• 1998 to 2002 to 2013
• West Malling, Kent, UK

(NOTE: Limited role from December 2010 to April 2013 due to long-term medical issue)

I have listed a selection of noteworthy projects carried out on behalf of my employer below:

Care Computers & Services Ltd: I have regularly provided a diverse range services to this computer shop & consultancy based in Berkshire ranging from disaster recovery to server migrations to routine server builds.  Representing the client through their own brand name, I have provided telephone, remote and on-site support to their customers who range from single home users to large corporations spread around the Country.  We have performed numerous installations of Small Business Server (both fresh installs and upgrades), Cisco routers and server migrations on behalf of their customers and have also deployed Microsoft Operations Manager and performed security hardening for their internal use.

Travel Insurance Facilities plc: I have managed and implemented numerous projects for this Kent based insurance company as a result of them outsourcing their I.T. department to Invincible including server consolidations, new server builds, several data centre moves and the replacement of their I.T. infrastructure.  This has included a VMware based replacement for their ecommerce and critical line-of-business application based across multiple data centres.

Low Consulting Ltd: This small SAS consultancy based near Tonbridge, Kent was no longer able to manage with their outdated standalone hardware and wanted to purchase more up-to-date equipment and network their systems.  Using Microsoft Small Business Server and having purchased replacement hardware, the client is now able to take full advantage of the numerous features offered by SBS and reports a marked improvement in their abilities to effectively communicate with their customers and suppliers.

Surrey Care Trust: Working with the former operations manager, I resurrected a very broken Active Directory and Exchange infrastructure that had failed and corrected several configuration issues with their servers.  Subsequently, I consolidated four servers into a single machine that is considerably more stable than the previous systems that were in place and were chosen as their partner when they outsourced their I.T. department.  Later on, Adrian installed a Terminal Services based environment to enable remote workers to take full advantage of the numerous improvements made to the charity’s core I.T. systems.

CharityShare Ltd (obo NSPCC): On an extremely tight deadline, I was brought in to prepare the infrastructure for a major overhaul of the NSPCC’s ChildLine web site project running on Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) and VMware ESX Server.  After the initial configuration was complete, it was virtualised into two separate testing environments and a new “production” baseline created upon a hardened Windows Server 2008 configuration.

FinanSys Solutions Ltd: After several failed attempts by other I.T. consultancy companies, this small financial systems consultancy and recruitment agency based in Central London engaged us to install a server running Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 Premium Edition and completely upgrade their I.T. infrastructure.  Shortly after the completing the above work, the client engaged us to commission a candidate and vacancy management system for the specialist recruitment side of their business.  We deployed Microsoft CRM v3 and performed extensive customisation to allow for candidate details to be recorded in a way that allowed extremely complex searches to be performed to find the right match for their clients.  Once a suitable candidate is found, the details stored in the database are used to automatically produce a copy of the candidate’s curriculum vitae in a format appropriate for sending to the client for consideration.

Preferred One Stop Technologies Ltd: This medium-sized I.T. systems distributor based in North Yorkshire was referred to us after they experienced a major disaster with their Active Directory databases which was causing major inconvenience for their staff due to logons being unable to authenticate and their existing external consultancy partner was unable to assist.  Within fifteen minutes of being engaged, we were able to provide a temporary fix to their problems that allowed their staff to be able to work and arranged for a permanent fix to be implemented over the following weekend to resolve the matter and reconfigure their network to allow for a link to be established to a branch office in Berkshire.

Dendrite Clinical Systems Ltd: When this software house based near Reading, Berkshire experienced a sudden rapid growth, it became apparent that they needed to install the file server system they purchased 18 months previously and required the services of an experienced consultancy to devise and implement an I.T. strategy for them.  Originally starting on Microsoft Small Business Server (SBS) 2000 and with a small branch office in Central London, the company expanded their operations and opened a new operations centre in North-West London, whereon we installed a new Microsoft Windows Small Business Server (SBS) 2003 at the office outside London and installed the standalone versions of Windows Server 2003 & Exchange Server 2003 over the old SBS 2000 machine.

South West Cancer Intelligence Service (NHS): On-site at their head office in Winchester, Adrian oversaw a disaster recovery operation when their multi-site Microsoft Exchange 2000 configuration failed due to gradual corruption to the Active Directory over-time.  Over the course of a long-weekend, the existing AD domain was dissolved, the primary servers on both sites reinstalled and a replacement AD structure commissioned prior to migrating the servers and workstations on both sites to the newly created domain.

Memorex Telex Ltd (obo Allied Domecq): On-site at Allied Domecq’s offices, Adrian oversaw the daytime management of a joint Memorex/Electronic Data Services (EDS) project migrating AD’s Windows NT Workstation 4.0 & Windows 2000 Professional machines to Windows XP Professional.  Our involvement was intended to be technical with responsibility for ensuring that any issues that neither the migration team nor EDS’ own resources were unable to resolve at the first point of contact were resolved in accordance to agreed targets.  During the lifecycle of the project it was necessary to also take local control over the project management in order to ensure that the process went smoothly and our involvement ensured that the project completed successfully and ahead of schedule.

Northern Ireland Water Services (NIWS): On-site at the ‘Crystal Alliance’ office in Belfast, Adrian oversaw the installation, configuration and skeleton content layout of Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003 for use by their new call centre for dealing with billing issues. 

In addition to the above, my employer has numerous other clients where our involvement arranges from providing ad-hoc break/fix work to proactive maintenance contracts to offering completely outsourced I.T. management functions.  Furthermore, there are several clients that we are restricted from publishing our relationship with due to confidentiality agreements or because of the nature of their business.

• 1998 to 2002
• Snodland, Kent, UK

Town & Country Housing Group: Adrian was involved with a number of projects with this Tunbridge Wells based major housing association.  Some of these projects included:

• Redesigning the network infrastructure to cope with the substantial rate of growth experienced; this included upgrading the link to Tunbridge Wells Borough Council, replacing the existing non-modular routers with Cisco 2621 routers and connecting to two other remote sites.
• Provisioning a FreeBSD-based packet filtering firewall/VPN server to allow key staff the ability to work securely from home (the firewall provided by their previous IT provider did not support passing-on GRE);
• Redesigning the server room to cope with growth; multiple manual KVM switches and metal shelves were replaced by Compaq racking (all servers converted from tower to rack form-factor) and a single KVM switch;
• Supplying and installing several new servers ranging from departmental level servers to a two-node cluster server system with external direct attached storage;
• Several major network changes including moving from a multi-protocol (NetBEUI + TCP/IP + IPX/SPX) environment to purely TCP/IP, changing from an inefficient static IP address system to dynamically-allocated using DHCP and migration from 10 MBps to 100 MBps;

S F Cody’s Archive of Originals Ltd: This busy chain of curiosity stores physically operates in major shopping centres, via mail order and also has a strong online presence via their eCommerce site.  SFC was expanding rapidly and it soon became apparent that their existing systems would be unable to cope with the expected workload so Adrian project managed an overhaul of their telecommunications systems by arranging for a kilo stream circuit (to the Internet) and multiple ISDN2e connections to be provided.  Adrian was also responsible for installing & maintaining a multi-homed FreeBSD based proxy server (using ‘squid’) and for ensuring that full logging & reporting features were available to the management.  After SFC was purchased by Retail Variations plc, Adrian became involved with preparing SFC’s head office and stores for integration with RV plc’s systems.

The Morse Group (for Merrill Lynch plc): On-site at Merrill Lynch’s then current headquarters in Ropemaker Street, Adrian was part of a team responsible for overseeing the migration of their Sun servers from three existing data centres into their newly constructed Merrill Lynch Financial Centre.  This involved co-ordinating with Merrill Lynch what servers they required to move over a particular weekend, documenting the existing configuration of the machines and arranging for their decommissioning prior to move.  After being physically moved by specialist couriers, it fell to the team’s responsibility to reconnect the system, arrange for it to be re-commissioned and document the events of the move.

Generic Software Consultants Ltd (for Nokia Telecommunications Ltd): On-site at Nokia’s factory in Camberley, Adrian was responsible for the overnight supervision of their computer systems network to prevent factory production issues and later for overseeing asset management tasks and overnight rollouts of Windows 2000 Professional.  Although originally only designated as a one-off task, there was a noticeable drop in overnight incidents during his involvement that resulted in a further eighteen months involvement until just before production was moved elsewhere.

Advanced Satellite International Ltd: On-site at AdSat’s offices in North London, Adrian was initially called in to simply install two new workstations and perform a network health-check after their recent office move.  An audit of the client’s systems soon revealed that there were several major underlying issues that needed to be resolved and resulted in the commissioning of a new primary domain controller, migrating all workstations from Windows 9x to Windows NT Workstation and replacing the networking infrastructure (switches and network interface cards).

LAN Technology (South) Ltd: LANtech was a LAN & WAN solutions provider who subcontracted the services of Adrian’s previous employer out to their own clients.  Although originally a “one off” deal in order to assist with a migration project for one of their clients, Adrian’s services were retained for several years.  Adrian carried out a variety of migration projects for their clients including from Token Ring to Ethernet, from Novell Netware to Windows NT Server, from test to production networks and from proprietary or third-party email systems to Microsoft Exchange.  Frequently Adrian was asked to provide on-site network support when LANtech’s in-house engineers were unable to resolve the issue at the customer’s first point-of-contact, however he was also responsible for installing/configuring countless servers ranging from white-box to high-end fault-tolerant systems usually running Microsoft BackOffice or Microsoft BackOffice Small Business Server.

MainDEC Ltd (for GEC Marconi Avionics Ltd): Adrian was required to help reduce the load on GEC’s internal helpdesk for 2,000+ employees when their staff team was unexpectedly reduced to a single helpdesk operator and two shift leaders.  The role of the only remaining permanent helpdesk operator was to provide basic first-line technical support, however he provided second and third line support via the telephone and additionally assisted the desktop support team on migrations and basic server issues.  In addition to manning the support lines during regular hours, after the lines were closed Adrian was responsible for going through the outstanding calls and resolving as many as possible.

Electronic Data Systems (EDS) Ltd (for Rolls Royce IMGT): On-site at Rolls Royce Industrial & Marine Gas Turbines’ site at Ansty near Coventry, Adrian was engaged to provide network administration to the end-user client, however due to a problems with their helpdesk staff he was instead responsible for reducing the rapidly accumulating backlog of calls that their internal resources were unable to process.

Scottish Hydro-Electric plc: On-site at the client’s head office in Perth, Adrian was responsible for administering three machines forming part of a new customer management system being introduced by the customer.  Acting as the administrative point-of-contact for the operations acceptance testing (“OAT”) and user acceptance testing (“UAT”) teams, it was his responsibility to determine, document and enforce procedures for use of these failover machines should the production systems fail for whatever reason.

• 1998
• Minneapolis, MN, USA
• Brentford, Middlesex, UK

An unexpected surge in growth required DDS to move from multiple “instant offices” leased from Regus into a more permanent custom-designed office on the ground floor, but with their information technology department situated 4,000 miles away, I was hired in order to project manage the IT side of their move.

After spending a few weeks at their head office in their Minneapolis, MN head office familiarising myself with the company, identifying the user’s requirements and carrying out preparatory work, I returned to the UK and began to move the computer network and telephone system to their new office.  Immediately after the move, I commissioned a new Compaq ProLiant server to act as a domain controller & general file server and installed Exchange Server 5.5 on their old system, taking the opportunity to move user data from Personal Folders (PST) to the Exchange Information Store at the same time.

DDS relied heavily on use of the Internet so a kilo stream circuit was commissioned (to replace their existing ISDN configuration), which required me to install a suitable firewall and author an acceptable use policy (AUP) for employee use.  As DDS’ consultants often needed to work from client sites, the Routing & Remote Access Service (RRAS) was installed to enable dial-up connections and a VPN established to the Minneapolis office.  The existing desktops and notebooks were all reinstalled in order to create a common operating environment as well as inventoried and the entire network was thoroughly documented prior to handing the facility back to the company to be remotely administered from the Minneapolis office.

• 1996 to 1998
• Finchley, London, UK
• Southend-on-Sea, Essex, UK

I started at Demon Internet as a frontline technical support technician, handling technical support queries and problems from our customers via the telephone and electronic mail.  When I left the company, we had in excess of 150,000 subscribers and we provided free technical support twenty-four hours a day, working twelve-hour shifts in order to provide the necessary cover.  The majority of customers were using Windows 95 and simply wanted to know “how to get online”, however there were a good number of callers who wanted to establish internet access or email for their entire company or to establish a corporate presence on the world wide web.  After approximately six months, I was dealing with calls that the second line support team and the shift leaders were unable to resolve

I have also provided cover for staff at our network operation centre in Finchley, London where I had to monitor the network status looking for potential or current problems.  Once a problem was detected, it was my responsibility to report it to either my working colleague or to the management.  Each problem is prioritised by the impact failure of that machine or service would have to our services.  After diagnosis, the problem was either repaired on the spot or an engineer called.  Communication between shifts was imperative to update them with any outstanding problems or tasks to be carried out.

For a short period of time, I worked as a network technician in our both our Hendon Lane computing centre and Telehouse London.  My duties included:

• Configuring and installing and new hardware products ranging from high-end routers (Ascend) to building servers (mostly NetBSD based or one of a variety of flavours of Linux)
• Maintaining and upgrading our existing communications equipment
• Maintaining and upgrading our Intel, Sun and Silicon Graphics based hardware
• Ensuring that an accurate record was kept of the function of each cable
• Patching machines onto the access network and core routers

Due to the nature of the business and the many potential things that could go wrong it was a very pressured environment under which I thrived and thoroughly enjoyed.  These positions have provided me with an in-depth knowledge of the internet that enables me to provide technical support of the following:

• General usage (i.e. reading hypertext documents over the world wide web, transferring files from host to host using the file transfer protocol [ftp]).
• Machine configuration (i.e. setting up both clients to connect to the internet and the actual servers to be connected to, which used mainly NetBSD, FreeBSD or OpenBSD. The internet predominantly uses UNIX for servers)
• Operations side (i.e. ensuring services are fully functional, customers are able to connect)
  Hands on (i.e. configuring, installing and cabling-in equipment)