My project / delivery history
Below is a compilation (somewhat incomplete) of the various technologies and projects I have either been involved in delivering, or have championed, designed, developed, deployed and delivered as a main contributor
"...because there are very few instances in life (and tech), where you develop something truly on your own!"
I have architected and/or deployed so many varied technology solutions and performed so many transformations across diverse technical stacks, that it would be difficult to capture them all (but let's try):
Technology: CRM / Customer Call Centre
Decision: I made a strategically pragmatic decision to chose Five9 and Gem (over more popular, well known brands) to deliver a technically complex service quickly, launching a new replacement CRM and Call Centre service within six month deadline (required following the incumbent provider going into receivership in 2023).
The solution integrated Gem (a specialist vendor) with Five9 (a global provider), enabling automated customer voucher verification, multi-channel contact—including WhatsApp, email, AI chatbot interactions—and an IVR system that could escalate customers to human agents when necessary.
Business Outcome: This technical choice was made to guarantee delivery by a firm "go live" date, ensuring the new service launched before the previous service was switched off. Meeting this non-negotiable deadline protected the guest experience during the transition, allowing us to retain our high-performing, CSAT-rated South African Call Centre team for continuity. The outcome not only maintained but improved the guest experience, introducing innovative omni-channel capabilities for the UK and architecting the solution for operational performance, with service mappings designed to reduce Single Points of Failure between old and new Vue systems. The project went live as scheduled, stayed within budget, and launched without any customer-facing bugs.
Technology: Telephony Modernisation
Decision: I made the strategic decision to replace Cisco VoIP CallManager and PSTN (Copper) telephony (ahead of the UK Governments Copper Switch-off originally scheduled for 2025, now 2027) with Zoom Telephony within Vue’s England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland cinema’s.
Business Outcome: The technical decision was made consciously to deliver a reduced telephony OPEX cost by over 66% (£220k to £74k) annually in the UK alone, providing reliable telephony service in cinemas and in projection areas for the first time in years.
I negotiated a 5 year contract that would see the whole organisation see an almost £1M reduction over current Telephony OPEX spend, with other services bundled in for free for 2 years.
Technology: Network (WAN) Acceleration & Optimisation
Decision: I made the strategic decision to investigate, evaluate and then deploy WAN Acceleration devices in every legal office throughout Asia-Pacific.
Business Outcome: The technical decision delivered a cost reduction in planned OPEX spend for Wide Area Network costs by ~$700,000 AUD over 3 years (delivering an ROI in 10 months), facilitating improved business operations with the centralisation of the Firm's Practice Management & Document Management Systems, and a corresponding reduction in environmental costs (i.e., less infrastructure hosted in remote offices, drawing less on energy and cooling).
Technology: Cinema Management Software (ERP handling ticket & concession sales, film schedules)
Decision: I collaborated with our primary vendor to develop a pricing model that supported our shift from an on-premises platform to Cloud Native Services.
Business Outcome: My analysis of the features of Cloud-based Cinema Management software, coupled with the financial analysis of the proposed contract, enabled me to negotiate a fee structure that delivered a cost benefit that was a win-win for by Vista (as a vendor) and VUE as the customer.
It established a simplified subscription-based cost structure, tied to cinema count, transaction volume, and loyalty metrics, achieving an OPEX breakeven in under 18 months (safeguarding Vue’s legacy investment).
Technology: Video Conferencing (Zoom)
Decision: I initiated a strategic search to assess and find a replacement for the current video conference solution to solve a widespread challenge in organisations of all sizes—namely, the need for straightforward and effective communication tools. To achieve this, I led the shift from Cisco Webex to Zoom Video Conferencing.
Business Outcome: The UK team had barely utilized Webex due to its complexity in managing and scheduling meetings, so Zoom was quickly adopted and made an immediate impact. Transitioning in Germany posed more challenging since Webex was widely used there, although they had the benefit of one full-time employee who managed the system. I expanded Zoom’s deployment to Italy, Poland, and The Netherlands, where teams previously relied on varying services like Blue Jeans, Google Hangouts/Meet, and Viber. This transition resulted in rapid operational improvement, enhancing communication, collaboration, and scheduling across the entire organization. Further operational advantages have followed, thanks to features like integrated telephony, meeting recording, language translation, and AI-driven meeting transcription and summarization.
An additional, unexpected benefit was that Zoom was already in place prior to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, which enabled the company to switch to remote work immediately upon lockdown. This allowed senior staff, who were not furloughed, to quickly respond to evolving circumstances by implementing cost-saving measures—such as securing rent discounts or holidays for major leases (saving Vue over £22M), reducing or shutting down unnecessary tech services, and planning for a safe office return—thereby mitigating significant financial impacts and helping keep the business afloat during the pandemic.
Technology: Cybersecurity Tooling & Security Operations Centre (SOC)
Decision: I made the strategic decision to investigate, evaluate and then invest in a cybersecurity solution (Carbon Black EDR) and a Cybersecurity Security Operations Centre (SOC) service to deliver SOC, SIEM and a Digital Forensic Incident Response retainer for use across the entire organisation (9 countries).
Business Outcome: The service was barely in place when it instantly proved operationally effective, stopping an attempted breech in Italy (with the EDR Service instantly shutting down the attempted malware payload). In The Netherlands when a 3rd party data centre hosting service being used, was breeched, our Cybersecurity Incident Response Forensic team (on retainer) spun into action within the hour, immediately providing the necessary advice and guidance (both technically and legally) to swiftly address the situation.
Technology: Databases (SQL)
Decision: I made the strategic decision at to deploy an Enterprise version of SQL on a large hosted virtual platform, to consolidate many various disparate SQL databases that were spread across many platforms (each with varying levels of capacity and resilience).
Business Outcome:
Reduce the OPEX spend of by consolidating the many copies of SQL Server (taking advantage of the Enterprise Licence model enabling the hosting of as many SQL instances as you liked on the hardware it was hosted on),
Reduce the environmental impact of having multiple SQL Server instances running in many locations across Campus (also freeing up compute space in tightly constrained server rooms).
It improved the stability, availability by ensured critical systems management processes (A/V, patching, backup schedules, housekeeping, etc) were applied to this business critical platform, architected with as few single points of failure as was affordable.
Technology: PABX (Analogue) transformation to PBX (IP-Based)
Decision: I made the strategic decision to deploy a digital PBX to replace the legacy Motorola PABX that was hosting the universities telephony capability (was approaching End of Life, with limited capacity).
Business Outcome: This digital gateway enabled me to put in place a system that could:
handle the Universities growth requirement for more extensions,
enabling new number ranges and dial plans to be expanded and changed without requiring a change to wiring and a telephony engineer to run/move copper
deliver new capability such as enhanced IVR and voicemail capability
Technology: Machine Hall - Data Centre Relocation
Decision: I made the strategic decision to move core compute from their old “machine hall” in the basement of The Strand building, to a modern, highly resilient purpose-built Tier 3 Data Centre
Business Outcome:
It enabled the institution to free up the extremely valuable, prime location real-estate (in a Listed Building - The Strand), for other business purposes.
It improved the reliability of the various IT services that were being delivered from the old “machine hall” (e.g. floods in winter would occasionally threaten the machine hall, frequently in summer the HVAC could not sustain its output, requiring 50% of compute to be shut down, and the machine hall door having to be left open - with a guard standing on duty - to ensure heat didn’t build up).
It enabled a more robust Disaster Recovery plan to be put in place, which could then underpin and deliver an improved Business Continuity plan.
Technology: Process & Governance (Change Control & Cybersecurity)
Decision: I established a Cybersecurity Governance Board to enhance decision-making and improve change control processes.
Business Outcome: Previously, the Security CAB was considered slow, prompting departments to create their own solutions to bypass its extensive and long review process. This resulted in delays for all change requests. By introducing a runbook of standard operational changes and supervising its implementation, I streamlined the service and strengthened governance. Serious changes now receive appropriate attention for risk analysis and action planning. As a result, more change items are submitted properly rather than departments seeking alternatives, which has boosted both the College's reputation and its security posture.
Technology: Data Sovereignty / Business Performance Analysis & Reporting (PowerBI)
Decision: I established a new Power BI Service, complete with a gateway and Data Fabric Layer, within the Multi-territory Azure Landing Zone to serve as the central repository for the organisation's financial transaction and performance data.
Business Outcome: Implementing Power BI delivered to the Senior Leadership a consolidated view of the whole organisation’s financial health (using sanitised data), and regional leadership detailed insights at the transaction level of their financial performance (specific to their respective countries). Also achieved an OPEX reduction by consolidation of PowerBI licences.
Other Projects and Technology Transformations I've Championed or been heavily involved in
Regional-Data Centre Architecture & Fit-outs in China, Australia and England
Migration/consolidation of multiple email systems to centralised systems & Microsoft Exchange Online for Italy, UK, Poland, Denmark and The Netherlands
Azure Landing Zones for multi-territory Identity & Services Collaboration, with Cloud-Native & Hybrid architectures
Cloud Idp for multi-country on-boarding of company user identities, enabling autonomous hybrid local identity management, with Centralised control of Service access
Cloud Firewall Services for Multiple Countries, enabling secure authentication for Remote Access to corporate business systems, incorporating posture determined access control
Architecture Governance of major commercial Website's migration from AWS to Azure, transforming from silo'd country-specific to service-specific stacks (i.e., legacy 3-tier server model to AKS Containers & API Gateways)
Championed PCI Compliance Programs in every Retail sector I’ve worked.
Upgrade of infrastructure hardware platform AND software code base for Hummingbird Document Management System and Keystone Practice Management System delivery, support and maintenance at Australia’s oldest legal practice
I conducted the technical architecture design review with our French collaborators (Pathe) ahead of the setup of 3-tier PKI Infrastructure for secure authentication for the new implementation of Vue’s first automated eGates & Self-service POS terminals. Having first proposed eGates in 2022, the trendlines (and budget) took almost 2 years to build, before a successful pilot was completed at Swindon in Feb 2025.
Architect the technology strategy to enable selection and delivery of the integrated solution for digital advertising to be delivered in the retail areas of cinemas for the UK and Germany.
Provide architecture governance and technical design oversight for the delivery of Hubspot CRM in the UK
I instituted an automated Snapshot imaging process to perform nightly images of all online servers & services. This technology supported a zero-day patching policy (to apply patches as soon as released) as it facilitated rapid rollback if a patch ever caused unintended technical issues to a system/services/application.
Lead a team to deliver projects and provide hands-on support and maintenance for the EUC technology being delivered to BHP Companies (now BlueScope) for their Landside and Maritime Logistics arm (BHP Transport), their Mining arm (BHP Collieries) and their Steel Manufacturing arm (BHP Steel). The experience gained here ingrained in me the critical importance of all components of manufacturing businesses (in this instance, the “Soup-to-Nuts” process is from the raw materials extraction from the earth (mining), then the transport of raw material to plant for processing (smelting, pouring, moulding, extruding, shaping and cutting), and back again to the transport arm with delivery of the completed product to customers (BHP Transport).
During my time in the RAAF as an “Air Defence Controller”, taught me to see things from the perspective of others. I needed to have an appreciation of the situation my pilots are flying into. Then once engaged in an action, I also must have an appreciation of what the person and machine are capable of (i.e., pilot and aircraft) so I can effectively guide them into and out of contact encounters. As this job literally involves “life & death” decisions (even when no combat is involved), it teaches you to be able to calmly assess situations and react accordingly.
Led the transformation of the EUC estate within the University's administration department, overseeing the migration from Apple to Windows platforms and the deployment of PeopleSoft Server and client applications.
- and many more (WAN/LAN/SD-WAN comm's, EUC, etc...)