Key Skills and Achievements

Exemplary Programme Management Discipline

  • C-level engagement (Large Smart Meter Implementation Delivery Lead including PMO): Directly with C-Level executives and other senior customer and internal stakeholders throughout the programme.
  • Robust planning (“Big Six” UK Utility SMETS 2 Planning lead): Scoped, defined and implemented a robust strategy and plan to deploy more than 5 million smart meters across the UK by 2020.
  • Complex stakeholder engagement (Big Six): Coordinated activities internally between Meter Operations, Asset Management, Customer Service and Sales, Business Change, Training, Security, Programme Management and IT. Strict Regulatory requirements.
  • Commercial responsibility (Delivery Lead and PMO): £21M and more than 200,000 hours of services. Included contracting, forecasting, budgeting, staffing, HR, invoicing and customer satisfaction.
  • People Leadership (Delivery Lead and PMO): Successfully managed a team of 120 who designed and installed the Smart Meter network across a 640,000 sq. km service territory, installed 1.2M Smart Meters and developed and implemented related IT systems, business processes and call centre changes.
  • Industry Knowledge (Electricity and Gas Regulator Senior Project Manager): Recognised for industry knowledge and proven management discipline and appointed the Senior Project Manager for a high-profile regulatory programme that delivered lower electricity bills to over 500,000 low-income homes.
  • Relentless Drive (Electricity and Gas Regulator): Project which was deemed “impossible” by government stakeholders was delivered on time and on budget.
  • Return to Profitability (Government Entity for Smart Metering): Brought in to lead a cross functional team of 52 onshore and offshore employees operating and upgrading the Provincial Smart Meter Data Management system (MDM). Returned the account to profitability after several years of losses.
  • Technical Acumen (Government Entity for Smart Metering): Successfully delivered a two-year, 50,000 hour hardware refresh project for the infrastructure and networks supporting Siemens EnergyIP system.

Strong Focus on People Leadership

  • Personal Adaptability: Keen ability to listen and to adjust style and approach across a wide variety of disciplines, cultures, vendors and from the most junior employees to the C-Suite.
  • Teaching and Mentoring (Accenture Consulting University): regularly delivered intensive week-long course to develop key consulting skills in less-experienced colleagues around Europe and beyond.
  • Restoring Trust (UK Gas Distributor, Networks team lead): Within six weeks, successfully rebuilt ineffective, eroded relationships with business and technical stakeholders through strong communication, accountability and reliably meeting deadlines and commitments.
  • Mending Relationships (UK Electricity Distributor, SAP Performance project lead): Parachuted in to accelerate performance on a stalling project to improve the performance of SAP across the field force and back office.  Quickly and effectively addressed the interpersonal issues that caused the stall, ultimately realising improved Technical and business performance.
  • Emphasis on the Vulnerable (Government programme to reduce the cost of electricity): Critical conduit between five government departments, 100 utilities, legal counsel and over 500 social service agencies to drive the technical and business integration requirements within very challenging timescales. Chaired webinars, meetings and roadshows representing the Regulator and attended by hundreds.

Commercial Acumen

  • Twenty years of experience as a member of dozens of teams developing commercial offerings to clients including T&M, T&M with a cap, fixed price and pay-for-performance commercial models.
  • Vendor Management (SMETS 2 Planning lead): brought in to rescue failing delivery and commercial relationships with two Smart Meter vendors, addressing issues and returning them to high performance.
  • “Win/Win” Contracts, Delivered profitably (Overall Delivery Lead, Smart Meter Implementation): Integral part of the senior management team writing a 150,000h Statement of Work for the Smart Meter Programme then delivered the New Systems Development and Integration Test workstreams profitably.
  • Sustained Satisfaction and Profitability (Customer Care Portfolio Lead): Responsible for a budget of approximately £10 million while delivering approximately 100,000 hours of work across 80 projects to a large Ontario-based electric power generation utility on a key long-term Outsourcing contract.

International Effectiveness

  • Desire and ability to travel for work. Dual UK and Canadian citizen.
  • Cultural Effectiveness (Smart Metering and Smart Cities prospective customers): Ability to modify style, approach and communication to adapt to a variety of national and corporate cultures. Demonstrated recently with strategy work in Smart Metering (Malaysia) and Smart Cities (Saudi Arabia).
  • In-person and Virtual effectiveness: Worked both in-person and virtually with clients and colleagues in Canada, Europe, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Brazil, Philippines and the USA.

Effective Across a Wide Range of Technologies and Disciplines

  • Smart Metering: Working as a subject matter specialist on a global team bringing Accenture’s innovative Smart Cites solutions to two clients in the Middle East.
  • Software Development (Integration Lead, Smart Meter Implementation): Managed a team of 75 individuals including: Release Management, System and Integration Testing Management, New Systems Development and Integration, Legacy Systems Development and Integration, Performance Testing, Disaster Recovery, Operational Metrics, Business Process Design and Call Centre.
  • Network and Cloud migration (UK Gas Distributor, Networks team lead): Oversight of connectivity elements including critical national infrastructure and other high-availability, high resiliency systems migrating to Amazon Web Services (AWS) from a legacy on-premise data centre in the UK
  • System Performance and Non-functional Testing (UK Electricity Distributor, SAP Performance project lead): Planned and orchestrated performance improvements through the implementation of a disciplined project approach to a multi-disciplined team and 3rd party vendors.

Government and Regulatory Bodies

  • Client Trust (Big Six UK Utility SMETS 2 Planning lead): Recognized for representing the client in-person with UK Government bodies (BEIS and Ofgem) through a series of bilateral meetings by giving talks, reporting progress, highlighting national and regional risks with recommendations.
  • Serving the Vulnerable (Government programme to reduce the cost of electricity): Main conduit between disparate provincial and federal government ministries, legal counsel and the provincial Regulator to overcome institutional and personal barriers and deliver a project deemed “impossible”.
  • Excel under Government Scrutiny: (Customer Care Portfolio Lead): dozens of Regulatory projects annually over four years achieved 100% on-time Delivery for a heavily-scrutinised utility.