darren king

* From 2009 to 2011 I operated as an Independent Contractor, completing assignments for organisations such as Citizens Advice Bureau and Ridgeway Partnership NHS Trust. I typically had end-to-end project involvement, with responsibilities such as: requirements analysis * oversight of infrastructure design and development * vendor management and negotiation * project documentation * and budget management. See Project section for a list of example assignments.

* Responsible for operational leadership and strategic planning for IT function and providing IT services to 1,200+ end users across 30+ locations. * Managed 2 IT staff and relationships with 3 IT suppliers and 3 government partnerships. * Managed an IT OPEX budget of £3M+ and led projects with budgets of £100K+. * Key Projects: * Led programme to reduce operating costs by rolling out enterprise-wide wireless LAN and hot desk environments. Succeeded in reducing costs by £500K+ over 3-year period. * Completed infrastructure delivery phase of the new Electronic Patient Records system and succeeded in on-time delivery across 3 counties despite taking over a project behind schedule. * Updated the organisation’s Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) strategy and produced a technology roadmap & programme plan to better align with business objectives. * Led improvements to the business intelligence reporting and data warehousing systems that led to quicker production of better quality statutory and internal financial reporting.

* Hired on a 6-month contract to deliver key IT infrastructure projects across the charity’s 27K+ IT user base. * Responsible for managing relationship with 2 IT suppliers (HP and Steria) of outsourced data centre facilities, ensuring achievement of SLAs. * Worked closely with key stakeholders and senior management teams, including providing bi-weekly and monthly reporting on IT programmes and strategy. * Key Projects: * Led integration of interactive decision-making tool for website, receiving 1M+ hits monthly. * Worked with Steria to diagnose and fix an Internet capacity issue that was causing poor performance across key IT services, which avoided a £18K expenditure on new systems. * Successfully migrated email system from MS Exchange 2000 to 2003 and servers from MS Windows 2000 to Windows 2003 as part of IT infrastructure upgrade project. * Turned around failing Blackberry pilot project by working with project sponsor to complete the business case, re-write the project plan and create a comprehensive communication plan.

Graduated in June 1994 with a 2:1 in Bsc (Hons) Information Techology degree Activities and Societies: Treasurer of the faculty social society