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Career Summary

Career Details

ITSA

ITSA was the Information Technology Services Agency of the DSS. The main VME development centre is at Lytham St Anne's in Lancashire.  ITSA ran several of its own infrastructure products under VME to support the large network of VME systems required to service its applications.  The Error Management System (EMS) is one such infrastructure product, which as its name implies is responsible for the management of all reported errors and incidents. My initial assignment was to redesign and rewrite EMS.  Since the successful implementation of EMS, the work at ITSA has been wide and varied. In the main, work has focused on the performance evaluation of existing application systems and the TPMS and IDMS design of these systems. It has also included the performance evaluation of ICL's Open TP products TPMSX and IDMSX 620. I also became involved with Service Level Agreements and provided new targets and methods of calculating performance. All my work has involved the preparation of reports and statistical analyses using Microsoft Office 97. The statistical data required for the reports have often required Visual Basic programs to extract the data from Access databases or present the data to Excel in a suitable format.

Welsh Water

During the period of the contract, Welsh Water ran a four node Series 39 Level 80, which during the day was very heavily loaded.  The majority of the workload was TP but a significant number of batch jobs needed to be run. The batch jobs were mainly initiated from within TP and produced prints. The Print Manager System was designed to handle the scheduling of the batch work and the prints.  The system was implemented as System Tasks using RSI facilities.  Each system task interfaced with an IDMS database to provide control, synchronisation and information to TP and the statistics sub-system. This fascinating, project required skills in SCL, COBOL, IDMS and TPMS programming and a thorough knowledge of the RSI option. The project was completed in late September with the final release of the Print Director sub-system.

North Western Regional Health Authority

At the time of the assignment, the computer centre ran work for the 20 District Health Authorities that comprised the region.  The workload on the dual node Series 39 Level 80 was varied but included a significant amount of batch processing. The main objective of the assignment was to write a comprehensive system for the control and scheduling of the batch work. In addition, work was carried out on the technical evaluation of a financial package.

ICL Training

The duration of freelance consultancy at ICL training breaks down into three distinct periods, covering the years 1987, 1988 and 1989-1990. For the first period, the responsibilities were solely lecturing. The complete range of Series 39 training courses was presented.

For the second period, the lectures were still given but the main responsibility was to write a course on VME System Performance. This course was called Exploiting VME for Series 39 (EVME39).  The course was written presented and was afterwards delivered by permanent staff.  In addition, in this period additional courses were presented.

The final period had as its prime objective the development of another new course, called VME Solutions (VSOL). This course provided a unique environment, teaching the use of techniques to exploit facilities present in the VME Run Time Set and the Systems Programming Option.

HM Naval Base Plymouth

In this assignment, the role was that of Senior VME Consultant. The principal responsibility was to provide consultancy to the Head of Computer Bureau and liaise with independent management consultants.  Additional responsibilities were, to manage a team of three systems consultants, plan and allocate work for the conversion project and monitor and improve system performance and the use of filestore.

South Western Regional Health Authority

This assignment was a highly technical one.  The customer had the problem that support for the release of VME, being used for production work, was to cease imminently.  The principal objective, therefore, was to upgrade to the latest release as quickly as possible. In addition, the system was to be converted to use a standard loadset.  It was also required to implement workmix system of work management and to convert from tape pools to categories.

International Computers Limited

Summary

The period with ICL was a long and varied one and although the majority of projects and assignments were of a technical nature other projects were undertaken. These included the organisation of conferences and user groups.  The period can be broken down into four major projects spanning the years 1979 to 1985, as follows. South Western Regional Health Authority (SWRHA) project lasted from July 1979 to November 1980.Welsh Health Technical Services Organisation (WHTSO) project was from December 1980 to June 1981. Oxford Regional Health Authority (ORHA) covered the period of December 1981 to December 1983. The final period with ICL consisted of the TRES (Terminal Replacement and Enquiry Service) Project for the DHSS.

ICL 1979 - 1980

The first project with ICL was on the surface a very simple and straightforward one, the installation of a 2960 running VME/B.  What complicated the project was that all other Regional Health Authorities in England and Wales were at the time running 1900 systems under George III. SWRHA was the one exception running a Honeywell 2060 system and although OS200 was installed, very little use of the operating system was being made.  The installation at SWRHA, therefore, set the standard for future VME/B systems in the NHS.

Responsibilities on this project were to manage the installation of the hardware; to design the VME/B system; to install the VME/B system; train operations staff; write the Operations Procedures Manual; Introduce reliability management techniques; run a user acceptance trial; write a special spooler.

ICL 1980 - 1981

The second period with ICL encompassed the pre and post sales stages of the WHTSO project. The period included a secondment to ICL Manufacturing in Kidsgrove to take part in the 2966 Extended System Trial.

The pre-sales stage of the WHTSO project involved re-submitting the original tender basing it on the newly announced 2966 rather than the originally proposed 2972. Responsibilities were for the hardware and software sections of this proposal.  The software was changed from a VME/B based system to one based on the newly announced VME/B-E product, later to become VME 2900.

The 2966 Extended System Trial was intended to trial the newly developed 2966 in a user environment.  Responsibilities on this secondment were for all aspects of operability of the new hardware and software regime.

The post sales stage of the WHTSO Project required the installation of the hardware and operating system. All work was then transferred from the existing 1900 system to the dual 2966 system.  All the above requirements were undertaken and the project finished when all work had been successfully transferred.

ICL 1981 - 1983

The third period with ICL was largely concerned with the implementation of Patient Administration Systems for Oxford Regional Health Authority. Oxford was the first NHS Region to define a strategy for implementation of these systems in all of its districts. However, during this period a number of other NHS regions were replacing their 1900 systems and the vetting of all such proposals was carried out.

The first stage of this project was to produce a proposal, that met the strategy requirements, and which was accepted by the region.

The next phase incorporated the installation of the hardware and operating system at the regional headquarters and the provision of a working Patient Administration System for evaluation. This system then formed the base from which the specific system for Oxford was developed.

The final phase involved the installation of the system in the first district. The installation was sited at Northampton District General Hospital and the whole process of installation of both the hardware and software was completed.

ICL 1983 - 1985

The final project with ICL was the Terminal Replacement and Enquiry Service for the DHSS. This was the largest project in Central Government computing in 1985.TRES implementation was on 11 dual 2966 systems situated at Reading and Livingstone, in Scotland. The job title was Senior ICL Systems Consultant.

Responsibilities were to manage a team of five other consultants with task implementing VME and the application on all 11 systems.  Responsibilities included: the design of the development system; the strategy for and implementation of methods for replicating VME systems across the different machines; the design of the Systems Maintenance Utilities, a method to ensure that all VME Systems remained identical; formulating the strategy for community management of both the mainframes and terminal systems.

Along with the technical responsibilities detailed above, there were further requirements to provide consultancy to the department itself at senior level and liaise with the project management consultants, Arthur Anderson.

South West Universities Regional Computer Centre (SWURCC)

The Regional Computer Centre for the South West Universities Computer Network (SWUCN) was sited on the campus of the University of Bath. The computer system to be installed was an ICL 2980 to provide a batch processing facility for all universities in the network. The machine installed was only the third production machine produced by ICL and the operating system, then called System B, was at a very early release (4x40).

The first post held at SWURCC was that of Senior Operator. As well as performing the duties this job normally entails it was required that all first-line support was undertaken. With an operating system at such an early release, it was to this latter duty that most time was devoted. The objective of the operations department was always that the system should be capable of running unattended and SWURCC pioneered much of the work in this area.

The job of Technical Administrator was the second post held at SWURCC and this involved as, its name suggests, the administration of the VME/B system. Responsibilities included; the integrity and security of filestore; accounting; filestore allocation; second line technical support; the production and monitoring of performance statistics; liaison with ICL on all matters of reliability; purchasing and deputising for the Production Manager.

City of Birmingham Treasurer's Department

The Treasurer's Department provided computer services not only to other departments within the local authority but also to a number of other bodies, such as the Severn and Trent Water Authority.  The city of Birmingham was the largest administrative area in Britain, at the time, and so had the most powerful commercial computer system then available.  Job title was computer operator with the prime responsibility of the operation of a 1906A under George III. In addition, all job submission was controlled by operations staff and a certain amount of JCL writing was performed.

Magnet Computer Bureau

This was a large computer bureau satisfying the data processing requirements of a large number of individual companies in the GEC group. The computer equipment was varied and included Honeywell 800, 200, 1250 and 1648 systems and an ICL System 4-72. There was in additional a plethora of ancillary equipment such as card sorters and collators, as well as magnetic and punched tape transmission systems. Computer operators at Magnet were required to operate all the equipment.

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