Equitas are Business Growth consultants, helping businesses grow via franchising, licensing, co-ordinated promotional strategy or whatever is appropriate.

Corridors are a provider of specialist commercial information on various commodities, and commodity markets. My role is to ensure the company is run ethically & legally, to review performance and help formulate strategy. E.g. The company provide analytical reviews each month, and I felt they were vulnerable because of the small number of journalists used. They have since doubled the number of journalists used.

Various Contract Positions

The Company (which disbanded in 2013 when the owner retired) were environmental & management consultants. My role was one of assisting with strategy, costings, budgeting, etc. sales & project management.Managed DTI interface for grant funded development of innovative air cleaning process.

A sales consultancy with a turnover of £1m• Successfully completed, on time and under budget, a benchmarking project for HMRC identifying areas in need of improvement extending the scope by comparison with commercial sites.

Swimming Pool and Spa Engineers and Retailers.Invited to help a young company grow and develop necessary business processes, procedures and systems to enable the business to operate in an efficient and profitable way.• Increased size of projects from £12k to £100k+ whilst also introducing three highly profitable services to the business.• Maintained margins and tripled turnover in 18 months.

Managing applications for R&D Government Grants on behalf of clients.Obtained £65k grant for Oxfordshire Farmer to develop a more efficient Mushroom Compost.Obtained £60k grant for Essex Printer to develop more versatile digital printer

Agricultural research institute with a turnover of £14m.Invited to develop and manage a heavily criticised accounting team (12 people) that provided financial services to the Institute, whilst improving procedures and processes.• Restructured the team and established clear lines of responsibility for each member enabling more efficient working with auditors noting significant improvement.• Replaced the contract debt chaser and introduced more robust credit control procedures, reducing aged debt from £900k to£300k and cleared invoice backlog worth over £630k.• Rationalised 42 different income streams into 3 processes.• Introduced a new pricing model for the Tractor Test section that converted a loss to a profit, making a 10% return on turnover.• Introduced an electronic timesheet system to replace the existing manual one to ensure compliance with the Working Time Directive, freeing up 50% of a clerk’s time.• Improved the project database doubling the volume of projects recorded and identifying anomalies early thus enabling accurate forecasting of income by date.• Worked with UK and EEC organisations such as DEFRA, DTI and leading Universities to develop a uniform costing spreadsheet that saved time and improved accuracy. Separate projects included setting up a budgeting process manual, and a detailed review of the purchasing function

Swimming Pool Engineers and Retailers with a turnover of £500k.Improved profitability month on month and improved staff retention (previous average was 3 months. No one left in my time.)

Business travel agents owned by Sodexho with a turn over of £20m.• In conjunction with another CSM developed a system that converted 12%-15% of leads provided by telemarketing activities into sales, twice the level of other CSMs.• Introduced new clients with combined travel spending of £2m in 18 months.

Managers of 50 office buildings and a revenue budget of £50m.Invited, after an initial 3 month contract, to stay for 2.5 years to work on a variety of projects including the merger of London Underground Facilities with London Transport Facilities.• Installed a common Facilities Management System across 3 contractors in 5 months. • Negotiated with provider of the Facilities Management System to get free upgrades by offering free use of a state of the art presentation centre to enable sales to other users.• Identified need for business protection following Arndale Centre Bombing, prioritising risks for 5 operationally critical buildings, leading to £10m worth of improvements. • Rewrote and negotiated both contracts and SLAs between LUL and their contact facilities managers.* Developed a set of accommodation standards for all offices* Developed Project Database to track projects; inform post, telecoms, reception, & security of staff movements; and generate satisfaction monitor.

Group Logistics Services had 6000 employees.Transferred from IAL to lead major change projects that would enable a reduced workforce to continue to deliver consistent standards, through the introduction of more efficient processes.* Introduced uniform and more robust packaging for repairable items for payphones that saved £3m annually.* Reduced Payphone stock by £12m in 2 years.* Introduced new processes for tracking and refurbishing fax machines saving £3m annually. * Developed Service Level Agreement with Payphones and set up Logistics team to manage all Payphone Logistics issues. This became the template for all Logistics/client relationships.* Rationalised the function of local stores for engineers; and reduced the number by 200; whilst maintaining quality of service. This saved £18m p.a. in reduced staff, property & stock costs. * Provided Group Property with the starting point for their rationalisation plans.

IAL (who later merged with Serco) - maintenance contractors circa 4,000 employeesBusiness Manager Medical Services - Hospital Management - 200 staff* Negotiated contracts with Clients, Specialist Sub-Contractors, Expatriate Staff & Local Staff Unions:- included 2 extensions of £4m p.a. contract maintaining King Hussein Medical Centre in Amman.* Reduced aged debt on Jordanian contract from £7.5m to under £750k in two years.* Managed the start up of a mobile medical equipment service in the UK (the first of its type in the UK) that covered 8 hospitals.* Developed Business Plans in conjunction with 2 NHS District Authorities for a new business to run their maintenance & estates businesses.

Management Consultants - 20 employees.Ran productivity improvement projects at clients' sites for departments with large staff numbers.* Improved the efficiency of an NHS District Maintenance Department, improving productivity by 6%, saving £50k p.a.* Reduced machine downtime & hence improved output by 30+% in Tampon Factory.

HVAC Contractors T/o £4mInvited to set up & build a new team undertaking all “site services” (installation, commissioning, warranty inspections, troubleshooting, surveys, quality inspections etc.)* Profitable from day 1.* Managed over 20 oil, gas & power station projects to schedule & budget.* Supervised manufacture of a £600k ventilation system for an ARCO rig

HVAC Contractors T/o £4mResponsible for product development, certification, troubleshooting, & performance evaluation of the Group's products. * Met turnover & profit targets* Wrote & produced technical sales brochure covering over 30 products.

Paper Makers - 20+k employeesSelected to join strategic services department, running market research, brand awareness, customer competitor analysis projects* Ran a carbonless copying paper brand awareness survey in Germany.* Completed a detailed study of European fine paper manufacturers covering organisation, financial status, products, marketing strategy & technical resources. This highlighted the synergies between WT & Arjo-Marie who later merged.

Paper Makers - 20+k employeesWorked in 3 departments with 2 promotions on transfer, managing process development projects. * Ran production trials in various UK locations & Sweden; all to schedule & budget. * Set a new record for the number of machine conditions run on a coating pilot plant. It had been unusual for trials to run more than 5 machine conditions in a day. Ina 4 day trial period, over 400 machine conditions were run.