 1 'go live' - 06 June 2005 - with this success being celebrated across each of the contributing key / prime organisations of ATO, Accenture, EDS and IBM.

Roles & Responsibilities

Reporting directly to the Change Program Technical Architecture Environment & Infrastructure Manager with the help of the matrix Project Team in a coordination role based at the ATO national data centre in Bruce, Canberra, to bridge the 'gaps' between the teams involved in the physical build, configuration and handover of the mid-range servers. In summary the 'gaps' were causing delays against the master project plan and my job was to bring it all back on track, remove the significant levels of miscommunication, monitor, track & report on progress to deliver built and tested servers to the Environment team, for the loading and configuration of the Change Program applications.

The challenge being the number of different groups and people with split responsibilities, primarily project versus production support. Making it happen, was more about dealing with the people and developing / maintaining a detailed & credible master status reporting sheet, than it was in dealing with the technology.

Achievements

·     Getting to know a lot of people in a very short space of time but more importantly, to have them help me to achieve delivery and get the plan / priorities back under control, without having any direct ability to influence their support

·     Developing, maintaining and publishing a detailed status report with multiple ready made views on a daily basis

·     The plan dates were improved, delivery flowed and most importantly people started believing the published status report/s, which meant less pone calls, daily progress meetings (micro management) being cancelled and recognition for a job well done by all involved. Having someone sit in the middle, allowed each of the teams to get on and do their job

ACCENTURE (Australia Ltd - BRISBANE) – 2004 to 2004

Working as part of the Brisbane based Accenture Project Quest Team, to move the two distinct Energex and Ergon Energy IT&T organisations to the new operating model of a single (newly formed company) IT&T organisation - SPARQ Solutions. With both Energex and Ergon Energy being Queensland Government owned, this move made a great deal of commercial sense, with a projected first three year savings of $100 million as a result of a number of initiatives:

·     Workforce consolidation, against the backdrop of union agreed no forced redundancies and no forced re-locations

·     Streamlined operational procedures

·     IT&T infrastructure consolidation, including merging of multiple data centres and IT&T operations centres

·     Consolidation of software licences and on-going maintenance costs

Roles & Responsibilities

Reporting directly to the Change Program Environment & Infrastructure Manager, with only one direct report but with access to the full support of the assigned project team, my role on the project was to mentor and guide the two Operations Managers (with one becoming the Operations Director) through the period of transition to Day one delivery of the new SPARQ Solutions IT&T Operations team. I was selected for this role because of my previous experience in a similar key IT&T role with British Gas and its multiple re-shuffles re-brandings, specifically:

Achievements

·     The newly formed SPARQ Solutions entity was formed to deliver the on-going IT&T support service for the two parent organisations, with the newly appointed Operations Director appointed working from new premises using a single set of reviewed, agreed and approved supporting operations procedures for both on-going and project based work

·     My assigned set of deliverables (Operations Manual and Operations Procedures) were available on time and in accordance with the agreed Operations Project Plan

·     The Operations Setup Team key management tools of Project Plan, Issues Register, Risk Register and Change Register were maintained, current and delivered for Steering Group ‘review and challenge’ on a weekly basis

·     Represent Accenture on a series of ‘road show’ presentations in Brisbane, Rockhampton and Townsville

CENTRICA (British Gas) INFORMATION SERVICES – 1998 to 2002

Set against the backdrop of deregulation, British Gas undertook a major transformation Program (Jupiter Program of work with a planned budget of $820m) to retain and regain its customers through improved flexibility and enhanced customer relationships. From a solution perspective, this involved the implementation of SAP & Siebel solutions, the re-engineering of legacy environments and enablement through middleware for the solution to perform in a distributed computing environment.

Roles & Responsibilities

Reporting directly to the Jupiter Integration Manager with direct line management and Program management accountability for a multi-disciplined team of 52 direct reports covering a range of responsibilities including; infrastructure design, systems integration, common services/adapters, environment support, configuration management, technical infrastructure support, legacy support and release management with an annual revenue budget (1^st year) of $24m and a total capital budget of $295m.

In addition to the core TI project team, through negotiation and planning, there was access to the full resource of Centrica IT and the best available from the key suppliers and managed outsource contracts with HP, SUN, Compaq, Veritas, Quest, StorageTek, EMC, BMC and Oracle:

·     Mapped the technical requirements to define and deliver a technical infrastructure solution with consideration to architecture, volume, stress, performance, operability, storage backup & recovery, system security, high availability, resilience, saleability, redundancy, disaster recovery, business continuity and archiving. The technology solution implemented, supported 30million customer accounts with 13,000 client log-ins, sub two-second end-user response times and ‘24x7x365’ day operation

·     Planned and coordinated resource contention across all Program system environments including development, test, legacy and release management environments.

·     Championed resolution of major “show stopper” technical infrastructure risks & issues as these threatened project timeline, project budgets and architected solution.

·     Defined and managed infrastructure readiness for transition, handover and acceptance by operations support.

·     Owned the definition of technical specification for procurement and joined the procurement team as a key player in negotiating the major contracts including features like utility pricing, capacity on demand, innovative volume discounting, professional service days and performance guarantees.

Achievements

·     Delivered 1^st release to timeline commitment made by CEO to shareholders prior to Program start-up and completion of business case.

·     As the resident expert on the archiving of transactional data to a safe and readable storage medium, I was asked to assist Luminus, the Centrica operation in Europe, with their investigations and decision making process.

·     Obtained all signatures of acceptance of successful handover from the Program to Service Delivery Operations for the hardware, infrastructure, documentation and proof of extensive testing for Release 1.

This Program needed someone with a unique blend of experience and skills; Senior Manager within the Centrica organisation, an in-depth understanding of the data centre environments & architecture, able to operate at all levels within the organisation to ‘get things done’, enterprise application experience, large Program management experience and a flexible approach to work.

Roles & Responsibilities

Reporting directly to the Jupiter Program Manager - Technology Infrastructure (TI) with direct line management of a team of nine (9) FTEs skilled in automated testing, plus the support of key third party suppliers including; Mercury Interactive, SAP, Siebel and SeeBeyond.

·     Managed and ensured quality in all levels of technical testing were successful. This included; architecture, volume, stress, performance, operability, storage backup & recovery, system security, high availability, resilience, scale ability, redundancy, disaster recovery and archiving.

·     Represented the Program team into the organizations “Enterprise Architecture Management Group”

·     Coordinated activities between the Program and Infrastructure operations ensuring deliverables were confirmed as operationally ready

·     Ensured a robust audit trail for all technical testing activities and outcomes.

Achievements

·     From scratch and with ‘out of the box’ applications & tool set, the team built and demonstrated a cohesive flow of information across the Program’s architecture

·     Following a review of available automated testing products, negotiated with Mercury Interactive for the supply of their automated testing tools at better that corporate book price for the software & services.

·     Lead the technology review to recommend the choice of server and storage supplier for each key element of the Jupiter Project Solution

With the formation of the new IT organisation supporting British Gas and affiliates, promoted to Senior Management level for Facilities Management support of all UK based data centres within the new group.

Roles & Responsibilities

Reporting directly to the Operations & Technology Manager, with line management responsibility of three (3) managers and a total team size of thirty four (34 - the team size moved to thirty seven (37) in 2002). Managed the external third party maintenance providers including; Amdahl, ICL, Synstar, Compaq, SUN, HP, BGI, StorageTek and IBM, against an approved maintenance budget of $27.36m:

·     Planned, co-ordinated and managed the delivery, installation and maintenance of all computer hardware, infrastructure and facilities installed / operating at the six UK Data Centres & Disaster Recovery locations, in a 24x7 operating model. This included; monitoring financials, resource management, continued ISO 9001 compliance, document control, supplier management, procurement and data centre related software licence control

·     Monitored and operated all hardware Service Level and Operational Level Agreements (SLA’s & OLA’s), with a focus to minimize disruption and risk against agreed, documented and measured KPI’s

·     Ensured maximum value was delivered from the out-sourced service providers, with a primary focus on quality, timescale, budget and practicality

·     Worked with each of the Projects to assist in their planning for their hardware and infrastructure needs, ensuring successful implementations. The assistance provided extended to procurement, asset management, space planning, delivery, installation, data connectivity, power distribution, warranty monitoring, maintenance cover and ISO procedure compliance.

Achievements

·     Took on and accepted the challenge of a new role, that extended my knowledge and understanding of computer hardware and infrastructure operations within a national data centre environment  

·     Achieved a greater than 10% reduction in expenditure against the agreed annual budget, through contract re-negotiation, manpower efficiencies and an asset by asset review of planned maintenance requirements

·     Successfully project managed the Mitcham site refurbishment and team relocations against a $3.12m million budget.

·     With respect to data centre consolidation, six sites reduced to three, ensured an overarching responsibility to ensure from an end-to-end basis, all issues and risks were addressed. All hardware moves actioned over a nine-month period without disruption to the production services.

·     Successfully managed the production, adoption and accreditation of a single set of Data Centre Facilities ISO9001 operations procedures covering all business unit requirements (The AA, British Gas Trading, British Gas Services, Scottish Gas, One-Tel, Goldfish Bank, Centrica Business Services, Centrica Energy Management Group and Halfords Garages)

·     Successfully project managed delivery of an enterprise Project Management Toolset, compliant with the Centrica Prince methodology, to plan, control and monitor all work across Operations & Technology.

·     Achieved a step change of improvement in Operations & Technology employee satisfaction, through a series of very real changes at the Mitcham, Basingstoke and Staines sites, with recognition at Director level

Responsible for the research, specification, agreement and delivery of solutions designed to meet both IT and British Gas Services business requirements and objectives through the supply of a service, not just the delivery of technology.

Roles & Responsibilities

Reporting directly to the Program Manager, with three (3) direct reports, managing a number of third party relationships responsible for application maintenance and enhancements. The associated budget for these services was $13m excluding projects:

·     Managed and accountable for the outsourced Application Maintenance Support (AMS) contracts and supplier relationships for the core applications SAP, Calidus - warehouse and logistics, Premier - leads and supply chain management, FINEX - financial control and exchange, a staging process between bulk billing and SAP.

·     Worked with business unit leadership to develop business cases and gain approval and funding. Defined related project terms of reference and scope ensuring objectives and timescales could be met.

·     Following business case approval, acquire the resources necessary for successfully delivery and monitored quality of deliverables against standards to ensure compliance

·     Prepared and presented project progress through regular formal reporting and presentation to governance boards

·     Lead, influenced and monitored the behavioural and business change initiatives necessary to achieve continuous development and improvement in quality

Achievements

·     Move into the New Year with confirmation of Y2K compliancy achieved for accountable portfolio of applications

·     Delivered core application maintenance services for SAP, Calidus and the Premier portfolio with a saving of 4.32% against planned budget

·     Project managed the delivery of the Central Heating Re-Engineering project, which exceeded forecast business benefits. The average order value of each central heating sale was increased by $333.6 (forecast of $240.00) and the customer conversion rate increased by 1.1% (forecast 1%) with in excess of 100,000 units sold each year the numbers are significant! The success of this project was documented in a customer study (white) paper prepared by the Toshiba organisation, a copy of which can be found at: http://uk.computers.toshiba-europe.com/cgi-bin/ToshibaCSG/case_studies.jsp?z=84&service=UK&ID=0000000aa1

·     Project managed the delivery the first Centrica production data archiving solution (on the Premier application)

·     Project managed the delivery a two-way EDI capability between the Premier application and the three key main suppliers of central heating supplies into British Gas Services for purchase order and goods receipt

·     Represent Centrica IT on the joint British Gas Services & Sitel (outsourced call centre) project steering group for their implementation of a Siebel Call Centre solution

·     Represent Home & Road Services on the cross Centrica team e-utility project. This project was established to set the strategy and design criteria of the Centrica view of how to best utilise / benefit from the world of e-commerce

·     Project managed the re-engineering of the Energy Assessment Program (EAP) for use both in the field and via the British Gas Services web site

·     Project managed the delivery the 1st Centrica application conversion from Oracle 7 to Oracle 8.1.6.

·     Represented British Gas Services IT as a member of Centrica IT Business Solutions work group, to work along side colleagues from British Gas Trading and The AA to develop best practice group wide processes and procedures.

·     Successfully undertook the challenging task of developing the 1999 IT budget Program covering all aspects of work across internal headcount staff, external revenue and capital expenditure. This task was augmented with a report on lessons learnt and a proposal of recommendation for process improvement.

LOGICA UK LTD - 1994 to 1998

Represent Logica within the British Gas Services account, as the single point of contact on all matters relating to application maintenance, change management, approved project development and account management.

This was the ‘reward’ for having ‘grown up’ with the account first as Analyst, to Technical Authority, Project Manager and into the Program Manager role.

Roles & Responsibilities

Reporting directly to the Logica Down-stream Projects Co-ordinator and the British Gas Services Applications Maintenance and Development Manager, with five (5) team leaders and a total team size of seventy nine (79) with a base operating budget of $5.68m:

·     The only authorised Logica on-site management interface concerning work requests, schedule management and commercial matters.

·     Provided ‘24x7’ knowledgeable applications support for the services portfolio of; Banner (service contracts and asset definition), AUDDIS (a scorecard to determine customer viability for contract cover), WMIS (work flow, materials, work orders and high level planning), UCAD/WINDISP (detailed work planning and allocation), Field Application (work assignment and work progress update) and their interfaces

·     Began the process of ensuring Y2K compliance of all maintained applications

Achievements

·     Won a Logica world wide, Energy & Utilities award / trophy, for the project the greatest margin delivery contribution to the ‘bottom line’ with consideration to team size.

As part of the successful bid team, were awarded a $17.04m rolling three years Application Maintenance Support deal for a range of British Gas Services. The initial scope of the project was extended beyond maintenance only, to also include major change and project development work. This extension to scope resulted in additional staff resource requirements with a greater emphasis on quality, planning, configuration control and an integrated release management process.

Roles & Responsibilities

Reporting directly to both the Logica Down-stream Projects Coordinator and the BGS Applications Maintenance Development Manager, with direct responsibility for approximately thirty (30) staff and three (3) sub-contract suppliers:

·     Provided each deliverable to the client in a timely and scheduled manner

·     Managed and monitored the sub-contract supplier relationships

·     Ensured customer satisfaction to secure continuation of the AMS rolling agreement

·     Ensured fulfilment of all contractual obligations to the client in a professional, cost effective manner

·     Ensured that Logica achieved and improved on the planned financial return from the project

·     Produced, agreed and maintained a Project Plan, Quality Plan, Financial Plan and Manpower Forecast and direct the project staff and sub-contracts in accordance with the agreed plans

·     Reported to the British Gas Services and Logica Management on a monthly basis

·     Agreed any changes to Logica’s scope of work, that do not impinge on any contractual statements

·     Incurred and approved overtime and other expenses within the agreed limits with the project Financial Plan

Achievements

·     Through confident contract based discussions, grew the team from fourteen (14) FTEs dedicate to application maintenance to a team size up to thirty three (33) FTE’s to support application development projects

·     Achieve recognition for my teams work at Director level in both the Logica and British Gas Services

Joined the Logica organisation to provide specialist technical and detailed business knowledge, for the ongoing support and development of the PM3 application, an ORACLE 7 / SQL*Forms 3 / SQL*Menu 4 / CASE, integrated Purchasing, Materials and Maintenance Management system.

Assigned to the Logica British Gas Services WMIS application development project (Workflow Management Information System). The projects remit was for the Field Application with an approximate 7,000 field engineers and 30,000 work instructions per day, to communicate two ways with the back office systems via a centralised distribution application UCAD, across seven distinct regions. WMIS was the hub of all the back end application communications. The Field Application was a bespoke developed solution, designed to run on a rugged windows managed Panasonic laptop.

Roles & Responsibilities

Reporting directly to the Logica Project Manager in a technical design role, without line management or financial responsibility:

·     Considered the end to end interfaces and message flows from the field to UCAD to WMIS to Contracts (Banner) both from / to and ensured the required content was accounted for, with the minimum of values being distributed

·     Documented all interfaces to the project standard using Edifact message formats  (a modified form of Electronic Interchange Definition (EDI)

·     All message flows to be accounted for through applying business test scenarios

·     Monitored the development of all interface modules

·     Prepared all test data and test plans and run a series of technical and functional tests to ensure conformance to the test plan. Through testing and re-work of the application code to programmatically resolve errors encountered

·     Ensured ability of Logica team to continue to support and maintain the application code once through technical testing and made available for User Acceptance Testing and subsequent promotion to production

Achievements

·     Achieved recognition as the prime source of information and technical / functional authority for the Area Operations systems interfaces using Vcom message queuing, shared database tables, direct reads or limited direct writes

·     Achieve an understanding of not only the Logica developed applications but also those from the other suppliers. Enough of an understanding to begin the process of proposing their migration away from the original developers to be under Logica control

KVAERNER AM (KAM) - 1992 to 1994

Worked with Kvaerner AM primarily as Business Analyst with special skills in Oil & Gas, materials and maintenance management on two key projects:

·     London Underground Project - Train Maintenance and supporting procedures and – London based

·     PM3 - Design, development and implementation of a full feature Purchasing, Materials & Maintenance Management system for joint use (two instances) by the Aberdeen based Oil & Gas organisations, Chevron UK and Amerada Hess Ltd

WAKEPLACE LTD - 1992 to 1992

Worked with Wakeplace Ltd in a Business Analyst and Consulting role, across a wide range of projects including; retail EPOS study and cosmetic surgery (dental) application implementation

TRANSCON LTD - 1987 to 1992

Worked with Transcon Ltd in the role of Consultant, Project Manager and Program Manager, across a diverse set of industries and applications but with the common themes of Maintenance, Procurement, Asset and Materials Management, with most of the systems being stand alone PC solutions (Dbase+ / Clipper / and…) with supporting services.

MARATHON OIL UK LTD - 1981 to 1987

Worked with Marathon Oil UK, on the development of two North Sea oil field platform projects:

·     Brae ‘A’ (Alpha) &

·     Brae ‘B’ (Bravo)

The fabrication and commissioning operations being spread through England, Scotland and Spain with the ever changing nature of the project, affording the opportunity to work in a number of challenging roles, culminating in a transfer from the more practical nature of fabrication site / support base materials control, into a management position in IT Services, first in the Aberdeen and then the London head office. 

VARIOUS RETAIL ORGANISATIONS - 1975 to 1981

Worked with a range of UK high street retail stores, to achieve rapid promotion from Warehouse Manager through to Assistant Store Manager and onto Store Manager entailing significant staff, stock inventory, security and $-performance responsibilities and accountabilities… dealing with the needs of the Store, the staff, the inventory and the retail public.