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TPD Ltd - Interim Project Manager (Feb 04 - present)

Managing Director of TPD Ltd a company set up to provide Interim Project Management services to companies.

Achievements (PepsiCo International, Dec 07 - Present)

• Secured initial 3 month contract to project manage the testing component of a European, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) application, data and server (Wintel/Unix) migration project to a centralised datacentre
• Successfully led the requirements gathering, design, procurement, commissioning and handover to EMEA teams of a VMWare Wintel test datacentre. Achieved on time, under budget and to agreed requirements
• Successfully led a performance test across the entire EMEA Wintel and Unix Server estate where server CPU, I/O, memory usage was continuously monitored over a one month period in order to size the EMEA datacentre
• Set up a Quality Center proof of concept to introduce the PepsiCo EMEA datacentre Test Teams to Mercury Test Director
• Facilitated the learning of PepsiCo Global testing best practices and test tools across the EMEA datacentre Test Teams
• Set up and initially chaired an EMEA datacentre Architecture Design board to facilitate roll out of the global design to the EMEA Design teams
• Set up and initially chaired a major third party review board to facilitate learning of the EMEA datacentre design, roles and responsibilities between both companies
• Successfully documented, set up and implemented a compliance tracking process to ensure migrating Wintel and Unix servers are complaint prior to migration to the EMEA datacentre
• Attended datacentre meetings to share learning across EMEA, Latin America and Asia to ensure mistakes were only made once across the globe
• Secured two further contract extensions of 3 months and 6 months

Achievements (Research Machines, Dec 04 - Dec 07)

• Managed the initial set up of the Managed Service for the Leeds BSF project
• Managed the Design, Development, QA Testing and Commissioning of an online assessment marking system with a team in excess of 50 people and budget of £2.5m
• Saw the project grow from just myself to a complete department in excess of 60 people managing a five year managed service and significantly contributing financially to RM
• Managed 7 pilot runs on time, to budget and to specification within a managed service environment
• Managed multiple project streams with multiple vendors
• Managed a QA team of 2 Test Leads and 7 Test Analysts for 3 months
• As QA Manager delivered a de-skilled performance test environment capable of modelling department growth over the next 5 years
• Asked to step in and manage to resolution a critical customer facing issue at the customer’s site. Issue was resolved quietly, quickly and efficiently, resulting in a delighted customer
• Secured eight contract extensions and one of only a handful of contractors within RM to be extended beyond a year

Achievements (Phoenix Trader Distributorship, Feb 04 - Nov 04)

• Increased distributor team by 340% to 55 members
• Increased sales by 600% to £152k per annum

Achievements (Capita, Jun 04 - Jul 04)

• Contracted to integrate new software into schools in the Oxfordshire region
• Software integration was successfully completed ahead of time
• Re-assigned to integrate new software into Berkshire schools, again completed ahead of time

O2 - Project Manager (Sep 97 - Jan 04)

Mobile telephone network provider for the UK currently providing mobile telephony services to over 12.5 million customers. I reported to the Head of Intelligent Networks and PrePay for O2.

Responsibilities

• Entirely responsible for the network aspects of the O2 PrePay service including full software life cycle
• Nationwide PrePay network expansions to 1m, 2m, 5m, 8m and finally 12.5m customers
• Ownership of the project plan with dependencies for Development, QA Testing, Integration into live service and handover to Service Delivery
• Responsible for third party software suppliers including tendering, vendor selection, procurement and final acceptance
• Controlling and monitoring third party testing in conjunction with the Quality Assurance Test Manager to ensure adherence to specification
• Supporting Quality Assurance Test Manager to develop integration testing plan including all dependencies to ensure integrity of network after integration
• Managing user acceptance testing to ensure end user requirements were met
• Handover to Service Delivery
• Spend was below negotiated annual budget (£20m in 2002)

Achievements

• Managed the capacity integration programme from 100k customers to 12.5 million customers in less than 3 years with no customer affecting problems
• Managed the complete life cycle of 18 software releases into the live mobile phone prepay network, including QA testing, integration and hand over to Service Delivery
• Asked to replace the programme manager of a complex multi-country roaming mobile telecoms project. Resolved all morale, technical and resourcing issues, then with the complete project team went on to successfully integrate all hardware and software into the live network to plan
• Pulled together at extreme short notice a project team to resolve a telecoms issue in the Channel Islands where customers were making free calls. Project was successfully completed after 2 weeks
• Recruited and managed two project managers and had overall responsibility for the projects they were managing. The first project manager was so successful he was transferred to another area of the business. The second project manager took over my role when I left
• Wrote business cases for submission to senior management to enable capacity expansion to continue and for new services to be introduced. All expansion funding requested was successfully negotiated.
• Graduated with an MSc in Project Management from Lancaster University

Lucas Assembly and Test Systems - Project Manager (Jun 94 - Sep 97)

Provides automotive automation equipment to allow customers to automatically assemble and test vehicle engines, brake systems and other major sub-systems. I reported to the relevant Program Manager relating to the project I was assigned to.

Responsibilities

• Entirely responsible for the mechanical engineering aspects for the project I was assigned to
• Including supplier programmes, managing the design team, assembly team, testing team and implementation team
• Where extra external resource was required, recruitment of team members, including drawing office and test team staff
• Interfacing with customers during entire project life cycle
• Spend was below allocated budget

Achievements

• Successfully led a bid team on a $52m contract with General Motors. The contract was won through a superior design proposal and competitive pricing. Only project to have a margin greater than 50%
• Lead the mechanical engineering team on 4 of the 7 phases of the General Motors contract. Despite a standard company product lead time of two years, I managed to lead the team to deliver the 1st phase in 15 months, much to the delight of General Motors
• First 4 phases of the contract were delivered ahead of schedule, under budget and within specification
• Took over the commissioning of a £6m automation contract in Italy. Despite the equipment being incomplete, I rapidly planned what was required, negotiated with head office, and within two weeks had a delighted customer

Schlumberger Industries - Project Manager (Sep 92 - Jun 94)

Provides gas turbine temperature measurement devices for input to instrumentation and engine management systems. I reported to the Engineering Director.

Responsibilities

• Managed the submission of proposals to Rolls Royce, Pratt & Whitney and GE in conjunction with the Marketing Department
• Following contract award, I would manage the design, development, testing, and introduction into production of the temperature measurement devices

Achievements

• I was hand picked by the Managing Director to work autonomously with a group of 10 other team members to investigate and overhaul the entire factory with the goal of reducing product lead time by 30%
• Following a 10 week program of reviewing and redesigning the factory flow, product lead times were reduced by 35%
• In my two years at Schlumberger I achieved a spend against budget of 96% in year 1 and 94% in year 2
• In the 93 to 94 business year I submitted 18 proposals to customers all within 5 days as stipulated in the company guidelines, introduced to delight customers

Smiths Industries - Project Manager (Mar 89 - Sep 92)

Provides gas turbine temperature measurement devices for input to instrumentation and engine management systems. I reported to the Engineering Director.

Responsibilities

• Managed the design, development, testing, and introduction into production of the temperature measurement devices

Achievements

• Reduced the lead time for determining the thermal response time from 2 weeks to 1 day. This was achieved by introducing a proven computer model developed by myself to predict the response time compared to the existing method which was to manufacture a device and test it

Marconi Space Systems - Thermal Engineer (Jul 87 - Mar 89)

Provides satellites ranging in capability from providing military communication to delivering probes to Saturn for entry into Saturn’s moon Titan. I reported to the Thermal Engineering Manager

Responsibilities

• Thermal design of satellite sub-systems
• Thermal testing of satellite sub-systems to prove mathematical modelling

Achievements

• Was part of a team which successfully managed the thermal testing of a satellite to satellite inter orbit communication module to be trialled on two satellites to be launched by NASA
• I led the thermal design team on the phase 1 thermal design of the probe due to be delivered to Saturn’s moon Titan, to discover more about the moon which has an atmosphere similar to Earth’s

qualifications and training

personal details

43 years old, non smoker, with clean driving licence