Watford Consulting is a software development consultancy with experience in projects ranging from the embedded to the enterprise.As a consultant I have provided software development and integration services for multiple clients on high-profile projects. I am often brought in on legacy/brown-field projects that have stalled under the weight of their technical debt and where the knowledge of how the systems work has been lost. These projects often have complex code bases, are lacking in build reproducibility and are governed by vague requirements. By tacking these areas we can drive down the technical debt, creating an environment where projects can run with a rapid feedback loop, deliver more frequently and get a return on investment.Once we have projects running in a more agile way the business can evolve products to meet their customers' needs in a much more rapid and confident manner.

Following on from two years of contributing and committing software to the Apache OFBiz project, I'm pleased to have accepted an invitation to join the OFBiz Project Management Committee (PMC).More information about what a PMC does for the Apache Foundation's projects can be found here - https://www.apache.org/dev/pmc.htmlApache OFBiz is an Open Source on-premises ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system. It is very powerful, but does require a bit of work to get up and running - similar to any ERP supporting a business. My focus with OFBiz is to improve the experience for companies getting started with the software.

Greenfield project to build a Java EE webservice to provide the integration point between line of business applications and the new SharePoint document management system. Supported delivery of Integration Services through test and live environments and assisted many teams in their integration efforts.Development of a webservice for the conversion of documents to various formats, utilising Aspose and Apache Tika.Development of a Java EE application to migrate documents stored in Oracle databases to SharePoint using the new Integration Services.Refactoring of an existing product’s codebase to utilise concurrency to meet performance needs when indexing document content.Worked closely with infrastructure providers to resolve issues around the new PKI authentication approach pioneered for use in the wider organisation.Rework of an AngularJS based user interface to improve accessibility for users of screen readers (JAWS) and speech controls (Dragon Naturally Speaking).Implemented the Elastic Stack (Elastic/Logstash/Kibana) to provide performance analysis tooling within an application support dashboardTechnologies: Java EE, WebLogic, REST, Jersey, Jackson, PKI, SharePoint APIs, Scripting, Jenkins, JIRA, Maven, RHE Linux, Elastic Stack, Aspose, Tika, JMockit.

Investigation and resolution of system issues across the entire software system (OS through to application).Major Technology Refresh project to update product line to be based on new COTS versions with heavy customisation. Significant re-factoring of sources and build approach, paving the way for implementation of a Continuous Integration system. SME for core platform components of product.Created tools to allow linguists to produce translations for product localisation, with results imported back into sources, sidestepping issues related to file formats.Liaison and support for Key Suppliers regarding specification and integration of their components with the product.Technologies: Java SE, C, C++, Groovy, Scripting, Jenkins, Subversion, JIRA, Crucible, Ant, Ivy, Ubuntu

External Projects team member providing consulting and development to bring trade feeds into credit risk systems measuring counter-party exposure and issuer risk.Recognition of race conditions in previous feed reception pattern and championing of design to provide resolution.Participation in System Test and Dry Run activities, coordinating with external partners.Technologies: Java SE, C, Subversion, Design Patterns, Maven, JIRA, Re-factoring, Autosys.

Provided software consultancy and Java development services to the Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence (TMBD) team working on Plato (Planning and Tasking Tool), a tool to create defence designs against ballistic missile threats. Plato is a prototype used to help define requirements that will feed into other NATO projects such as NATO ACCS (Air Command and Control System). Responsible for the Plato implementation of CIXS 3.1 (Common IAMD XML Schema) messaging over WS-BaseNotification (Web Service Base Notification) to communicate with AMDWS and C2BMC systems for the purpose of tasking missile defence units. This functionality forms part of an IAMD (Integrated Air and Missile Defence) Planning Pilot to be exercised at JPOW 2010. Contributed extensive re-factoring to the NC3A WS-BaseNotification server product. The server was implemented over the Apache Axis 2 engine and runs within an Apache Tomcat Servlet container.In addition to the messaging aspects of Plato, I was involved in general development including configuring items for display on the GIS (LuciadMap), generating Java bindings to Plato XML databases using XMLBeans, and XSLT for transforming those Plato XML databases between different schema versions.Technologies: Java SE, Swing, XML, XML Schema, XSLT, XMLBeans, UML, Object-based design, Tomcat, Axis2, Spring, SOA, SOAP, WSDL, WS-Notification, Design Patterns, Maven, Trac, Re-factoring.

Long-term international assignment at the Thales-Raytheon site in Fullerton, California, USA, working as a Senior Java Software Engineer on the NATO ACCS (Air Command and Control System) program. ACCS is intended to combine, and automate, at the tactical level the planning, tasking and execution of all NATO air operations. Initially I worked as part of the System Integration group resolving software and configuration issues. I was promoted to new software development and became a significant contributor to Business Services layer software implemented using Enterprise Java Beans (J2EE) running on Weblogic Application Server with data served by an Oracle DBMS. Following successful Code and Unit Test activities I supported the Component Integration and Domain Integration Test teams during test procedure development in preparation for test demonstration with QA and the customer sign off. Following a successful development cycle I moved into Top Level Design and Detailed Design activities targeting the next software release. I was the Lead Engineer and Subject Matter Expert for several functional threads within the software and was the SLUC Lead (role responsible to oversee  design/development/testing) on another. Pursued the introduction of Dependency Injection (DI) methods into detailed design to permit true unit testing and decoupling at the business services layer (Legacy implementation had direct dependencies to the Information Management Service layer frustrating unit test efforts). This led to my contribution to internal discussions concerned with ensuring business services stability in the face of rapid and numerous changes in other system layers. The outcome was to further pursue the DI approach and ensure tests were run during the build to aid early problem detection.Significant domain experience has been obtained on Feasible Tasking, System Determined Routing, C2 Planning and Metrics Generation.

EMS specialise in the design and manufacture of wire-free fire and security alarm systems. I was responsible for the maintenance and further development of software and hardware for the System 5000 Fire Alarm Control Panel product line. Significant achievements were the extensive re-engineering of the network communication system, implementing a whole new cause-and-effect system for sounder and output control, developing interfaces for interoperability with other industry leading large alarm systems, and bring about and maintain conformance with changing British and European standards. These works allowed EMS to enter the market for significantly more complex and prestigious installations. I managed the full project life cycle of all development within this product line, coordinating work with all other departments. Product development was mostly carried out in C and Assembler with some schematic capture work.For the last two years of this employment I worked on the development of EMS’s next generation of wire-free fire detection and alarm products. I was responsible for system-level requirements capture and the system architecture. I carried out full analysis of the communication needs of the system leading to a design that satisfied all relevant customer requirements and British (BS5839) and European (EN54) standards. Simulations were built to prove the signalling protocol design. When the wider development team was brought onto the project I led the implementation of the communication system on the TI MSP430 and Renesas M16C targets. UML diagrams and Doxygen were used to document the software.  My other projects at EMS include the Radio Remote Keypads, a small battery powered control panel communicating over a secure radio link to control a security or fire alarm system. I was responsible for the majority of the software and later stages of schematic design and PCB layout for this product based on four Microchip PIC microcontrollers.

CCTEC provided bespoke software development services, specialising in database systems for local authority contract management projects. These databases were originally developed using MS Access but were moved to SQL Server for scalability. Project titles include Leisure Centre membership and booking system, Trade Waste Contract Management, Personnel Management System with 3rd party interface to SAGE, Street Cleansing Management and Street Cleansing Inspection System.