Gary Ward Email & Phone Number

Wellington, New Zealand

Transpower New Zealand Limited (TPNZ) is the state-owned enterprise responsible for electric power transmission in New Zealand. It performs two major functions in the New Zealand electricity market. As the owner of the National Grid, it provides the infrastructure of electric power transmission that allows consumers to have access to generation from a wide range of sources, and enables competition in the wholesale electricity market; as System Operator it manages the real-time operation of the grid and the physical operation of the electricity market.My role as Technical Change Lead is primarily project delivery focused. I provide technical advice to the project manager, test manager and/or business for matters relating to the development and delivery of projects. I oversee the implementation of application architectures using automation within these projects and lead the prioritization of development and delivery tasks whilst driving the project from a technical perspective. I provide technical leadership, find gaps and issues and ensure they are understood and resolved by the project to meet timelines, budget and scope.

Wellington & Wairarapa, New Zealand

The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) is the lead agency for the social sector. The Ministry helps Government to set priorities across the sector, co-ordinate the actions of other social sector agencies, and track changes in the social wellbeing of New Zealanders.As Senior Development Support Analyst at MSD, I was responsible for developing, enhancing, and or maintaining manual and automated systems and processes used to build and deploy application code and configurations in a consistent, reliable, and repeatable manner across a wide range of development environments. This helped the Development Support Team to work rapidly and to achieve a high level of scalability and flexibility, ensuring developers have the necessary capacity, permissions, and tools to do their work effectively.A key achievement during this contract was the delivery of a fully automated installation and configuration process for Oracle Unified Directory and Layer7 SiteMinder product suite. This development was undertaken using the Python Fabric2 library.

Wellington New Zealand

Inland Revenue (IRD; former known name: Inland Revenue Department) (Māori: Te Tari Taake) is the public service department of New Zealand charged with advising the government on tax policy, collecting and disbursing payments for social support programmes, and collecting tax.Provide generalist technical assistance to On-Demand Services team, reducing workload and actively contributing to critical project activities requiring technical leadership, subject matter expertise and strong problem solving skills.Key project resource providing Ansible automation expertise to develop unattended installation and configuration capability for WebSphere Portal 8.5 on Linux server farm for major IR platform upgrade.

London, United Kingdom

Glue Reply specialises in IT architecture, integration and data solutions that drive value for organisations. Pragmatic in its approach, Glue Reply provides independent advice on the technology solutions that fulfil business objectives.Responsible for SDLC environments supporting the replacement of the Cruise Personaliser application and implementation of new WebMethods cross-brand integration tier for Carnival UK.Also, responsible for planning, scheduling and coordinating all release and deployment activities within the SDLC from testing through to production. Due to financial constraints, the customer halted the integration project before it was formally initiated. Consequently, the Environments Manager role was considered redundant and my contract was terminated after three weeks with Glue Reply.

Bristol, United Kingdom

Profund is a leading provider of pension software which has been developing, implementing and supporting systems specifically designed for those with the responsibility for running pension schemes since 1984. (http://www.profund.com)Brought on-board to streamline release and configuration management for a large programme delivering extensive customisation of Profund's core application suite for the British Telecom pension scheme.

The Customhouse, 1 Hinemoa Street, Centreport Wellington New Zealand

The New Zealand Customs Service is the government agency with the job of ensuring the security of New Zealand's borders. They protect the economy from illegal imports and exports and promote New Zealand’s international trade. They collect revenues, investigate illegal activity and prosecute where necessary.The Joint Border Management System (JBMS) is being developed by the New Zealand Customs Service and the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI). The objective of the JBMS programme is to modernise the two agencies’ border systems to allow sharing of processes, data, and technology.Guided and mentored infrastructure and middleware support specialists within the programmes environments management team.Performed complex infrastructure troubleshooting and problem resolution where greater knowledge and experience was required.Implemented process improvements and good-practice systems management disciplines to ensure environments stability and availability.Implemented and enforced processes to increase turnaround on infrastructure defect troubleshooting and problem resolution.Instrumental in the successful business case to develop environment automation (DevOps) capability for next major phase of JBMS programme.Provided infrastructure management expertise and technical input to DevOps automation project.Personally developed utilities to simplify the control and management of infrastructure and application stack.

The Customhouse (Then) 18 - 21 Whitmore Street, Wellington Cdb New Zealand

The New Zealand Customs Service is the government agency with the job of ensuring the security of New Zealand's borders. They protect the economy from illegal imports and exports and promote New Zealand’s international trade. They collect revenues, investigate illegal activity and prosecute where necessary.The Joint Border Management System (JBMS) is being developed by the New Zealand Customs Service and the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI). The objective of the JBMS programme is to modernise the two agencies’ border systems to allow sharing of processes, data, and technology.Transferred from the permanent role in the Office of the Clerk (New Zealand) into a contract technical project management position within the Joint Border Management System (JBMS) Programme.Primarily responsible for the supplier relationship and the provision of new interfaces into the SDLC environments.Rescued a failing data migration project, completed a comprehensive analysis of current state, and introduced a robust structure that enabled the timely recovery.Succeeded in delivering a challenging project to implement IBM Tivoli security suite within the application solution, and ahead of scheduled penetration testing for production go-live.

The Treasury, 1 The Terrace, Wellington New Zealand

The New Zealand House of Representatives is the sole chamber of the legislature of New Zealand.Handled the support and development of critical applications and website publication systems, and also directed the IT support team.Took ownership for the improvements to core processes and services, introduced best practices such as ITIL and handled the operational management & further development of the intranet site ‘Our House’ and www.parliament.nz website. Drove the seamless restructuring of the IT support teams into a clear 1st, 2nd and 3rd line framework. Succeeded in championing the introduction of Nagios systems monitoring capabilities that safeguarded vital availability of core applications & systems for critical house sittings and committee meetings.

The Treasury, 1 The Terrace, Wellington New Zealand

During this period, as a result of the issues raised during a PWC audit of the organisation, took ownership for the delivery of the resultant projects to resolve problems and enhance the intranet & public website. Operated within Agile/Scrum methodology and coordinate sprints, demos and releases of new functionality or changes. Implemented Parliament Intranet (Our House) Usability and Information Architecture enhancements.Generated technical design for Online Submissions feature of Parliament website and its integration with the Office’ Enterprise Content Management System.Drove the successful deployment of Groundwork enterprise systems monitoring platform known as Nagios.

Datacom Wellington Data Centre, 84 Abel Smith Street

Datacom Systems Limited is an Information Technology services company, offering IT management and consulting, cloud services, data centre services, custom software development, business process management and payroll services.Appointed to fulfill the role of Acting Team Lead for the Microsoft Desktop and Service Support teams, driving service delivery aligned with best practices and introduced system performance & capacity reporting into the organisation, in addition to spearheading other continuous improvements.

Datacom Wellington Data Centre, 84 Abel Smith Street

Progressed into the position of Infrastructure Architect as recognition for outstanding technical prowess, led the shaping of architectural solutions underpinning multiple projects, involving virtualisation, hardware provisioning and hardware audits. Played a major part in the design and performance troubleshooting for a Disaster Recovery solution for the organisation’s payroll application upgrade to PayGlobal.Completed a number of power configuration audits involving risk assessments for UPS upgrades at the Datacom’s Wellington and Auckland data centres. Handled the evaluation of the hardware provisioning requirements for the FMIS PeopleSoft 9 upgrade, including the integration with Wellington and Auckland data centre infrastructures. As part of a key virtualisation project, led the rack design and collaboration with suppliers for the installation of blade enclosures within the two main data centres.

The Customhouse (Then) 18 - 21 Whitmore Street, Wellington Cdb New Zealand

Assigned to various business critical infrastructure projects and drove the end-to-end lifecycle from initiation, planning and technical design, through to development, installation and final handover/commissioning. Drove the successful implementation of an IBM BladeCenter H Chassis and associated blade servers into the Wellington and Auckland data centres.Relocated production data warehouse from Wellington to Auckland data centre, and transferred legacy standalone storage to new Storage Area Networks for applications and data warehouse environments. Succeeded in delivering the infrastructure design for implementation of IBM Applicability Statement 2 (AS2) protocol relating to an external agency interface into New Zealand Customs.

Level 5 New Zealand Post Building

Datacom Wellington Data Centre, 84 Abel Smith Street

Odlins Building, Petone Esplanade, Wellington New Zealand

Diploma In Cobol Programming, Applications Programming, B+

Activities and Societies: Student action team Study towards New Zealand Certificate in Civil Engineering

New Zealand Certificate Of Civil Engineering, Civil Engineering

Activities and Societies: Student action team COBOL programing block course

School Certificate, Mathematics, Engineering, Science And Art

Activities and Societies: School theatre School Certificate