Three decades of delivery, in the words of the people who hired me.

Brought in during March 2018 to restart the £5M BT X21 KiloStream replacement programme after the previous project manager resigned unexpectedly. I rebuilt the plan, the budget forecast and the project documentation from the PID up — communications strategy, risk management strategy, risk register, test and acceptance plan — and held the confidence of the Managing Director, Commercial Director and CFO through a full re-baseline. Every re-baselined target was met, and the project handed over £100,000 under budget.

Arqiva brought me back in 2020 for a further three years — directing a £2M BT Wholesale Line replacement programme, running the start-up and discovery phase of a multi-factor authentication project aligned to the wider security strategy, and delivering the replacement of obsolete Cisco infrastructure.

Quite simply put, Neil is a consummate Project and Programme leader who’s particularly adept at identifying and managing the disparate stakeholder groups who have a vested interest in the success of the programmes of work under his span of control.

We recruited Neil in March 2018 to lead a project that was on the verge of failure. Within a couple of months Neil worked with and influenced the Arqiva leadership teams to build and lead a programme team that to this day has met all of its re-baselined milestones and is aligned to the original budget. He’s led and re-built relationships with internal and external delivery partners through clear uncluttered expectation leadership.

For me personally, I’ve been with Arqiva for 22 Years and have not seen a better contract programme lead in that time. I (and many of my colleagues) have no hesitation in recommending Neil in similar roles.

A contact-centre telephony programme for remote users inside a heavily regulated healthcare business, originally scoped at six months. It went live on budget in four — before the end of December, two months ahead of the estimate.

The solution spanned Cisco Call Manager, Enghouse International call centre and Gamma SIP, delivered by a set of geographically separated vendors I led remotely. Alongside delivery I ran a training needs analysis and built the in-house capability to support the system after handover.

Neil joined Ashfield as Project Manager of a Contact Centre telephony project with the responsibility of delivering a new telephone system in a heavily regulated healthcare company. Neil joined the project in September and had a ambitious deadline of delivering the new system before the end of the year. When initially scoped the project was estimated to take 6 months, however under Neil’s management the new system was delivered on budget and before the end of December (2 months ahead of estimation).

To deliver a project of this technical complexity, regulation and time restrictions is a testament to Neil’s ability as a Project Manager. In particular Neil has shown exceptional organisation and planning skills also with the ability to adapt the project approach to overcome the challenges met through this project. With numerous resources aligned to the project Neil has shown brilliant man management skills to ensure everyone involved was focused on the end objective and immediate priorities. Neil also invested a large amount of time personally in the delivery of the project far exceeding that of other PM’s I have worked with.

Lastly Neil is also very adept at working with both senior leadership and the project team. This ensures not only the delivery of the system but also great business engagement and adoption.

Colt International and Colt Group were leaving a site they had occupied for fifty years, moving the corporate HQ, the UK head office and the UK manufacturing base into three new premises across Petersfield, Waterlooville and Havant. I was brought in as Project Director after the original project manager resigned, with the relocation already in danger of failing and real internal resistance to moving at all.

End to end it took 120 days from the January restart. It completed within budget, under extreme time pressure and with no disruption to operations — a complete factory move, IT and telecoms migration, extensive infrastructure work, and the final decommissioning and handover of the old Havant site.

Neil was parachuted in as Project Director at very short notice to take over the leadership and control of our business relocation project at a time when the complete project was in danger of failure, following the resignation of the original project manager. Despite having no prior knowledge of our business, Neil was able to quickly assimilate all the relevant information, build detailed programs and cost plans and then go on to deliver the project in time and within budget with minimal impact on the day to day operations of the business. A tremendous result given the starting point Neil inherited.

Although he has clear expertise in all elements of project management, Neil really excels in his ability to gain stakeholder engagement. He is comfortable dealing with people at all levels of an organisation – from the CEO to the operatives – and quickly builds trust, respect and support within an organisation.

Neil is a class act and I would have no hesitation in recommending him to any prospective employers.

A £54M programme to optimise EE’s Radio Access Network across 27,500 sites, mandated to realise £15M a year in synergy savings after the merger — while holding customer experience and network performance steady across 2G, 3G and 4G at the same time.

I directed and managed multiple sub-contractors to keep delivery on time and to budget, held a large and diverse stakeholder group together through a high-pressure business transformation, and built the KPIs that let the network changes be absorbed into business as usual with minimal impact on customers. It delivered benefits 53% above target in the first year.

I worked closely with Neil at his time as a Project Manager at EE. Neil project managed a high profile network optimisation programme that was critical to achieving EE’s near term objectives.

Neil is a highly capable project manager, managing the programme with many diverse stakeholders and always satisfactorily. Neil has great communication and people skills and I’d happily work with him again.

Developed and delivered the roadmap for consolidating disparate websites and marketing platforms into a single coherent web presence.

Ran the PMO function for a deployed training mission — in-country planning, admin and logistics for deployed consultants, and the welfare and discipline of 55 instructors. Directed the safe repatriation of the whole team when Covid-19 terminated the mission.

Directed delivery against in-country work plans for FCO-sponsored justice and security infrastructure projects, managing local suppliers and stakeholders. Ran the PMO function, audited consultant and supplier spend to cut costs and raise margin, and put in place the health, safety and security plan including primary medical care for deployed consultants.