Situation 1: Delivery of BT’s £10 billion deployment of 21CN (21st Century Network) was behind schedule.

Approach: As partof a team provided by Accenture, reviewed performance of aspects of the programme related to deployment of Fibre, presented findings and recommendations to BT, and implemented key recommendations to improve performance.

Situation 2: The client considered he was getting poor value from a 10-year £90 million Email and Directory service.

Approach: Managed the Email and Directory Services programme through the later parts of development, through testing, marketing, rollout, termination of the supplier’s service delivery contract and dispute resolution through mediation as well as managing the ongoing service and exit from the service. Contract renewed.

Outcome: The service contract was terminated with agreeable commercial implications for the client. The ongoing service was provided without serious incident. A superior quality replacement service was procured saving £40 million.

Situation 3: In a commercially pressured environment a team of 30 was deploying products inefficiently to over 700 servers and missing deadlines increasing the risk of incurring substantial financial penalties to this £620 million programme. The timely achievement of deployment was required to help avoid contract penalties.

Approach: As interim Deployment Manager successfully took actions to increase the team’s capacity by enlarging the team to 40-persons, ensuring that this rapid growth did not temporarily decrease operational effectiveness and taking steps to ensure that the quality of the products received by the team increased over time so that they would be deployed more efficiently.

Outcome: The team consistently met delivery dates avoiding financial penalties and the capacity of the team to deploy increased in line with requirements.

Situation 4: The Electronic Prescription Service was to be deployed to community pharmacies and GP practices in England to a tight deadline as part of a £12 billion programme. Deployment of the service was dependent upon organisations for whom deployment of the service could inhibit achievement of their targets and over whom the programme had no authority.

Approach:Responsible for programme managing deployment of the service in pharmacies and GP practices in England as well as communications related to the Electronic Prescription Service in local organisations. Recruited and line managed implementation managers to support the implementation. Successfully negotiated with and persuaded most of the organisations to implement the service.  Contract renewed four times.

Outcome: Successfully managed the deployment to more than 5,500 GP practices and community pharmacies.

Situation 5: A major high street bank’s card authorisation service malfunctioned resulting in retailers being unable to adequately service customers seeking to pay for goods. Queues of customers waiting to pay would develop in the retailers. The bank would be subject to financial penalties. Relationship with the supplier was jeopardised.

Approach: On behalf of the supplier of the card authorisation system, effectively managed the critical situation.

Outcome: Steps were successfully taken to reduce the immediate impact of the problem. The incident and its underlying cause were fully resolved within 3 weeks with the bank successfully supporting it busiest ever winter season. Resolution of the incident resulted in greatly enhanced relationships between senior management in the bank and the supplier. When I became freelance, the bank asked me to carry out my first two assignments.

Situation 6: A major retailer required its product category managers to more effectively manage its frequent promotions.

Approach: Successfully managed the bid to develop and implement a Business Intelligence solution for the retailer including development of proposals and presentation to potential client. Managed the resulting programme including business consultancy, development and delivery of Business Intelligence solution on time and to budget.

Outcome: The retailer reported a fourteen-week payback for the programme.

Situation 7: A retail bank sought to allow its customers to manage their credit cards over the internet and through a call centre as a basis for launching further services. The bank committed to providing this service to an extremely short timescale. This took place whilst the supplier of the systems was undergoing major change due to it being taken over.

Approach:Successfully managed the development of an internet-based facility for customers (B2C) and call centre staff.

Outcome: The systems were successfully delivered to a tight timescale enabling the bank to offer further services.

Situation 8: A supplier’s projects for the same client were overrunning schedule and budget.

Approach: Project doctor to two projects experiencing difficulties and implemented key recommendations.

Outcome: Project effectiveness improved and recommendations were put in place for future projects.