Maritz Research is a world leader in the field of market research, providing marketing research expertise with specialized knowledge in the financial services, information technology, hospitality, telecommunications, automotive, pharmaceutical, & retail industries.

The role is to provide expert interim cover for up to three months for a business critical customer. The project involves developing and maintaining software applications to provide Volkswagen with accurate market research data, and analysis from new sales and after sales activities.

Major Achievements:
• Implemented comprehensive new change control process to provide greater visibility and control of code releases.
• Adopted Agile techniques to improve flexibility and strengthen customer satisfaction and team moral.
• Implemented SharePoint Server 2007 and commenced pilot to demonstrate suitability as a solution to meet document management and control requirements.

Barclays Wealth is part of the Barclays Group, and is a premier European Wealth Manager, attracting clients throughout the world. Reporting to the Head of Design & Solutions, responsibilities included the delivery of a strategic email solution as part of the overall infrastructure delivery for the new company structure – in the process replacing the existing Project Manager.

Major Achievements:
• Restored the project to its original timeline; at the time of joining it was missing key milestones and delivery dates.
• Completed the design, build and delivery of Exchange 2003 and 2007 within six months.
• Raised customer and stakeholder satisfaction by improving communications and relationships.
• Improved team moral & productivity by focussing on deliverables rather than mechanisms (the “what” rather than the “how”).
• Delivered outsourced email encryption on time and to the required specification, thereby closing the longest standing audit point in the entire Barclays Group.
• Delivered associated technologies such as Blackberry Enterprise Server, meeting required delivery dates and quality criteria.

A leading financial services company, working with the investment banking arm (CSFB) prior to 2006. Reporting to the Director of Engineering, responsibilities included designing, engineering and globally implementing MS Exchange. Also oversaw further infrastructure enhancement projects including PST elimination and attachment compression, with additional overall responsibility for the engineering of the Outlook client into the in-house desktop build.


Major Achievements:
• Streamlined the messaging environment significantly and reduced the overall TCO for messaging after replacing all existing messaging systems (primarily ZMail and cc:Mail) with MS Exchange.
• Principle activities centred on application deployment, risk identification & management
stakeholder management as well as quality assurance & control in a high pressure environment.
• Assisted with strategy development for the compliance, collaboration and messaging spaces.
• Budgetary responsibility for up to $2 million, as well as managing up to 15 staff in a matrix environment according to project requirements.
• Managed projects with a variety of timescales, ranging from 2 weeks to 3 years
• Enabled the saving of more than $15m over five years and a dramatic cut the rate of growth of mail volumes by enabling the removal of PST files globally with resulting 30% reduction of storage requirements.
• Reduced private and investment banking regulatory exposure and strengthened company lawyers' positions by working closely with Symantec to adapt their Enterprise Vault and Compliance Accelerator products to meet FSA and MiFID requirements.
• Cut potential virus attack impact and eliminated all exposure to the Melissa virus by defining and implementing an antivirus strategy which was the first to automatically monitor the location of pattern files with the antivirus vendor and immediately distribute all updates across email servers throughout the world.
• Increased group visibility, aligned projects with business needs and raised team morale after redefining group project management methodologies and creating over 100 templates following PMBOK and PRINCE2 skill acquisitions (focussed on PRINCE2 until corporate standard moved to PMBOK in 2002).
• Facilitated the purchase of software on extremely beneficial terms after establishing close and productive links with numerous vendors which enabled the company to leverage their expertise at minimal cost.

A software and computer services provider which was an original COBOL supplier. Reporting to the IT Support Manager, responsibilities included providing first-class support and training to over 700 users in Europe and the USA.

Major Achievements:
• Facilitated ongoing internal communications by transferring the e-mail system from IBM OfficeVision and MS Mail to MS Exchange.
• Minimised the culture shock aspects of the MS Exchange upgrade and minimised support calls by devising and developing comprehensive in-house training courses.
• Designed and implemented the company Intranet.
• Resolved over 5,500 incidents through the internal Help System over three years.

A part of the Akzo Nobel group and specialising in paints and car refinishing. Reporting to the Customer Support Manager, responsibilities included providing excellent IT support to over 260 UK users whilst organising training and development of existing customers and staff. Also demonstrated the system to potential customers and assisted with pre-sales activities.

Major Achievements:
• Designed and developed a new user manual which was distributed to customers worldwide after resolving contradictory demands from Holland and the UK.
• Set up a help desk facility which was integrated with the Head Office in Holland.