James Pollard Email and Phone Number

Delivering Project Management services into Central Government.

Delivering Project Management services

Interface with diverse range of stakeholders to deliver sophisticated projects and programme capabilities within budget and ahead of schedule, specialising in cyber security, privileged access, firewalls and next generation firewall security features. Key Achievements:• Implemented a higher level of segmentation, visibility and control between the 240+ Home Office (HO) WAN sites and the HO data centres.• Delivered a series of new capabilities to improve the security posture of the HO, including signature-based intrusion prevention system (IPS).• Facilitated threat emulation, identity awareness, SSL inspection and URL filtering to diligently monitor cyber security operations across the HO.• Simplified auditing, logging and reporting following deployment of a firewall orchestration solution using AWS technology.• Successful in the implementation of a security policy baseline with a single point of reference for configuration analysis.

Orchestrated the delivery of infrastructure and cyber security projects for the Home Office (HO), including legacy HO and data centre firewall uplift, and internet gateway DLP. Delivered technical leadership to control WAN, DMZ, firewall (Checkpoint, Juniper, Fortinet, Cisco), routing and switching. Sourced and managed relationships with external vendor/SI for each project within the remit of the wider cyber programme.Key Achievements:• Upgraded and successfully deployed next generation firewall technology across the whole internal Home Office estate.• Developed innovative security solutions in partnership with Technical Infrastructure Lead, from presales to implementation and handover into service

Hunter Macdonald is one of the UK’s most respected end-to-end IT Delivery and Services organisations. We have built an enviable reputation delivering comprehensive technical solutions that range from fixed price application and infrastructure delivery services through to talent sourcing and cost reduction programmes.

Delivery and Implementation Project Manager on the Offender Management National Infrastructure (OMNI) Transformation Programme designed to provide consistency, enhance performance, access and reliability across all National Probation Trusts to support end-to-end offender management.

Project Manager responsible for the preparation, delivery and coordination of the technical activity, coordination of the Project activities to migrate each of the 35 Probation Trusts from their legacy Offender Case Management systems to a single Application known as National Delius.

• Responsible for the preparation, delivery and co-ordination of both the Migration and Live Services teams technical activity. Ultimately, operating as the single point of contact.• Successfully delivered the infrastructure & data migration aspects for UK Probation Trusts from initiation through warranty into Live Service for the Programme.• Management for the Change & Release process on the programme, attending weekly Change Advisory Board (CAB).• Responsible for producing Data in Transit (DIT) documentation with the Security team to ensure the movements of secure data are documented, signed off and managed within a controlled manner.• Providing Impact Assessment to Request for Service (RFS) for changes to the requirement scope of the Programme. • Responsible for ensuring the management of scope and delivery for Data Migration from specific Case Management Systems to a National Application Solution housed on a single platform.• Responsible for ensuring the management of scope and delivery for Trust Proving, Infrastructure Upgrade and Migration to the National Data Centre(s) against the baselined generic project plan.• Developed business process material, road maps and plan on page that outlined the Project approach in both high & low level detail logical to the appropriate recipient• Raise and managed Trust specific change requests throughout the life cycle of the project to support the requirements of the client ensuring that cost for the work was justified against the deliverable.• Managing of Trust project plans, identifying dependencies and management of resources for both the client and supplier. Identify, manage and mitigate project specific risks and issues.• Handover through Project exit to Operations/Live Service function.

Permanent Role:• Supporting the delivery of several pre-production test and support environments as well as the user application enabling connections between the Crown Prosecution Service, the Crown Courts and Magistrates courts. • Effectively delivered a number of new project releases and supported a system upgrade on time with no major issues.• Project Manager for other Central Government programmes introducing improvements for both the DVLA and Criminal Records Bureau.• Knowledge transfer to the Service Management team following Project release into a live environment.

Contract Role:• Area specific data migration project planning, levelling resources and monitoring progress. • Manage NPS areas data migration issues and risks, constructing and recommending remedial actions as required. Chairing checkpoint meetings, facilitating workshops and presenting briefings, liaison with the area, regional business teams and other NOMIS work streams.• Programme management support in full for meetings, documenting of procedures and communication to members across the board.• Aiding with the end-to-end data migration process through to reconciliation in preparation for handover to Live Services.

Short Term Contract:• Managing the process required to transmit and extract vehicle, service and parts data.• Contacting dealers via the VPN to extract sales and marketing information from the network, patching in to obtain the required data and reporting back any outcome of the calls.• Co-ordination and monitoring the dealers and formulating responses from the calls and feeding this information back to third party data manipulation specialists.

Delivering mobile network solutions on large-scale projects to customers in the UK, Europe, Africa and Asia.Deliverables• Management responsibility for staff assisting on a project delivery undertaken overseas, ensuring that tight deadlines were met in order to support the successful delivery of the project.• Project planning & consultancy, client demonstrations and pre-sales support for various project bids. Business needs and requirement and gap analysis workshop interaction with existing and prospective customers.• Project management and application development experience enabled the ability to play various roles within the successful delivery of an integrated workflow solution. • Responsible for working with Process Managers, Project Leaders, and key Users of corporate organisations to analyse and formulate technical solutions to business process requirements, applying these to develop customised solutions. • Training and mentoring administrators and key users of the product following the go-live stage of various projects.• Acting as a facilitator in requirements gathering workshops to allow the formulation and production of documentation, reports and test plans.• Working in-house to continually improve various key modules of the product that support the management of projects, finance, information and inventory.

Providing 1st and 2nd line support for customer configuration and reporting issues and often providing ad-hoc and flexible solutions to these.• Operation of a helpdesk system to receive, administer and resolve support related issues within the SLA timescales set. • Working as Duty Support Manager on a shift basis, providing 24/7 telephone support cover.• IT Administration for all internal network, hardware and software maintenance and building customised product install sets using Wise application software.