Rick Kirkendall, Pmp Email & Phone Number

Raleigh, Nc

• Project managed large scale multi-year, multi-million dollar End-to-end field deployments of Smart Grid AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure) meters to Utilities and Municipalities in North America.• Managed the deployment of 100+ field technicians, supervisors, and warehouse personnel installing over +1M electric meters in Mississippi, and Louisiana in support of Entergy AMI project, generating over $1M in profit.• Developed and managed project plans, schedules, budgets and deliverables.• Established metrics for evaluating performance of projects against established goals.• Ensured compliance with all applicable laws, regulations and standards related to the project.• Conducted meetings with clients to identify requirements, objectives, scope and timeline of projects.

Kalamazoo, Michigan Area

As part of the Ericsson PMO for Managed Services matrix organization, I delivered operational services (software upgrades, trunk migrations, feature activation, eBSC re-homes, hardware circuit adds) into the customers 3G/ 4G RAN , Microwave, and Core networks. • Working closely with the Solutions Team, developed business cases for software services, and successfully delivered over 20 nationwide software upgrade roll-out projects across tens of thousands RAN RF sites from initiation to close on time and within budget. • Lead between 4 to 7 projects at a time with budgets of $200,000 to $1M with a yearly budget of over $4M. • Resourced and managed a global cross functional team to complete various tasks on nationwide software upgrade deployments throughout the customers RAN network e.g. Software Delivery, Supply Chain, Field Service Switch and Cell Techs, RF Engineering, Translations, Technical Support, Solutions, and Sales. • The single-point-of-contact (SPOC) to the customer for all project process areas ensuring high levels of customer satisfaction by effectively communicating, meeting schedule timelines, and maintaining a high-quality delivery of services. • A key contributor in transforming the software upgrade services, changing it from a local to a global staffing business model to gain competitive pricing, and facilitated in creating the business and project management processes to align with our strategic objectives. • Recognized by the customer multiple times for excellence in project delivery, and being a trusted partner.• Recognized by Ericsson executive management for successfully delivering a highly sensitive, and critical software upgrade project early and under budget.

Richardson, Tx

Managed a regional wireless operator in the United States.• Main customer interface for all service delivery towards the customer. Responsible for establishing and maintaining effective governance processes in close partnership with the Customer Operations organization.• Ensured the quality and profitability of software, hardware and technical support services were delivered in accordance to the contractual obligations within the Service Level Agreement (SLA) contracts resulting in high customer satisfaction.• Accountable for all customer emergency events ensuring timely resolution, and communication to executive management with ownership of the delivery of the root cause analysis to the customer.• Lead a team of technical support engineers to ensure their effectiveness and appropriate engagement with the customer to resolve all issues in their network within the agreed SLA.• Weekly progress reviews with customer operations personnel of all trouble tickets opened on issues found in the network.• Owned performance metrics and presented to the customer at Quarterly Business Reviews confirming contract adherence.• Partnered with sales, project management, order management, technical support and delivery teams to drive revenue, manage costs, maximize cash flow and ensure a positive customer experience.• Recognized for finding and recovering over a $1M billing error in hardware services for our department that had gone against our budget.

Richardson, Tx

Emergency Recovery Customer Support for Ericsson GSM Voice Core and Data Core Networks.• Recovered network outages through highly complex analysis to isolate single and multiple, hardware and software faults within the network.• Interfaced with the customer during system outage to ensure the communications of all the recovery actions were understood, and agreed to before performing next steps.• Crisis management during severe weather events.

Richardson, Tx

Kalamazoo, Michigan Area

Project managed all aspects of the delivery of Assisted Operate Services which provided software upgrades, consulting, and on-site training services to the Major North American CDMA and GSM wireless operators. Responsible for new project review, project requirements, service quotes, scope of work development, resourcing, project financials, customer orientation, delivering, monitoring and controlling to the services, and project close with the accountability for the project profit and loss, quality of service, customer satisfaction, and employee satisfaction. Accomplishment:Kept Customer Satisfaction scores of 86%; Quality of Service scores of 98%; Delivered On-time Performance of 98%.Successfully delivered and managed more than 100 services projects on time and in budget.

Richardson, Tx

Providing Tier III Technical Support to major Wireless Operators in the United States, and South America,. Specific focus is the troubleshooting of complex technical issues in large GSM/UMTS networks, and performing highly complex analysis of outage/degradation; perform root cause analysis for GSM Core and GPRS outages. Working as Subject Matter Expert for GSM/UMTS Voice Core (MSC/VLR/HLR, Media Gateway (MGW).), proficient in Data Services (GPRS, SGSN, GGSN, and Sig), and CDMA MTX Core, Translations.

Livonia, Mi

On-site single point of contact handling tier 2 and tier 3 technical issues within Ameritech's STC (ESAC) and CTG (Centralized Translation Group) to drive product design- and process related issues into field, and core organizations.Technical liaison between Ameritech and ACI, and TAS, TAC, E3, GPS, PLM, and BLM. Drive product design- and process related issues into field, and core organizations.Soft/Leadership: Negotiate, influence, and partnered with the Ameritech ESAC Management Team as a trusted advisor championing and coaching the development of new and old ESAC members.

Sunrise, Fl

Perform highly complex analysis of outage/degradation causes, to isolate single/multiple, hardware/software faults within the communication network, and to provide a solution using knowledge of high level language PROTEL, C++ (OO) to identify, and fix software problems within the DMS networkRoot Cause analysis for all outages coming into the CALA region working closely with GPS, and design for timely resolutions

Greater Atlanta Area

Engineer, organize, build an effective Captive Office. Interfacing with project primes, planning, and providing customer support for AccessNode, and DMS1U environments. Engineered, design and configured DMS100 network configurations to support two environments simultaneously. Provided external networking and planning, resulting in a solid traffic base offering a stable resource to critical AccessNode projects. Designed, engineered, supported several additions, and improvement to the Captive Office. Including SuperNode SE, LPP, ACD applications, and Network configurations, peripheral redistribution, power rectifier enhancements.

Jacksonville, Florida Area

Research Triangle Park, Nc