As Deputy Director I play a full role in the day to day management of Applications Division with over 100 staff and with an annual budget of over £5M. I work closely with the Director on planning, financial management, recruitment, staff development and enhancing working practices. I have a collaborative and consistent leadership style and regularly provide support and advice for the other Applications Division Section Heads. I lead on cross divisional initiatives including the recent introduction of the Divisional blogs and social media presence on Twitter. I am trusted by colleagues across the University. I am often asked to lead challenging activities which impact on the Division and our staff. In 2012 I led the successful creation of the Student Systems Partnership with Registry.Since July 2016 I have been operating as Acting Director on a part time basis supporting the Division during the phased retirement of the Director. I have taken on responsibility for the Digital Transformation portfolio and now Chair the UniDesk Shared Service Desk Board. I have offered leadership during a period of change taking on senior roles on major University initiatives including Service Excellence, Core Systems and Estates Transformation. As Head of Project Services I lead a team of professional project managers and business analysts. Each year we deliver >12,000 project days (>£3.7M). During 2016/17 we have increased our headcount by more than 40% through flexible resourcing with contractors. I have improved the effectiveness our internal processes, established best practice, developed partnerships and significantly improved project outcomes. Over this period successful major projects have included:- Shared Academic Timetabling - Worktribe Research Management - PURE and Edinburgh Research Explorer- Moodle VLE for distance learners- Office 365- Migration of University Web Site to Drupal CMS- Library Management Platform

UniDesk is an ITIL based Service Desk solution based on TopDesk. The UniDesk service was developed through a partnership between Abertay University, St Andrews University and the University of Edinburgh. UniDesk is available as software as service (SaaS) solution to UK Higher Education and Further Education institutions. Functionality provided by the UniDesk services includes:- A Service Desk using TOPdesk software- Self service incident logging and knowledge management- Integrated ITIL compliant Incident, Problem, Change and Release processes- Configuration Management and Service Level ReportingInstitutions using currently UniDesk include: Abertay University, Durham University, Edinburgh Napier University, Sheffield Hallam University, St Andrews University, Stirling University, Ulster University and University of Edinburgh You can find out more about UniDesk at http://www.unidesk.ac.uk/

As Head of Development Services I modernised our IT applications portfolio, professionalised the management of IT support and continued to build up our project management and business analysis capability. During this period had responsibility for up to 50 staff and an annual non-staff budget of between up to £1M. My achievements included:- Setting up the Production Management team to improve the efficiency of IT support by pooling resources, upskilling staff and establishing new processes for call prioritisation, change control and service reporting- Procuring and implementing new IT infrastructure (>£500K) for corporate applications- Introducing new procedures for project and task estimation- Improving the effectiveness of planning and resource management processes - Supporting the Director of Registry to procure and implement a new Student Records solution as part of a strategic project (EUCLID) to modernise student administration - Initiating a University wide IT service improvement initiative based on ITIL - Significantly improving the efficiency and effectiveness of project and service delivery In March 2007 I played a key role in establishing the new Applications Division within Information Services. I worked with the Director to devise an appropriate organisational structure for the new Division including:- separation of project/change based teams from those involved in business as usual service delivery - introduction of time recording to underpin our project and service delivery - interviewing and placing new staff joining the Division- Leading the Production Management, Development Services and Project Services sections - formalising our approach to operations management and project management During this period I helped the new Division build credibility through sustained and successful project and service delivery including delivering major projects including the Research Assessment Exercise, Wiki and Identity Management.

As Head of IT Infrastructure I had overall responsibility for the applications IT infrastructure. This infrastructure included: UNIX database and application servers, Windows and Novell file servers, Oracle RDBMS and Microsoft SQL Server supporting major applications including the Student Record, Finance, Human Resources and Payroll. I took on what had been a relatively informal service and put this on a robust and professional footing. In October 2000 I took on responsibility for the newly created Software Development team formed from staff who were previously aligned to specific business areas and carried out both support and software development. There were immediate and significant challenges. There were few development standards, our skill set was becoming out of date, we lacked flexibility and staff turnover had reached 40%. I addressed these challenges through strong leadership, improved working practices and the introduction of retention payments for key staff. There was one resignation from the team in the subsequent 4 years! During this period my achievements included: - Modernising our software development and applications IT infrastructure management practices- Introducing of new IT based solutions for Registry, Finance and Estates increasing applications usage by >300% - Developing a new computer room at Old College improving physical security and resilience- Refreshing software development skills through training, recruitment, introducing technical standards and improved quality assurance - Introducing web based technologies including Oracle Web Server, Apache and Cold Fusion- Introducing resource management processes, including time recording, to promote flexibility and improve transparency- Leading the implementation of the MyEd Portal and EASE Authentication servicesImprovements in the quality and breadth of MIS services during this period were recognised across the University and led to a significant expansion in our headcount.

In this role I successfully delivered a number of major and strategically important projects for the University including:- Designing and implementing a business intelligence solution based on Business Objects, Focus and the Oracle RDBMS for staff in Registry, HR and Planning. This was the first business intelligence solution at the University and provided the model for subsequent implementations- Leading the team tp procure and implement a new Financial Information Systems (FIS) for the University based on Cedar eFinancials. This major project introduced campus wide access to financial data and delivered a linked business intelligence solution using Business Objects. This system, although much upgraded, is still in use today- Carrying out the project management and systems analysis for the University’s first HESA return. Feedback from HESA indicated that this was the earliest and most accurate return received from any major UK university

The University and Colleges Information Systems Association (UCISA) is the voice of IT in Higher Education and Further Education in the UK and has increasing influence internationally. UCISA supports professional staff across HE and FE to leverage information technology and recognised best practice to deliver world class IT based solutions for teaching, research and administration. I conceived and set up the UCISA Project and Change Management Group in 2013 to recognise and support the growing importance of adopting best practice within project and change management across the UCISA community. The scope of PCMG included:- Project, programme and portfolio management frameworks, tools and methodologies- Governance and strategic alignment including developing business cases and options appraisal- Business process improvement methodologies, tools and techniques including Lean and Six Sigma- Change management - Business analysis - Project Management Office (PMO)- Resource management, capacity planning and cost estimation- Risk management - Communication and stakeholder engagement strategies- Benefits realisation management- Project to service transition and sustainabilityDuring my time as Chair we created an enthusiastic and active community of practitioners and ran two very successful national conferences. We also created a valuable set of best practice toolkits for project governance, risk management, PMO, benefits management and process improvement. The work of PCMG has been recognised within UCISA as beyond as a incredibly valuable contribution to the continuing development of effective project and change management in HE and FE. Our work is increasing awareness of the need to develop project and change management capability, offering leadership , developing confidence and recognising excellence. I am immensely proud of what we have achieved so far and confident that our future contribution will be even more valuable.

As a Senior Consultant within the IS Implementation Group I successfully delivered a number of key projects within the public sector including:• Evaluating, procuring and implementing a database solution for the Welsh Higher Education Funding Council • Re-engineering business processes for the Ministry of Defence Procurement Executive and Defence Research Agency • Analysis and database design for the Scottish Office Agriculture and Fisheries Department to support delivery of EU agricultural subsidies• Implementing a delivery monitoring system based on the Oracle RDBMS for the Scottish Milk Marketing BoardMy work earned the respect from a wide range of customers and colleagues generating significant repeat and new business. During my period with PA I had the highest utilisation rate of any of PA’s Scottish based consultants. My time at PA developed my skills in various high pressure projects and has been a platform for much of my subsequent career.

In 1991 I joined Information Management Group to lead the implementation of a data environment to support corporate data management and provide an enterprise wide master data management solution. This involved: - establishing the Oracle CASE tool CASE*Dictionary as the corporate data dictionary- promoting user awareness of the data dictionary environment- providing technical support to CASE*Dictionary users- producing data management standards- providing data modelling support to IT projects throughout the company- developing a fully functional system for the maintenance of corporate reference data Case*GeneratorIn my final project I carried out detailed systems analysis for a laboratory information system (LIMS) to be implemented at Hull. A potentially suitable software package had been identified and analysis was required to confirm its suitability and to define interfaces to other systems used at the site. The analysis outputs included: a full logical data definition; entity relationship diagrams; functional specifications and module designs. The analysis was documented using CASE*Dictionary and CASE*Designer.

I joined Technical Services Department, within Research and Development as part of a small IT team providing IT solutions for BP Chemicals six sites across Europe. In 1988 we decided to develop an ambitious system supporting research management and customer interactions built on the emerging distributed database capabilities of the Oracle RDBMS. My task to to design and develop this solution utilising Oracle Forms to provide common interface across the six sites with extensive use of distributed queries to support information sharing. I was solely responsible for the analysis, design and build of the system and shared responsibility for implementation and user training at each of the sites. This project was hampered somewhat by technical problems due to the speed of the network connections between the sites and the quality of the underlying Oracle technology. Nevertheless the vision and quality of the solution was widely recognised and we won an internal innovation award which was presented at a special event in the United States.During my employment I successfully encouraged the adoption of structured methods for software development, in particular the use Oracle's CASE*Method with its supporting data dictionary and modelling tools.

I joined BP Chemicals straight from University following success in BP's highly competitive graduate recruitment programme. My initial responsibilities were as part of a team developing accounting systems using the Oracle RDBMS running on VAX hardware. These included a prototype Cash Management System to record all cash movements within the company and a Manpower Resources system to record and analyse staff time sheet data. These systems were developed using the Oracle RDBMS, SQL*Forms, SQL*Report and SQL*Plus.