A highly motivated, results focused Project Manager with a passion for successful projects and extensive experience in the defence environment. He is accustomed to working to tight deadlines and being capable of producing innovative yet pragmatic solutions and communicating them at all levels. An experienced presenter, up to ministerial level, with a technical and management training background.  Qualified to Practitioner level in PRINCE2®,PRINCE2® Agile, ITIL® Expert, Resilia, APMG Change Management, Agile PM and Building Better Business Cases, Advanced Practitioner for Managing Successful Programmes and APM APMP (PMQ).

With a background as a telecommunications and network engineer and experience of commanding service support units he has also led software and web teams in creating applications and management information systems. He has also managed the business relationship. These experience and ability to work across disciplines puts him in an ideal position to assist organisations to harness the emerging area of DevOps, including Agile Service Management and Agile Process Ownership.

David’s approach to training is enthusiastic and infectious, ensuring that delegates return to work with the knowledge and capability to put their new skills into practise immediately.

Specialist areas

David  has a keen interest and specialism in helping organization maximise their return on investment in new ways of working, with particular emphasis on:

He has led consultancy projects to assist Higher Education and Utilities clients understand and adopt Agile and DevOps practices.  These included Senior Management Team presentations and facilitating practice and framework development workshops. These have included authoring tools to assist individuals within those organisations assess their current understanding and identify their future training needs.

Authoring and delivering customised training materials as part of graduate, degree apprenticeship and management talent acceleration schemes.  These have included modules aimed at digital leadership, data literacy, design thinking, operations management and DevOps.  These modules have included high level overviews for non-technical audiences  of tools such as MS Azure DevOps, Atlassian Jira and Terraform when required.   Additionally leading DevOps simulation days for senior IT Leadership Teams.  These high energy and engaging events have included international audiences.

Leading Consultancy projects to tailor and embed traditional and agile methodologies and frameworks for clients, including carrying out maturity assessments and gap analyses.  Authoring and delivering customised training materials, including Agile in Prince2 overviews and client specific and tailored “lite” implementations. Co-presenting seminars at local, national and international events focussing on the practical alignment within other frameworks and methodologies.

Industry experience

Head of an IT department, encompassing a standing Project Office, responsible for managing designing, and delivering a wide range of information and infrastructure project in support of the training and mobilisation of reservists on to operations worldwide and briefing on these projects to ministerial and prime ministerial level.  Hosting and briefing civic dignitaries and members of the Royal Family.  Awarded and presented with by the Minister for The Armed Forces an Adjutant’s General Commendation for outstanding service in this area and additionally IT Security Officer and responsible for Business Continuity Planning. 

Project Managed the MIS provision for a call centre facility for the Defence Medical Services Directorate.  Included the integration of telephony, call recording, electronic document management and associated infrastructure.  Sourced and managed a team of servicemen, civil servants, contract staff and suppliers.  Produced and delivered initial training within 8 weeks into a temporary build using agile methods within a Prince2 governance environment.  Responsible for design and accreditation of a secure network, utilising a range of technologies, working to the relevant Joint Service Publications and industry standards.  Utilisation of rapid application development and agile approaches as appropriate

Project Assurance for the mobilisation component and interfaces for the Joint Personnel Administration system, a highly customised implementation of Oracle HRMS. Customer-facing advisor to Senior Executives on the technical aspects of change management and provision of systems analysis and business case evaluation. Resources allocation.  Management and control of risk.  Articulating that risk to the organisation. Provision of Business Continuity Plan.

Responsible for the Career Management and mentoring of up to 120 personnel, including coaching for key career courses.  Project Manager of concept demonstration project for data over HF radio proposal, later integrated into a Nationwide business continuity system.  Change Management of the merger and re-training of 30 personnel into the business unit, including training needs analysis and the mapping of skills areas.

Deployment to the Balkans as part of a multi-national force.  Project management of a VHF rebroadcast radio system in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia and barracks switching and telephony equipments in Croatia.  Project Assurance for a United Nations technical out survey.

Qualifications and professional membership

  • Agile Scrum Fundamentals
  • Agile Project Management Practitioner and Trainer
  • APMP The APM Project Management Qualification and Trainer
  • Better Business Cases Practitioner 
  • Change Management Practitioner and Trainer
  • Certified Agile Service Manager and Trainer
  • Certified Agile Process Owner and Trainer
  • Certified DevOps Leader
  • DevOps Foundation and Trainer
  • DevOps Continuous Delivery Architect and Trainer
  • DevOps Continuous Testing Engineer and Trainer
  • DevOps Site Reliability Engineering
  • DevSecOps Foundation
  • Facilitation Foundation
  • G2G3 DevOps Simulation Trainer
  • ITIL Expert and Trainer of ITIL V4 Foundation
  • MoR Registered Practitioner and Trainer
  • MoP Management of Portfolios Foundation
  • MSP Registered Advanced Practitioner and Trainer
  • Prince2 Registered Practitioner and Trainer
  • Prince2 Agile Registered Practitioner and Trainer
  • Resilia Practitioner
  • Stakeholder Engagement 

David is an active member of the DevOps Institute’s Learning Community, Chartered Management Institute and APM.