Dean A. Jones, BEng(Hons) CEng MBCS
I.T. Consultant
Working as an independent consultant to the Asian Development Bank on the Local Government Performance Monitoring project with the Philippine Bureau of Local Government Support (BLGS). My role has been to;
I have performed this project based out of Kenya, and in between visits to the Philippines have assisted the International Federation of the Red Cross, in performing an analysis of their finance procedures with respect to network security and I pursued various studies, including;
Employed as a consultant working on a variety of large-scale Visual Basic/Sybase software projects for the UK Financial Services industry. Tasks included;
· Supplying an automated “Sales Advice” documentation system for the Life Insurance arm of a leading British bank. My role was as team leader of the project, which involved customer liaison with regards to the system functionality, project management and technical design.
· As part of the above project I was responsible for providing “on site” support to the customer during implementation. This involved production of database installation scripts, administration of the customers production-database environment, creation of backup/restore routines, and monitoring the progress of remote-update installation patches.
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Optimisation of the operating
environment for our customers’ installations. This involved detailed
configuration of all software components involved in our systems, from
operating systems (NT Server/Workstation, Windows 2000 professional), database
engines, third party products and our own programs.
· Design and development of a portable data mining and extraction tool to facilitate production of Management Information Reports from various configurable data sources. This used an XML based data storage and messaging mechanism.
Employed on the DANIDA Environmental Impact Monitoring Programme as an I.T. specialist. My objective was to build I.T. capacity within the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA), whilst managing the development of two environmental database systems. This included;
· Building and Managing the EEAA I.T. team (in collaboration with a local counterpart) that was able to function independently by the end of my tenure. This involved employing developers to work alongside existing EEAA staff, organising the department according to individual skills, and providing training and support where needed.
· Initial database and application design involving rapid development of prototypes during the short visits of expatriate staff members, to demonstrate the main features of the design.
· Developing a series of project templates to guide the programmer’s into implementing a consistent User Interface and provide them with a set of objects for tasks such as database interaction, error handling and file handling.
· Specifying the Database Stored Procedures and Views that formed the main interface between our client software and the database. These were further supported by a layer of Visual Basic classes, functions and ActiveX controls aimed at eliminating duplication of programming code.
Designing the Distributed Database Schema with an ‘open’ replication architecture to facilitate communication between all EEAA monitoring stations across the country, supporting either MS Access or MS SQL Server database engines.
· Implementing a quality control system for all aspects of the department’s role. This involved designing and implementing procedures for software engineering, front line support, fault monitoring, amendment requests, configuration control, systematic testing and deployment.
· Managing the development of the two systems. This involved technical prototyping, functional analysis, technical design, project management of the development cycle, managing the individual programmers workloads, and providing progress reports to the management team.
Working as a volunteer, my main role was to teach Basic and C++ at High School level, but I was also involved in refitting the school computer laboratory using components from computers donated by local NGO’s.
· Developing, from start to finish, a Point Of Sale/Stock Control System, using MS Access/VB, for the retail outlet of the Division of Revenue and Customs.
· Providing ad-hoc consultancy to various Thimphu NGO’s (UNDP, Helvetas). This involved designing new systems, modifying existing systems, and providing training in database theory and structured programming techniques.
Working for the consultancy division of a software house producing a Workflow product, Staffware. I was primarily involved in implementing customised Visual Basic / Staffware solutions within our client’s environment, such as;
· Development of a Visual Basic/MS Access Banking & Mandate system designed to control mandates of funds transfers throughout a large financial institution, involving O.L.E. integration with a Watermark Imaging system and other Visual Basic Add-Ins. My role involved initial specification of the system based on the users requirements, development of a series of program modules, testing, installation, documentation and support.
· Involvement on the development of a large claims handling system for a major U.K. insurance company, providing various modules from telephone message handling and claims completion through to developing a complete audit trail facility integrating with a DB2 mainframe database. This involved working as part of a 30 person development team to formal methods and standards.
· Designing and producing Visual Basic modules to integrate with third party products, enhancing Staffware own functionality, and simplifying the use of the Staffware A.P.I. This involved extensive knowledge of the functioning of windows .DLL’s and an understanding of C++.
· Various Workflow installations for resellers, partners and clients. These would initially involve network configuration and installation, followed by consultation with the users to develop relevant processes and Visual Basic modules.
· Installation of an in-house software-testing environment. This involved specifying and installing all the hardware to provide full TCP/IP Client/Server communication between a wide variety of Operating Systems and Database engines.
· Database Administrator of an Oracle/AIX workflow system for a client. As part of this project I gained a thorough understanding of Oracle 7 administration, configuration and installation within a Unix environment.
· Troubleshooting of Client/Server communication problems. This exposed me to installation and configuration problems, at operating system level, of various TCP/IP products.
Working as part of a project team responsible for the development of computer systems for the Sales and Commercial area of this large engineering company, I was directly responsible for the design and implementation of two database systems, and the management of one segment of the company LAN. Tasks included;
· Formulating plans for all aspects of the project including initial requirements analysis, recruitment of a small project team, specification of all necessary components, prototyping and testing, and complete project management. This system is still being used, 10 years after the original design.
· Initial creation of an expert system interface, in dBaseIV, to act as a basis for the project.
· Report writer, in Foxpro 2.5 for windows, allowing users to easily interrogate combined PC/Unix databases using an in-built data dictionary. This involved implementing and configuring various O.D.B.C driver sets.
· Maintaining and extending an Oracle Sales Order processing system using SQL*Forms 2.3/3 of Data General and Sun Unix hardware.
Please send an email to mail@DaJones.Net for a detailed Curriculum Vitae.