SIMON FIRTH
PERSONAL
ADDRESS
5 Lambton House, Longbourn, Imperial Road, Windsor, SL4 3TR
CONTACT
Home: 01753 850979. Mobile: 07808 290693
Email: simon@redseamanagement.co.uk
Web: www.redseamanagement.co.uk
NATIONALITY
British
OVERVIEW
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A versatile Business Project Manager, adept in a variety of industrial, infrastructure and technological
environments with experience of full Project life cycle.
Equally at home managing projects subject to infinite change as those that are fixed and have a date to
be achieved “without excuse”.
Skill set including, Project scoping and planning, Risk & issue management, Change control procedures,
Microsoft Office / Project, Full financial forecasting, Concurrent projects, accountability and reporting.
Existed within PRINCE2, PMI, PPM, Agile and localised methodologies with budgets ranging from
£100,000 to £6m including P&L and resource work package responsibility.
Strong Stakeholder Management.
Agile Scrum Master – certified no.0100747
EMPLOYMENT
Digital Project Manager
Jan 15 – Present
Rank
Working in the gaming and casino industry, concurrent digital projects to update and introduce online gaming for
both Grosvenor Casinos and Mecca Bingo. These involved website, tablet and mobile apps.
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Complete end to end, full life-cycle projects.
Business Case construction and subsequent presentation to the board.
Project team construction from both internal and external staff.
3rd Party digital development suppliers.
Small niche projects of values £50k to £200k.
Agile environment.
Infrastructure Project Manager
Telefonica O2
March 14 – Dec 14
Data Centre Migration – Following Telefonica’s purchase of O2, the current strategy is to consolidate
Telefonica Data Centres for the UK, Germany and the Czech Republic into Madrid. IBM is the contracted
partner to effect these migrations. O2 UK wish to close London based Data Centres and migrate the majority of
Services, Applications and servers to Madrid. This will effect considerable cost savings in terms of site rentals.
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A programme of 13 IT projects where similar services are consolidated into Affinity Groups. An Affinity
Group equates to a project. IBM own the design of each Affinity Group migration.
Concurrent ownership of one outsized project and three smaller ones.
Eight O2 UK work steams work-shopped to validate the As Is prior to design for migration.
Digital Project Manager
June 12 – March 14
BSkyB
SIMON FIRTH - CURRICULUM VITAE - 07808 290693
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Buy and Keep – Working in the Satellite TV and new media space, Buy and Keep was a project that offers
customers the ability to buy films through their Set Top Box. The unique selling point is that the customer
receives a digital copy of the film to their Set Top Box and a hard copy DVD through the post. A multi-phased
project, this phase launched the concept through individual films in direct competition to Netflix and Amazon
Lovefilm propositions.
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A project that entailed 15 separate work streams and reported into a wider programme of works.
Customer engagement enabled through mobile phone apps, web, TV, new media.
Involved CRM and Billing development.
Management of multiple change requests.
Management of fulfilment house.
Delivery through to End to End testing and handover to the Staff and Customer Trials.
£2m budget.
Number SubPorting – Working in the IT Telephony space, SubPorting was a medium sized project to allow the
Porting and Subsequent porting of home telephone numbers from one Communication Provider to another to
allow consumers to retain their incumbent number. A project split into two distinct parts; one part in partnership
with Talk Talk was Ofcom Regulatory lead and the other part was Business Case lead.
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Project environment involved both Waterfall and Agile project methodologies.
Management and co-ordination of multiple Business Analysts.
Project was initially just the one project with one go live date – decided to divide to allow clearer sight of
motivations between Regulatory and Business Case needs.
Integration with other CPs; Virgin Media, Openreach and Talk Talk.
Multiple stakeholders.
£1m budget
Integration Project Manager
Sep 11 – June 12
Tesco.com
Tesco Direct (online selling) created a new e-commerce platform on to which all their market place suppliers
were integrated. A two year programme involving a complete redesign of Tesco.com's offering for non-grocery
goods. The migration and integration of all the suppliers on to the new platform constituted for them a project of
substantial technical change.
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Project planning for integration of 100+ existing suppliers.
Multiple teams involving skill levels from differing sizes of suppliers.
Off shore Test Team management - India.
Owned relationship with 3rd party integrator for all suppliers requiring external development – development
team in Russia.
Managed relationship from initial Tesco presentation to fully Live integration.
Trained incoming Integration Managers.
Infrastructure Project Manager
TUI (Thomson/First Choice)
July 11 – Sep 11
Technology Enablers – The programme Phoenix, was made up of four stages, each containing multiple
projects to completely replace the online ticketing and reservations infrastructure for TUI’s brands. Technology
Enablers was the first project of Stage 1 to provide the platform upon which subsequent projects would be
delivered.
This was an interim planning role to manage the flow and creation of documentation across multiple work
streams, followed by handover to an external consultancy to implement and deliver.
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Planning for how design and cost analysis documents would be delivered.
Concurrent projects covering each of the platforms.
Project Scope formation.
Project work stream formation.
Products Project Manager
Feb 11 – July 11
Vodafone
Multiple concurrent projects crossing two internal Delivery methodologies: Prince and Agile
SIMON FIRTH - CURRICULUM VITAE - 07808 290693
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Child Bar – Implementation of online tool to manage Broadband access via Smartphone and Mobile Dongle. A
self management tool accessed via the portal to allow account holders to restrict access based on adult content
(18), social networks (13) and free access.
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Implementation of outsourced black box solution provided by supplier.
Requirements gathering via series of workshops with supplier.
Project managed across differing methodologies: IT delivery (Prince) and Transformation & Online (Agile).
Project commenced from Shaping document and Requirements gathering.
Full matrix/virtual project team creation from both sides of Delivery business.
Vodafone Bill Manager – Delivery of Business Change portion of Online Bill Analysis for corporate customers.
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Business Change team included Billing Operations, Customer Service, Go to Market, Process Creation,
User Experience.
Delivered into IT owned project. Outsourced vendor, CTI.
Weekly stakeholder management and sponsor reporting via Steering Group Meetings.
Creation of PID and Project plan which then fed into IT plan.
Project Manager
Centrica (British Gas)
Oct 10 – Jan 11
Customer Rewards – Employed by Centrica, this was a project to integrate utility company British Gas as a tier
one partner with the Nectar loyalty card. Project managed the Business, Marketing and Operational Readiness
aspects of the programme; liaised and fed into the IS project. Designed in three distinct phases, the pilot went
live in November, full launch in January with TV ATL advertising and BTL direct marketing, and a phase three to
offer further requirements, customer journeys and Redemptions in March. While managing these phases, was
also responsible for scoping out a fourth phase from early requirements, benefits, Shaping document to
Business Case.
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£6.5m project.
Handed project that had until then been without project management resource.
Strong 3rd party marketing and agency based team.
Managed London agencies for all marketing drive print requirements to include numerous versions of
Welcome Packs, Letters, Bills. These included the e-versions for email and internet.
Weekly face to face project meetings with agency supplier.
Project Manager
Telefonica O2
April 08 – July 10
Multiple concurrent projects of which the four largest are below.
Our Space – As part of a programme of property / infrastructure based projects dedicated to the consolidation of
O2 UK Slough based operations on to a single campus facility comprising an existing building and a new
adjacent building, Our Space was devoted to the installation of state of the art audio visual and conferencing
equipment. This covered the following functionalities and requirements;
- Smartboard and video conferencing meeting room facility
- Meeting Room booking system
- Information Display System
- Desktop booking facility
- Boardroom, Lecture Theatre and Training Rooms
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£2.3m Project.
17 3rd party equipment suppliers.
Many subsidiary job requirements; Directors’ TV installations, Devices Testing room creation.
Concurrent Smartboard and video conferencing project to ‘connect’ outlying O2 UK offices to Slough.
Office Zone - This CRM product delivered preferential mobile rates for calls made from registered business
locations referred to as zones. The zone is defined by the office postcode based on the triangulation of key
mobile cell sites covering the address. Using the office post code address as the Office Zone definition will result
in the customer receiving office zone rates outside their actual physical office/s and anywhere within their office
postcode (likely radius of 1.5km).
Office Zone rates are comparable to BT fixed line call rates and so there is no cost penalty for using mobile
SIMON FIRTH - CURRICULUM VITAE - 07808 290693
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phones when in the office.
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Was handed this project in a state suffering from lengthy delays and overspending. The project required a
complete audit for design, quality, tasking and costs.
As expectations were very high across the business and clients were already being sold to, this required
constant stakeholder management.
3rd Party Suppliers included Oracle, HP and off shored vendor, ITS in the US.
£2m project.
Was asked to remain in situ past contract end date during company-wide redundancies to complete.
Customer facing due to rollout to Tesco as first customer.
Virtual / Matrix project team
SIM Only - This CRM e-commerce initiative was aimed at providing a SIM card mass distribution model for
Postpay Simplicity in line with what was the current Prepay model that proved so successful.
Mass distribution followed the pay as you go sales model of receiving 4 free SIMs when ordering via online webmarketing drive. The customers order four free SIM cards during exclusive online promotion periods and activate
those SIMs online to one of three SIM Only Tariffs. These tariffs receive one additional promotional benefit that
is deemed as ‘exclusive’ to mass distribution. A set of tariffs are available for ‘Mass Distribution’ which have
‘unlimited O2 to O2 calls and SMS’ as the additional promotion benefit.
This e-commerce project was very heavily oriented towards online adverts and online ordering, the main supplier
for this being AA Razorfish.
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Very tight timescales - pre arranged go live date prior to project formation to meet marketing sales figures.
A project that utilized both PRINCE and Agile (Scrum) reporting methodologies.
Seven suppliers/vendors - IBM (billing), AARazorFish (Web page design), Equifax (credit vetting), GB Group
(identity checking), Smart421 (systems integration), Amazon (server hosting), Agency Republic (ad web
design and distribution).
£1m project.
Full life cycle - Requirements to PIR.
Very high commercial priority within O2.
Full internal project audit for quality, documentation and delivery.
Voicemail Platform replacement - Project managed replacement of O2 Voicemail platform. This provided
additional capacity for voicemail and to keep up with voicemail growth due to port capacity exhausted by August
2008. The platform was end of life so hardware no longer available to add new capacity. Migrations of all
customers commenced in November 2008. Additional capacity added thereafter. Visual Voicemail for the
iPhone also introduced as part of this project.
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Project start up.
Phased implementation.
3rd party outsourced supplier management.
Matrix organisation.
Documentation creation and Approval.
Project successfully audited externally.
£10m project budget.
Product Project Manager
Cable and Wireless
June 07– Feb 08
As part of the MSP (Multi Service Platform) Programme offering five new products, SDSL was required as an
access mechanism in to the MSP network.
SDSL - is Symmetrical Digital Subscriber Line, as opposed to the more commonly deployed ADSL. ADSL is
Asymmetrical and provides less bandwidth in the upstream direction. As SDSL is symmetrical, users have equal
bandwidth in both the upstream and downstream direction. The driver for this is VOIP enablement (IP/web
phones) and thin client work where data processing no longer has to be held at the server end.
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Project management of launch of product into programme.
Project management of first customer, Tesco. Customer was provisioned during ORT (Operational
Readiness Testing) to ensure as early a date as possible. Customer facing role to manage rollout.
Numerous workstreams working concurrently to meet deadline. Design documents created as development
progressed.
As well as vertical Product stream, also responsible for Networks Testing and Security Testing horizontally
SIMON FIRTH - CURRICULUM VITAE - 07808 290693
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across all five Programme products.
Consulting
HI Europe
Feb 07– May 07
Various short term consulting projects for telecoms analysis purposes.
Infrastructure Project Manager
Alcatel Lucent
Nov 06 – Jan 07
Multiple Infrastructure Network related projects – Local Loop Unbundling, Infrastructure, Network and Server
upgrades and migrations for client, Orange.
Eclipse – Nationwide server upgrades to combat Orange Broadband capacity and dropped connection issues.
SR1-SR7 – Server upgrades and migrations involving quality assurance issues, site surveys and resource
mapping.
Business Project Manager
Jan 06 – Sep 06
Vodafone
Multiple concurrent web based projects in a heavily processed PRINCE environment.
Friends and Family – Value Added Service CRM product that allows consumer customers to set up mini private
networks (VPN’s) between themselves to enjoy free calls. Aimed at families, it allows the hub, or a parent, to
pay a monthly subscription fee whereupon the satellites, or children, would be nominated to be a part of this
network. Once set up, all members of this network could make free calls between themselves on an unlimited
basis. The hub or parent managed this offering via the online portal; the development supplied by Sapient.
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Numerous 3rd Party software development suppliers / vendors.
P&L responsibility for resource work packages.
E-Commerce aspects of project presented on Vodafone portal utilising Indian off shored based development
teams. Allowed for full management of Friends with Username and Password.
Due to scope and size, a Project that became a program numbering seventeen work streams.
Matrix / Virtual project team
Smart Change – An internal online product that permits Vodafone employees to make charitable acts as
organised via a web based portal accessed through their intranet. The 3rd party supplier provided an off-site
solution to allow donors to effect; Give as You Earn, Matched donations, Company Lottery, Paid Leave to
volunteer on activities.
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3rd party outsourced Internet developers for Vodafone Intranet.
P&L responsibility for resource work packages.
Business Case input.
Prince gated process.
Technical Design approval.
3rd party outsourced testers.
PAST EMPLOYMENT
O2
May 03 – Dec 05
Product Project Manager
Teligen
Nov 02 – April 03
Consulting
Tiscali
May 02 – Nov 02
Billing Project Manager
Hogg Robinson (BTI)
Jul 01 – Feb 02
Migration Project Manager
Nortel Communications
April 00 – April 01
SDH Project Manager
Sport England (Government)
Sep 99 – April 00
Change / Project Manager
Ericsson Telecom - China
March 99 – Sep 99
Project Manager
ILOG Ltd (IT Software)
Feb 98 – Feb 99
Telco Events Manager
NTL (Cable TV / Telco)
Feb 94 – Feb 98
TV Channel Manager
Q Studios (Corporate Video)
Feb 93 – Jan 94
General Assistant
Various
June 90 – Jan 93
World Employment
In New York, Toronto, France (Lyons and Cote d’Azur), Hong Kong, and Australia (Perth and Sydney)
SIMON FIRTH - CURRICULUM VITAE - 07808 290693
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EDUCATION
1988 - 1990
Wolverhampton University
HND - Design Communications
1977 - 1984
Loughborough Grammar School
8 “O” Levels, 2 “A” Levels
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
EXTERNAL MANAGEMENT
Director of Building Management Company
COMPUTER LITERACY
Office 2007, MS Project, Visio
HTML + introduction to Frontpage and Dreamweaver
SharePoint, Clarity, Niku
DRIVING LICENCE
Full and Clean
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