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Since 1994 I have been working as an independent consultant, trading as Questa Computing Ltd. In addition to a number of short assignments for private clients, I have supported several major clients in a range of capacities, as described below.
National Grid Plc. (February 1997 – present)
At National Grid (NGT), I have worked in a wide-ranging role contributing to the group’s IT Strategy, technology development, merger activities, and individual system architectures. I have contributed to major business and technical change, and developing the role of IS architects throughout National Grid.
I have worked with successive IS Strategy Managers to develop the formal IT Strategy, aiming to deliver increased business value while reducing inefficiency, fragmentation and duplication. I innovated popular ways to document and communicate the strategy - the unique and acclaimed “roadmap” representation was my own invention.
As National Grid has grown by acquisition, I have been involved in various pre- and post-merger activities, including moves towards a unified IT Strategy, streamlined technical governance, and a group-wide Internet structure. NG use various system sourcing options, and I have been involved in preparing ITTs, evaluating suppliers and solutions, assisting managers new to the systems procurement process, and providing technical supervision to suppliers.
In late 2002, working with external consultants and the business, I articulated a new vision for the systems supporting NG's asset and work management. This was based around a central asset repository, with an integrated document management system, a field force solution, and a comprehensive data warehouse with Business Intelligence tools, all integrated by a shared EAI backbone.
This has now been almost fully implemented through a major programme of IS and business change, and is delivering business value. In my role as Solution Architect for the £34M programme I provided guidance and supervision to internal and external service and solution providers, maintaining a “hands on” approach. In particular I have been actively involved in the analysis, solution design and resolution of a number of integration, performance and reliability issues.
I also work closely with a number of senior business managers, to develop and communicate the planned IT changes and ensure they meet the business aims. My success in defining and executing the Solution Architect role has been recognised by National Grid, who have made it the template for architects throughout the organisation.
Legal Marketing Systems Ltd. (January-July 2004)
LMS proposed a major innovation in their core business process, remortgage conveyancing. I assessed whether their existing systems could support the revised process and what changes would be required. I then provided consultancy as this moved into the implementation phase.
Addison Wesley (January 2003 – present)
I regularly review book proposals and manuscripts for this major technical publisher.
Marks and Spencer Plc (May 1999 - June 2002)
Marks and Spencer had an urgent business requirement for a new back office system, for which several previous projects had failed. It was subject to a number of severe and conflicting constraints limiting timescales, the delivery of new software, and available WAN bandwidth. I designed a solution which met the very tight deadlines, used roughly 1% of the previous communications bandwidth, and exploited the existing Microsoft Office/Exchange infrastructure to deliver substantial functionality without any new components at the desktop. The solution reduced a key business process necessary to get and keep goods on sale from over 14 days to a few hours.
I provided technical leadership for two years, as the design was substantially extended in scope, including multi-country and multilingual support. Complex business and formatting rules were moved from the code to a rule database, substantially reducing the source code, and the system migrated to a very flexible component-based architecture.
Marks and Spencer cited me as co-inventor (with the key business manager) in a patent application covering several important concepts from this system. After the main project I continued to provide occasional consultancy for its development, including a working thin-client prototype of the system, using Microsoft .NET technology, developed in just ten days.
Faith Footwear Ltd. (May - November 2001)
In Summer 2000 I undertook a short fixed-price study to assess Faith's existing IT provision, and possible ways in which it might evolve to support new business models such as collaborative working with suppliers using eCommerce technology.
This led in 2001 to my involvement in a project to establish a Management Information database, and support for new business models. I developed a proprietary transport-independent EAI messaging system running between the stores and their head office supporting data warehousing, software distribution, application integration and distributed near-real-time processing.
Barclays Sales Financing Ltd. (January - June1999)
During this short assignment, I provided support for both the development of the system architecture and supporting standards, and also for the development of an intranet-based toolset for document distribution and control within the development team.
Oracle UK (June 1998 – March 1999)
Oracle’s Interactive Services Project was developing the platform for British Interactive Broadcasting’s interactive digital television service. I undertook a review of the design to assess its likely reliability, which included the development of a novel Fault Tree Analysis technique for such systems. In addition, I supported the development of system test plans and technical strategies for aspects such as error handling.
Livingston Rental (as an Associate of Sema Group) (March 1995 – January 1997)
This project centred around porting the Livingston Group's rental systems from a legacy Data General architecture to a more flexible Unix/Oracle base.
I defined the overall architecture for the new system. Performance benchmarking and prototyping exercises saved the client several hundred thousand pounds by allowing the use of lower-specification hardware . The performance prediction work led to a paper for the EUROStar '96 testing conference.
A leading role in commissioning the new infrastructure included setting up the Sun servers, defining a disaster recover plan and operational procedures, sorting out LAN communications and establishing new configuration control tools. I also set up a Wide Area Network between several European sites, using ISDN and the Suns as WAN routers.
Thereafter I specified, designed and implemented the following:
- A system to replicate stock information between the British, French and German sites, using Oracle database services, and Visual Basic for the client-server front-end.
- A scheme for remotely monitoring numerous aspects of system performance on the various Unix and NT servers and Oracle databases, relaying potential alerts back to a single point for system administrator attention via a graphical front-end.
- A tool to automate translation so that English, French and German versions of the Rental system (written in a Unix-based legacy 4GL) could use common source code.
National Power (July 1994 - March 1995)
I supported the introduction of Windows-based code control and automated test tools, and helped define repeatable system testing for the project. To control delivery of complex software infrastructure components, I specified, designed and built a unique PC-based configuration tool using PVCS and a component database. I also led a project to update, index and promote the development method and standards, to encourage developers to adopt and follow them.
© Questa Computing Ltd. 1999
Page last updated
20 April, 2007 15:56