CPS Consultants Ltd 2013 – Present Day

Owner & Consultant - Mar 2013 – Present Day

The Co-op – Infrastructure Delivery Consultant - May 2018 – Present Day

Retained, following term as Head of Networks, as Infrastructure Delivery Consultant across a number of critical programmes. Providing strategic and technical governance to assure the solutions and mitigate siloed spend and avoid creation of technical debt. Key commercial and contractual negotiator for major supplier contracts.

Key achievements:

• Lead on a successful contract renegotiation delivering a transformed Networks Service, in a fully managed service model. Total Contract Value (TCV) of over £70m with a £5m+ revenue saving over the 6-year term to the business.
• Completion of a WAN transformation across 4000 branch locations in the Retail & Funeral business, enabling the creation of a clear SD-WAN strategy direction as a key enabler for the continued business transformation.
• Successfully created and ran a competitive tender process for the strategic refit of all 3000 Store’s LAN & Firewall infrastructure. Leading to a £6m investment completed on target for completion in 6 months, with one of the largest retail Cisco Meraki solutions in the UK.
• Delivery of a transformed and upscaled corporate WiFi platform, including improved security and enhanced self-provisioned services. Delivering to over 3000 user/devices in central support office alone.

The Co-op – Head of Networks - February 2016 – March 2018

Head of the Co-op's Data Networks team, bringing key transformational deliveries into governance and architectural design control. Operational annual budget control of £2m with a direct change budget of £5m.

• Ensuring the 5 year £30m managed service contract, delivering key benefits across the estate, delivers to contractual and financial obligations.
• WAN transformation across all Food Stores and Funeral Care homes, circa 4000 branches. - £5m delivery
• Delivery of an enterprise class multi-cloud consumption network.
• Data Centre Distribution & Access Layer refresh - £5m delivery
• Migration of legacy Internet platform to a fully resilient and scaled solution, critical to meet the organisation's growing demands. - £25m delivery
• Implementation of a People as a Service (PaaS) augmentation solution providing rapid flex capability for network resources.
• Maintained a 99.98% networks availability for 2017.

the Co-operative Bank plc (Networks Programme Manager) – Oct 2016 to Jan 2016

Programme Manager for the Co-operative Bank’s Network & Telephony Separation Programme. Looking to deliver within the wider Bank separation a future state set of Network & Telephony Services. Current state consists of around 30 suppliers across a varied set of contracts and schedules with an annual spend of circa £9m.

Target state looking to provide a consolidated set of suppliers with substantial run cost benefits of between £1m & £2m/annum. Programme also includes a full re platform of the Bank’s current IP Telephony platform again in support of separation from The Co-operative Group.

Manchester City Council (Networks & Security Manager) - Oct 2014 to Oct 2015

Operating as a senior manager in the ICT Wider Leadership Team, responsible for the operational and tactical management of the Network & Security team. Accountable for full end to end technical solutions across all operational aspects of ICT Network & Security.

• Directing and successfully recovering on a number of key infrastructure transformation deliveries.
• Working on improved Operating Model for Network & Security and the wider ICT Operations function
• Developing and leading service improvement initiatives to address key operational risks and improve operational efficiencies.

Unilever (Transcend Programme Manager) - Apr 2014 to Oct 2014

Program Management of the Enterprise Computing portfolio of Transcend risk mitigation projects. A complex environment of critical change deliveries with a mix of BAU and Project managed initiatives. Budgetary control in 2014 of circa €5m, and built business cases and submissions for the 2015 €21m portfolio of work.

Co-operative Banking Group - 2008 - 2013

Head of Development Services  - Nov 2010 – March 2013

Head of Development Services leading 300+ strong multiple teams. Providing end to end Design, Build & Test services, through a combination of in-house and outsourced resources, to the Co-operative Banking Group (CBG), and more recently Co-operative Group through the Unity programme. Responsibility and accountability for all IT solutions across CBG Change and Integration portfolios of circa £450million spend over 3 years.

• Lead an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) initiative to provide a critical platform for the business Transformation and deliver capital savings across a £100m+ infrastructure investment.
• Restructure of Testing Services to enable an immediate £0.5m benefit to project delivery costs.
• Lead an operational initiative to identify and rectify key performance issues in legacy internet banking services platform. Resulted in immediate successful tactical enhancements, and identification of key strategic changes now being implemented. This enabled the business to launch a key primacy campaign in Qtr. 4 2011.
• Ensured a centralised combined budget of £12m allocated to the Integrated Network programme to enable the on-going merger and transformation plans for CBG.
• Delivered a 5 year WAN renewal deal, consolidating previous three separate WAN solutions, and delivery a £7.5m benefit to the business over the contract term.

Head of Network Services - Jan 2008 - Oct 2010

Reporting to the Director of IS Operations and responsible for strategic design, operational management and improvement of all Network Services to the end users in all service businesses. Accountable for the end to end delivery of the Networks Services, including those provided via 3rd parties and management of their contracts with full budget control circa £10m per annum. Key member of the IS Operations Leadership Team, driving through cultural change and supporting the Director in all aspects of IS Operations change.

• Lead the voice consolidation initiative, which delivered a single supplier voice solution with TalkTalk to CBG with annualised savings of £600k/annum on an initial 2 year contract.
• Rationalised core WAN provision from a mixed legacy estate to a single technology platform, with no incremental run costs and improved operational performance.
• Implementation of an £18m Telephony Stabilisation project, providing full re-platform of contact centre and back office voice systems.
• Delivered a tactical 2 year renewal of main BT contract with a £0.5m per annum saving on existing run costs.
• Brought inherited 2008 budget in at circa £4m under target, and subsequently delivered £1m+ budget savings in 2009 through diligent management of supplier costs and service improvement introductions

Keytech Managed Services - 2006 - 2007

Director of Operations - Dec 2006 - Dec 2007

Technical Services Manager - Jan 2006 – Nov 2006

Responsible for all Operations and Service Delivery, comprising 28 technology professionals. Delivering Managed and Hosted Services to 130+ companies within the UK with a projected £4m turnover. Member of the company executive with strategic and budgetary control.

• Successful migration of data centre migrating all 24x7 services with minimal downtime and disruption.
• Implemented improvements in the provision of the core service delivery functions. Encompassing step wise improvements to the existing client base whilst improving effective delivery to new clients.
• Restructure of Service Desk and Service Management and increased revenue stream through Service Delivery function
• Successful provision of 24 x 7 service monitoring, problem determination and resolution, operational procedures and Helpdesk function.

 

United Cinemas International - 2003 - 2005

Group Infrastructure Manager - Apr 2003 - Oct 2005

Responsible for designing, delivering and supporting a cost effective and secure Infrastructure that meets the needs of UCI globally. To bring a set of globally agreed standards and processes into force that will reduce overall operating costs and ensure the stability of the infrastructure.

• Updated server and network infrastructure to bring it back in line with business requirements, after a period of “stagnation” during the rapid growth of the group.
• Designed and implemented an improved remote access solution, incorporating SSL and SecurID technology.
• Specification and tendering process for the new web booking and CRM hosting solution, including integration into existing UCI booking and credit card systems.
• Designed and implemented email archiving solution for UK, providing seven year retrieval system and performance benefits to legacy Exchange system.
• Integrated and deployed Blackberry mobile email and calendar solution, removing need for laptop deployment and increasing email security.
• Implemented new server and network Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) to further enhance core system security.
• Project Managed the infrastructure integration for the merged UCI and Odeon operation

Thomson Gardiner Caldwell Group - 2001 – 2003

IT Technical Services Manager - May 2001 - Apr 2003

Responsible for the Technical Services team, with full infrastructure and networking development and management. Full budget and P&L responsibility.

• Redesigned the core network infrastructure to deliver a fully fault tolerant network, utilising CISCO technology and Gigabit server infrastructure.
• Project planned and implemented full infrastructure and server services to new building housing 200 staff.
• Restructured the Technical Services department both at a resource and infrastructure level, providing improved productivity and removed potential attrition.
• Migrated legacy Token-Ring & Netware to fully switched Ethernet and NT 4.0
• Restructured Lotus Domino infrastructure, including design and implementation of global mobile access system to email services
• Designed and implemented new rapid deployment client intranet service utilising Lotus Domino technology, allowing for a more effective client relationship during critical project development.
• Renegotiated core supplier agreements, providing improved SLAs and reduced revenue costs.
• Instigated full training portfolio for team, improving key skills across team.
• Delivered technical consultancy to the TGCG business with a focus on delivering business support, leading edge IT positioning and input to the IT technology standards and strategy

CPS (UK) Ltd - 1994 - 2001

Independent IT consultant

Provided Architectural and Programme Management services to many companies in the area of Infrastructure, Networking, Telecommunications and Messaging.

• Kellogg Company Ltd
• Woolworths plc
• North West Water Ltd
• AstraZeneca plc
• Unilever plc

Earlier Career

1994 - 1994 InfoService (UK) Ltd, Manchester - Director of Business Systems

1993 - 1994 RAM Mobile Data Ltd (Now trading as BT Transcomm UK Ltd), London - Project Manager

1992 - 1993 Communications Group plc, Birmingham - Business Systems Manager

1991 - 1992 Matthew Brown plc, Chorley, Lancashire - Information Centre Manager

1988 - 1991 Ferranti Creditphone Ltd, Manchester - IT Manager

1983 - 1988 Ferranti Instrumentation Ltd, Manchester - Trainee Computer Engineer