Personal Details.
Full Name :
Home Address :
Mobile :
E-mail :
Date of Birth :
Richard William Drew BSc. (Hons.) MBCS CITP
Flat 12, Fairways Court
Oldnall Road
Kidderminster
DY10 3HN
07562 813650
richard@rwdrew.co.uk
8th April 1970
Summary
Highly experienced IT Manager with 14 years’ experience within a regional law firm of
designing and developing a business aligned IT strategy, as well as retaining hands on skills
across a wide variety of technical areas. Responsible for building, developing and mentoring
a highly skilled IT department. Highly skilled at breaking down barriers between the business
and IT to achieve business goals.
Major Skills
 Business Process Optimisation – an ability to analyse existing business processes
and simplify them - particularly - though not necessarily - through the application of
information technology.
 Communications skills – an ability to communicate well with all members of the firm
is essential to the performance of my function.
 Strategic Thinking – An ability to see beyond the “here and now” and set a strategic
plan – then deliver it in a practical and affordable manner.
 Team Leadership – the IT team has been built from scratch and successfully
motivated through some very trying times
 Versatility – a willingness to do whatever it takes to get the business of the practice
done. As necessary, responsibility has been taken for Health & Safety, Facilities
Management and Library services within Challinors.
 Project Management – all of the projects that have been undertaken have been
delivered on time and to budget.
 Technical Knowledge
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OS: Windows 2000, 2003, 2008, 7, Vista, XP, Linux (SUSE, Ubuntu, Red Hat,
Debian), Solaris
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Data Centre: Managed small data centres of 40 Windows servers and of 60
Linux servers.
o
Development environments: C, C#, VB, Java, .NET, VSTS, CVS
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Server Apps: Exchange 2003, SQL server 2000, 2005, 2008, MySQL, IIS,
ASP, Apache, Terminal Services, Backup Exec, Kaspersky Antivirus, SCCM,
SCOM, WSUS, SharePoint 2007, LANDesk, Lotus Notes.
o
Virtualisation & Cloud: VMware vSphere 4, Hyper-V, Amazon EC2, Google
Apps, Mimecast
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Desktop Apps: Office 2010, 2007, 2003, 2000, Adobe CS2, Salesforce CRM,
Crystal Reports
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Legal Applications: LaserForm, TFB, PLC, Winscribe, Miles33
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Networking: Substantial experience of configuring, administering and
troubleshooting IP based networks including LANs, WANs, DNS, MPLS,
DHCP, Layer 2 switching and Layer 3 routing.
Hardware: HP Desktops & laptops, Lenovo Desktops, Dell Desktops & laptops,
NetApp storage, Sun Storage, IBM storage, HP Servers, IBM servers, Cisco
switches & routers.
Telephony: Cisco CallManager IP telephony, Asterisk, Nortel Meridian Option
11, Nortel BCM.
Professional Qualifications .
Member of the British Computer Society and a Chartered IT Professional.
Employment experience.
2011 - Date
:
CeWe Color Ltd. Leamington Spa, IT Manager
As IT Manager for the UK subsidiary of the business I am responsible for delivering both
locally initiated and group mandated projects, for maintaining an effective IT infrastructure in
a manufacturing / lab environment and for managing and maintaining relationships between
the business and IT, between UK IT and the German parent IT and between myself and
suppliers. Responsible for a team of 3 UK based IT specialists.
2010 – 2011
:
Islamic Bank of Britain, Infrastructure Manager
Member of the bank’s senior IT management team, responsible for developing and
maintaining a suitable IT infrastructure for the bank across 7 branches and head office.
Using VMware, NetApp, Cisco switching, routing and firewalls. Responsible for reaching out
to branch staff and gathering an understanding of end users needs and for developing the
relationship between branch staff and IT. Operating in an ITIL environment.
2010 – 2010
:
Danwood Group, Project Manager.
Responsibilities

Gathering customer expectations.

Designing and delivering managed print solutions

Managing projects under PRINCE2

Acting as “voice of the customer”
1996 – 2010
:
Challinors Solicitors, West Midlands. “IT Manager”.
Responsibilities

Responsible for an IT team of 7 supporting 300 users over six locations across
the East and West Midlands.

Responsible for an IT operations budget of some £350,000 (not including staff
costs).

Responsible for project budgets of up to £1,000,000

Creation and implementation of an IT strategy aligned to the current business
strategy.
Achievements

March 2008 - Introduced a BlackBerry solution that reduced the firm's mobile
data expenditure by over £1000 per month for a total capital outlay of £900.

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May 2008 - Successfully delivered replacement Practice Management System
on time and under budget. This allowed a far greater usage of automated Case
Management systems within the practice - ultimately allowing a reduction in
headcount for the same work volume.
August 2008 - Successfully opened new Nottingham office at very short notice
allowing the practice to gain a foothold in the East Midlands at a time when
competitors were closing small remote offices.
July & August 2009 - Successfully integrated two acquisitions into the practice
at very short notice and with a bare minimum of expenditure, allowing the firm
to seize market opportunities that might otherwise have been lost.
November 2009 - Delivered complete revision of printing facilities based on a
greater centralisation of print resource allowing user access to a greater range
of facilities at a reduced cost per print.
1993 – 1996
: Libris Computing Limited, Berwick upon Tweed. “Head
Programming”.

First employee of a startup software company specialising in public access
catalogue software to libraries.

Head of a team of 7 developers.

Responsible for all systems within the company and installed at customers.

Technical "guru" providing last line support for anything at all.
Education.
1981 – 1988 : Ashleigh School, Sheffield
English, Geography
: O – levels : Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry,
A – levels : Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry
1988 – 1991 : University of Newcastle upon Tyne : BSc. (Hons.) Physics
Other Training.
1992 – 1993 : Kalamazoo Training Consultants : NVQ IV diploma – Software development
Addendum.
Major projects undertaken at Challinors.
Infrastructure refresh 2009
For the new financial year in October 2008 I formulated a project to refresh
the firm's infrastructure using Blade servers, NetApp storage and VMWare.
Although this was accepted as essential by the partners - the project was
placed on indefinite hold because of the financial position of the business. In
response I repurposed some redundant hardware and built a VMWare
server using ESXi 3.5. Though this was intended as test server - it was
deployed into production during the acquisitions of 2009 (see next item) and
is currently running 4 terminal servers for remote site access to the main
Challinors systems.
Acquisitions of Sheltons and White & Billingham
In the summer of 2009 the business undertook a program of acquisitions. It
was necessary that the acquisitions should take place very quickly and at a
minimum of capital outlay. I managed to undertake both acquisitions inside a
2 month timeframe for a capital outlay measured in hundreds of pounds.
Introduction of Digital Dictation.
Following my presentation to the management board – they made the
decision to implement a digital dictation system. Once I had compiled a
shortlist of suppliers I arranged for them to present to the management
board and we ensured that the most suitable system for the practice was
purchased. Great emphasis was placed on the overall package rather than
the technological features. The project then transferred in its entirety to the
IT Department for implementation.
Procurement of replacement practice management system.
After the merger between Challinors and Lyon Clark – the former Lyon Clark
accounts package (Avenue) was retained. The system was replaced in 2000
with Miles33’s “Precedent” system. This was selected for its scalability as
well as for the solidity of its Sun/Oracle underpinnings as a platform for
future development.
Migration of telephony provision away from BT.
Historically we had had many customer service issues with BT (as have
many others). This culminated in a disconnection of the main telephone
circuit at our Edmund House office for a period of around 2 weeks. This has
resulted in a policy of slow but steady migration away from BT to other
carriers. In the process I have gained an awful lot of knowledge of the UK
telecoms market, the problems inherent in it and many of the solutions to
those problems.
Replacement of existing telephony systems with Cisco VOIP system.
When the leases on our BT provided telephony switches expired I
conducted a thorough investigation into suitable replacement systems. We
selected Cisco’s “CallManager” product. Because of our previous
experiences with BT as detailed above we elected to do the installation
ourselves. We specified the hardware. We built all of the servers, switches,
routers etc. We installed all of the hardware. We commissioned the system
and we perform ongoing maintenance with no external assistance. Our
suppliers told us that we were the first in the UK to build the system
completely on our own and they took bets on how long it would take before
we begged for help! We never have. This solution allowed the firm to reduce
telephony costs from £30,000 per month to £8,000 per month.
Merger with Cartwright & Lewis
In April 2006 Challinors merged with Cartwright and Lewis. This involved
complete renewal of the Cartwright & Lewis IT Infrastructure including all
PCs, servers, printers and photocopiers. 50 new members of staff were
added to our system overnight. Their accounts data was converted and
integrated into our system (by Miles33). The merger took place with
approximately 1 months notice and was executed with great success under
extreme pressure.
Migration from WordPerfect on desktop to Microsoft Office.
Migration from NetWare servers to Microsoft Windows Server.
Migration to Exchange e-mail server.
After many years of using various versions of WordPerfect, WordPerfect for
Windows and Pegasus Mail with Novell NetWare file & print servers and a
Linux based e-mail server a decision was made to migrate to an all Microsoft
environment. The process was speeded up somewhat when the NetWare
server at our West Bromwich office suffered a catastrophic failure and we
used that as the motivation to migrate “right here, right now”. The migration
for West Bromwich that had been scheduled for a 3 month time period took
place over a bank holiday weekend. I motivated the IT team to work through
the night over the bank holiday and to be in at 8am on the Tuesday morning
to tackle the user issues.