Curriculum Vitae

Modifying the MySQL database and the PERL Scripts and templates to allow the system to work from inside a Wordpress shell. Updated the application form to allow a slightly wider range of answers to some questions. Added some questions, removed others. Added additional validation for postcodes and telephone numbers.

Spent the first ten weeks working on a small development to capture additional details about all the occupants of properties over the age of 18.

Remainder of the time I spent working on a Welsh Water site to develop and implement a system to allow data to be transferred from DCWW's CAS payments system to and from a new system, Tallyman3 supplied by Experien, which is used to chase bad debts. This involved the development of a number of both ongoing and one off processes to transfer data between the systems, and to enhance or remove other parts of the system. Responsible for the complete SCL development for the new interface, ensuring the system was restartable, and that it did not impact on any fixed schedules. Supported the User Acceptance Testing teams during the testing phase, and helped to support the end users immediately after the go-live.

The first six months I spent most of my time doing small fixes for various parts of both the Alias Mortgage system and the Genisys Insurance system, and writing one-off ad-hoc reports and extracts, primarily for the MMR project, but also for ELM and the Payment Holiday project. I spent a lot of time supporting the testers on UCB Collect, fixing faults found in testing, and running batch jobs as requested by the testers. I also, wrote and tested the MSO Incentives Clawback changes, which involved changes to the online system as well as to the end of year statements. Designed and wrote a complete XML extract and load system for Alias to allow programmers to more easily set up and modify test data. This involved writing a complete XML parser in COBOL.

From September 2010 I worked for the testing team on the Group Strategic Asset Collateralisation (GSAC) project which involved extracting data from the ICL Alias system, and sending it to the Corporate Analytical Warehouse (CAW) and from there to a new package, ABS-Suite, bought in from Deloitte. Initially I was involved with setting up and executing test scripts for the initial release, using QC to document results. As I was also an experienced developer, as the project developed in scope I also did some small design and development work when the lead project developers were busy, and also helped to set up and run the batch processes to enable the other testers to concentrate on the testing. During this time I also developed and set up processes to enable the test team to be more efficient by automating some of the repetetive tasks around batch running. This included interfacing with the external support team at Fujitsu in Manchester.

Worked on all aspects of both the Designs and Trademarks systems, and both batch and TP, as well as supporting both the system testing team and the end user test team.

Involved with the later stages of the design process, and then the complete development and testing of the mainframe end of a system to allow customers to input objections to trademark registration (TM7a), that used an XML and HTML interface. Reprogrammed the system that allowed the mainframe to send out registration receipts from the mainfram, via email. This was done using XML which was then transferred to the outlook email server. Liased with PC systems team to ensure end-to-end testing conpleted successfully.

Responsible for converting older style documentation into newer forms and formats, replacing wordperfect with word, updating any documentation at the same time.

Part of a tiny team responsible for the running of the companies entire IT infrastructure. Worked on small system enhancements, bug fixes, one off reports as well as help & train users and help run and maintain the system.

Worked on the development of the new Traffic Management Act (TMA) interface software, writing out XML transactions from the TPMS service to send to the new server based system, in both EtON3 and EtON4 standards.

Lead developer on a project to increase the size of two fields on the mortgage database. This project had board level oversight as had it gone in late, the society would have had difficulties selling mortgages. Required a close examination of every single program that accessed those fields, along with a large number of screens and external files. Specific responsibility throughout to ensure that the DDS was maintained in such a way as to ensure other systems and projects were not inconvenienced. Ensured all systems that interfaced to the Alias mortgage system, both inside and out of the Society, most on other platforms, were made aware of the changes, and the interfaces were all tested properly. Became responsible for working with the senior users to ensure the smooth running of the system testing.

Planned the various production releases as autonomous parts of the project became ready, and was instrumental in the planning, implementation and support of the final production release; which required coordinating with two other systems as they would have to implement their changes at the same time. This required over 400 COBOL and AM modules to be released to production just before Christmas.

After the main release, the team was scaled down to just myself on a part time basis to identify and fix any faults that were discovered from the release. Simultaneously worked on a number of small changes to many parts of the Mortgage system: general bug fixes, small system enhancements, and one-off reports. Also worked on a small data cleansing project, identifying accounts with errors in insurance premium calculations.

Working primarily on the 'Metered DCS' project, involving design, coding and testing of both batch and TP code for the new Debt Collection System for Metered accounts. During the later stages was involved with supporting the User Acceptance Testing phase, helping to diagnose and fix faults, running batch jobs as requested by the Thames Water UAT team. Wrote implementation plan, and was closely involved with the live implementation.

Designer, programmer and tester on the CRYPTO project, identifying and generating letters to all properties affected by the Cryptosporidium outbreak in North Wales. This involved generating reports to enable Welsh Water staff to check and correct customer data prior to sending out Boil notices, All clear notices or Inconvenience Payments, as well as generating the Inconvenience payment processing.

Designer and developer for important changes to the Automatic Refunds processing and have also done some coding and testing for the interface to the new Banktec Payment Protection System, and to the Affordability Discount system.

Responsible for designing, coding and testing for any aspect of Northern Rocks business as required. Responsible for the maintenance of the Code generators, as well as the RTE test environment. Responsible for development of part of the BACS requirements for the transfers of Direct Debits and Standing Orders between financial institutions.

Time spent partly working on the Red Emperor site in Luton, and partly working from home.

In Luton, developed and extended the functionality of the main Red Emperor game The Ancients. This involved changing and extending both the HTML templates and the perl scripts which drive the games interface. Involved, at a basic level, with some changes to the MySQL database most notably in the membership parts of the database. Responsible for writing the membership renewal system, and for its interface to the Royal Bank Of Scotlands world-pay system.

From home, developed the complete user interface to the new game Conquest which is a simplified version of The Ancients. This involved the merging and tidying of various 'Ancients' HTML templates, as well as the related Perl scripts and writing a small number of new scripts. Responsible for the new colour scheme.

Responsible for the production and testing of code for the RDF client (Northern Rock Building Society). This involved all aspects of the clients business, mortgage maintenance, insurance, broking, etc. Responsible for the programming and testing, including generation of test plans and logs, of batch and TP code, both COBOL and, where appropriate, SCL. Responsible for the design and development of tools to assist in the generation of production SCL, and to validate code against current site standards.

Part of the design team on the next release of the Job Seekers Allowance Payment System, taking a high level design, and turning that into functional and technical design packs, developing test plans for both system and business testing, and arranging revues and sign off of the various packs. Worked on a database tidyup - dormant case deletion, involving a lot of complex batch procedures, as well as one off batch runs. Involved with a project to generate statistical information for the new Joint Claims introduced by the Government. Once programming began, my responsibilities extended to supporting the programmers: explaining the changes, and resolving any difficulties with either coding or testing.

Responsible for ensuring that the user departments were able to write their own test conditions and test scripts, explaining quite complex computer processes to non technical people.

Responsible for ensuring that a large number of changes that had been specified were merged back into the baseline specifications, ensuring that the code changes and the specification changes matched.

• Responsible for a large number of correspondence changes related to Phoneday2, as the AA used a lot of 0990 numbers.
• Responsible for a number of minor changes related to ABI compliance rules
• Responsible for a major data cleansing exercise correcting large numbers of invalid post codes.

Part of a small team, involved with the VME side of the Booker Food System, involving fix-on-fail for batch and TP, and also some developments and enhancements.

Involved in enhancements to the batch SCL.

Developed a batch suite to auto generate downloads to the unix based depot systems, alongside the development and testing of a number AM transactions that required splitting into smaller dialogues.

Two and a half months on backlog support, clearing very old calls, involving full access to the live systems, identifying whether they were data or code faults, and passing to the appropriate team.

Worked on two phases of the Customer/1 (OSE) project: passing money between the gas and electricity systems. Responsible for changes to lots of batch modules as a large number of record types had extra data inserted to identify type of account, and for statistical aggregations. Responsible for splitting the aggregations reports into three, adding new functionality at the same time. During this project, Wrote a number of ad-hoc SCL procedures to help the system testers control their testing environments.

Developed new module to control tariffs available to customers in arrears. Responsible for amending TP messages to enable the new processing, and also the development of new TP messages.
Responsible for new TP messages for quotations of, and to put customers onto, advanced payment tariffs. Closely involved with the batch changes for the change in billing for when the credit ran out, or for when a customer asked to go back onto a standard scheme requiring a refund. Involved with design re-work to cater for unusual conditions. Supported the business acceptance testing, helping identify unexpected results, and helping in the setup of test data.

Part of the Motor insurance development team, responsible for changes to all parts of the system: batch, on-line and PC code. Jointly responsible, for support of the live correspondence system, checking any failures as they occured, and repairing the failed letters.
Responsible for ensuring that new releases of the software were made available to the user support team. During the testing stages of a release, I was responsible for any fault reports returned, ensuring that they received prompt attention, either from the original programmer, or by myself in liason with the original programmer.

From January 1996 worked on the Home insurance fault team, diagnosing faults and liasing with the user support team in Newcastle. As the Home system is a clone of the Motor system, this involved liason between the teams, both to identify differences, where Motor code is not valid for Home, and to identify similarities, where a bug may be present in both. Developed ad-hoc programmes to identify and correct invalid data.

From January 1997, part of the Y2K team. This involved all phases after the user requirements stage, up to program test. Pilot work on the home insurance system to try and identify, in advance of the main work starting, any problems that may occur or any good practices that may need to be followed for this and other systems.
Designed, coded, and tested bridging programmes that allow Y2K compliant data to be passed to non Y2K compliant systems.

• General development and support programmer on all areas of the BankMaster system Mortgage system
• Introduced a number of SCL and Cobol standards, new IDMS protocols, and standardising data dictionary usage.
• In charge of project ensuring all batch SCL would restart after a failure.
• Responsible for complete design plus initial development of large batch suite for when HMC bought the mortgage book of another company.

Chief First-aider at HMC, running all the first-aid team meetings which took place, ensuring new first-aiders recruited as necessary, and all certificates and boxes up to date.

• Development of release 3 and 4, products database (PDB) in AM.
• Responsible for setting up and testing IDMS re-organise and restructure procedures for release 3.
• In charge of release 3 implementation and initial support.
• Upgraded internal Lafis database from release 6.1 to release 8.1.
• Development, including analysis and design, of new lafis implementation.
• Designed and wrote SCL for IRAS-AR implementation.
• Responsible for documenting the availability of support documentation for a large number of systems prior to a transfer of support responsibility.
• Second line support for about 100 systems and implementations.

• Development of DME to CPM and Supercalc link.
• Development of CPM based Nursing training records system.
• Development of VME Hospital Inpatient System (HIS), including DME to VME conversion software, in charge of DDS for project.
• Complete implementation, support and all end user training for Family Practitioner Committee (FPC) system at two FPC's.
• Implement and support IDMS/TPMS Manpower Management System (MMS). Responsible for planning the reorganise and re-structure of MMS. In charge of MMS liason with West Midlands RHA