Colin's Previous Consultancy Experience

Prior to working for my own company, I have been employed in a managerial capacity at Database Publishing Systems Ltd (DPSL) where I combined my management role with technical, project management, and customer facing roles. While at DPSL I took strategic, financial, sales, and technical responsibility for my business unit, contributing to company strategy and marketing, and communicating with customers at all levels. DPSL were a leading company in the industry and I became a well-known figure in the area of structured document management and electronic publishing, presenting papers at many industry events including three SGML/XML Europe conferences. These skills and experiences would prove useful to many employers and prove my expertise and knowledge of my chosen business area.

May 1996-June 1999

Database Publishing Systems Ltd (DPSL) were the UK’s largest SGML/XML consultancy and systems integration company prior to going into liquidation. I started my employment with DPSL as a consultant and project manager managing, designing and developing Intranet, Document Management, Workflow, and CD-ROM systems for structured documentation (SGML). These projects were for prestigious multinational customers in the Oil, Aerospace, and Publishing industries. Following my involvement in these highly successful projects (and my involvement in strategy, marketing, and pre-sales), I was promoted to be the manager of a newly formed business unit at the end of 1997.

November 1997 – June 1999

Projects Business Unit Manager, Database Publishing Systems Ltd

Following my promotion to Business Unit Manager I was directly responsible for seventeen staff including project managers, consultants, developers and salesmen. I was also responsible for all of the projects run through the department in this period (around £2,000,000). Along with the human resource side of management (recruitment, staff reviews, disciplinary procedures), I also maintained a high profile with customers and potential customers. I also developed some of the more complex proposals for larger projects that arose during my time as manager (along with technical, financial, and quality input to the other proposals). One of my duties as business unit manager was to seek to maximise revenue for each month by carefully planning the resource allocation across many projects. I was also tasked with selling consultancy work directly to customers.

Despite my busy role as manager, I felt it was important for me to keep up-to-date with modern development approaches, tools, and standards (e.g. XML/XSL, COM , JavaScript, ASP). This allows me to talk knowledgeably to programmers, consultants and customer IT staff alike. I also used my wide experience to aid in the design of the many complex systems that were developed by my department.

Some of the major projects that I helped to sell and design included:

• Document management and production system for a major Telecomm company (an SGML object-orientated database, linked to Staffware workflow, SQL Server and Exchange to support mobile phone manuals in 36 languages);
• Bibliographic Database Management System for a major official document publisher (linking SGML editors to a custom built SQL server document management system);
• Document management and production system for UK Oil company (using a too which provides a C++ and Java interface on top of an Oracle database;
• Custom CD-ROM for the an Encyclopaedia (thirteen volumes containing Arabic and Cyrillic); and
• Custom CD-ROM IETM (Interactive Electronic Technical Manual) for a helicopter manufacturer.

One major development that I was involved in was the development of an advanced web-based IETM (delivery XML using IIS, SQL Server/Oracle and IE4) for the UK Ministry of Defence and British Aerospace. The prototype system that was developed was truly leading edge and was highly acclaimed within the industry.

May 1996-November 1997

Project Manager/Consultant, Database Publishing Systems Ltd

On arrival at DPSL, I was primary technical consultant into a pre-sales effort for an Intranet project for a far-eastern branch of a multi-national oil company. Following a successful bid I became lead technical consultant and project manager of a development team to develop the software. The Intranet system utilised Netscape server, search engine and clients, JavaScript, database connectivity, and multimedia files to provide a total information solution for offshore oil production workers. The "static" content was specially developed according to our specification in SGML by an authoring. This content was then transformed into hyperlinked HTML for display, integrated with the multimedia content, and added to the "dynamic" components of the system. These "dynamic" components allowed the workers to enter equipment readings into a web browser form. The system would then present a historical graph of equipment readings including the most recent information added by the user. This graph would allow the worker to identify failing equipment and hyperlink to information on how to take remedial action. The system was completed in four months and was named "Ajaib" (Malay for miracle). This system was regarded as an innovative use of SGML and was featured in the Seybold magazine.

Following the Ajaib project, I became involved as project manager and consultant in two major developments for a London-based publisher. These projects involved the gathering of requirements, design, and development of a CD-ROM browser. The CD-ROMs required custom user interfaces (developed in Visual C++) integrated to an advanced SGML search program (DynaText). The first project was for the development of a browser to support multi-lingual dictionary products. The product would have to support the rendering and searching of multi-lingual content in a multi-lingual interface for various dictionaries (including languages and dictionaries that had not yet been specified). To solve this problem I created a design that satisfied the requirements of an abstract "generic" dictionary browser and led the development team to build the solutions in around three months. Five dictionaries were developed using this browser (it would not have been commercially viable for them to fund the development of five browsers.

The second project for the publisher took the concept of a "generic" browser even further by examining what the requirements would be for a CD-ROM browser capable of publishing of all content with advanced functionality. From pre-sales (where I had to present to the board) to the release of the first content for the browser took eight months. The first CD-ROM was contained over 130 MB of SGML. Following the commercial success of the first browser, the publisher planned three other titles that would require small customisation of the browser only.

Following the CD-ROM projects I sold and started to work on a project for the UK branch of a multi-national Oil company to manage and deliver SGML technical documentation using an Intranet-based document management product from OpenText called LiveLink (an Internet layer above Oracle). This project had to be developed within a very short timeframe and (like the Ajaib) project involved the conversion of SGML to HTML, complex hyperlinking, JavaScript, and multimedia and dynamic content. In the middle of this project I was promoted to Business Unit Manager and had to work in a joint consultant/manager role for three months.

During my time as a consultant, I was also extensively involved in pre-sales (from knowledgeable IT staff to board level), in technical review/design of other’s projects, and in the development of prototype systems.