Andy Lawrence

Andy Lawrence

Senior Project Manager and Practice Manager

United Kingdom

Current
  • Interim Head of IT at CBSA
Past
  • Senior Project Manager for Orion Health at Wigan NHS Trust
  • Senior Project Manager at Orion Health
  • Senior Project Manager for Orion Health at Walsall NHS Trust

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Education
  • De Montfort University
Recommended
Andy has 14 recommendations 14 people have recommended Andy
Connections
271 connections
Industry
Information Technology and Services
Websites

Andy Lawrence’s Summary

Track record of successful project / programme delivery and practice management since 1991.

In the former I have delivered successful projects for blue chip commercial companies (e.g. Vodafone, Nationwide Building Society, Centrica and Lloyds of London) and public sector organisations (e.g. Wandsworth Council, Walsall NHS and Wigan NHS).

In the latter I have managed consultancy teams of up to 40 staff and successfully delivered against a £6m revenue target.

I specialise in building productive relationships that result in successful projects and business-as-usual services. These may be with stakeholders, partners, suppliers or the project team.

I lead my teams by example, demonstrating a strong work ethic and high personal quality threshold whilst supporting them with an honest, good humoured management style.

I manage stakeholders by listening (and watching) carefully to ensure I understand their drivers and concerns. Then I can focus on achieving a "win win" for the project and the stakeholder, or identify and address risks or issues early.

I always maintain that with a strong technical background and a career delivering IT innovation, it is easy to pick up the fundamentals of a new product or technology. It is the people skills that cannot be learnt, and set the successful IT managers apart from the rest.

Andy Lawrence’s Specialties:

Management of stakeholders, partners, suppliers and staff

Tenacity, quality & commitment
Strong delivery focus
Great people & communication skills

Infrastructure / data centre projects
Software development / deployment projects
IT service management

5 years ITIL experience, Foundation certification
10 years Prince 2 experience
APM Practitioner qualification
business analysis
process design / improvement / Six Sigma white belt

Management of risk, change, testing & conflict

Andy Lawrence’s Experience

  • Interim Head of IT

    CBSA

    (Information Technology and Services industry)

    2008 — Present (2 years )

    CBSA (Commissioning Business Support Agency) is an NHS organisation which processes primary and secondary care data on behalf of 17 PCTs and 1000 GPs in the West Midlands. It does this to support its core function; providing direct management support in the contract negotiations with secondary care providers.

    Andy's role includes the following;
    - significant management contribution in a programme of change which is allowing CBSA to offer many new services in the west midlands health economy and beyond during 2009,
    - management of the relationship with CBSA's main IT services provider, Dudley PCT,
    - management of third party service providers including Sollis and Microsoft,
    - line management of 11 NHS staff including the data warehouse and technical support teams.

  • Senior Project Manager for Orion Health

    Wigan NHS Trust

    (Hospital & Health Care industry)

    April 2008 — August 2008 (5 months)

    Orion Health carried out bespoke development of the ICBM (Infection Control / Bed Management) system for the Trust. Allows ward staff and infection control nurses to act fast when faced with ‘superbug’ infections (see press coverage www.e-health-insider.com/news/3662). ICBM was written in Java, Oracle back-end, uses XML web services.

    My role as Orion PM on this challenging project required me to;
    - Work closely with the Trust (inc Director of Nursing) to understand / prioritise / address the changing requirements
    - Manage a virtual team of Orion resources spread across 4 continents
    - Closely manage the 5-man development team in New Zealand to ensure they address requirements and defects in a timely manner
    - Manage the 2-man implementation team in UK / Spain
    - Call upon Oracle and support consultants as required in Canada / Israel
    - Manage scope and raise change requests as required
    - Manage / report on risks
    - Report on progress at the project review board.

  • Senior Project Manager

    Orion Health

    (Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

    March 2008 — August 2008 (6 months)

    Andy joined Orion Health on an interim basis to run projects at 2 NHS Trusts; Walsall and Wigan. He hit the ground running and quickly came up to speed on the Orion product set and the complexities of delivering software development/deployment projects in the health sector.

    Andy's role required him to manage several UK-based resources as well as remote staff in Canada, Spain, Israel and New Zealand. This required high levels of commitment and energy in order to run the daily late-night and early-morning conference calls.

    The Walsall 'Whiteboard' project went live on 4 Aug 2008 in the A&E department and provides clinicians with wall-mounted, touch-screen access to patient location, demographics and diagnostic information.

    The Wigan 'Infection Control / Bed Management' project went live in 3 pilot wards in September 2008 and the roll-out continues. Press coverage can be found here www.e-health-insider.com/news/3662/

  • Senior Project Manager for Orion Health

    Walsall NHS Trust

    (Health, Wellness and Fitness industry)

    March 2008 — August 2008 (6 months)

    In his role as Senior PM on this project Andy was required to;
    - manage a small team of up to 3 integration consultants
    - work closely with the Trust's project manager
    - assist in directing Trust resources
    - monitor project scope and raise change requests as required
    - provide regular progress updates to the project board

    The Walsall 'Whiteboard' project went live on 4 Aug 2008 in the A&E department and provides clinicians with wall-mounted, touch-screen access to patient location, demographics and diagnostic information.

  • Senior Project Manager (Interim)

    Serco

    (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; SRP; Information Technology and Services industry)

    February 2008 — August 2008 (7 months)

    Andy was hired to run a number of complex, high-profile infrastructure projects for the Serco Solutions division.

    After completing his Serco induction an urgent request for PM assistance resulted in him being assigned to Orion Health, for whom he worked full-time until the end of his contract.

    See the separate item for details of the Orion Health assignment.

  • Senior Project Manager for Unisys

    Wandsworth Council

    (Government Agency; 10,001 or more employees; Government Administration industry)

    January 2007 — February 2008 (1 year 2 months)

    Andy led a 10-man, on-site project team delivering a complex mixture of infrastructure upgrade and systems integration for this - an important local government client of Unisys.

    Between Jan 2007 and Feb 2008 the project provided new hardware and services utilising the latest storage, thin client, virtualisation and consolidation technologies.

    Andy's role, as the senior member of Unisys staff on site, was to;
    - own the day-to-day relationship with the customer,
    - procure and motivate the resources,
    - manage relationships with third parties such as Microsoft, EMC and Sun,
    - work with central IT to manage business stakeholders via presentations and workshops,
    - and drive the project team towards successful delivery of the project to quality, time and budget.

    The benefits to the Council included;
    - reduction in server estate from >150 to <30
    - reduction in power, cooling and carbon footprint
    - reduction in support costs
    - standardisation and centralisation of services.

  • Owner

    AL Consulting (UK) Ltd

    (Information Technology and Services industry)

    2001 — 2008 (7 years )

  • IT Consultant

    Technical Surfaces Ltd

    (Information Technology and Services industry)

    2001 — 2008 (7 years )

  • Senior Project Manager

    Unisys

    (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

    November 2000 — February 2008 (7 years 4 months)

    Andy is responsible for managing high-profile, high-value infrastructure projects which require attention to detail and extremely good people skills in order to achieve positive results in difficult circumstances. For this reason he has occasionally been used as a project troubleshooter.

    He has extensive experience in the banking sector as well as having worked in telecoms, logistics, insurance, health and local government.

    He is also experienced in practice management having spent 2 years (2004-5) running consultancy teams of up to 40 staff and successfully delivering against a $9m revenue target.

  • Senior Project Manager

    Bradford & Bingley Group

    (Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; Financial Services industry)

    September 2006 — December 2006 (4 months)

    A jointly-funded presales and implementation planning project whose objective was to improve the performance of the UFSS mortgage operations software by replatforming it to Unisys Clearpath enterprise servers. The planning and pricing was for a £multi-million service including hardware, software, implementation, testing, migration and ongoing operations across twin data centres.

    Andy's role was a hybrid of project manager and bid manager, working closely with Bradford & Bingley, IBM and multiple business units within Unisys.

  • Senior Project Manager

    Nationwide Building Society

    (Privately Held; 10,001 or more employees; Financial Services industry)

    April 2006 — September 2006 (6 months)

    A Unisys / Nationwide jointly-funded proof of concept project with the objective of proving the Unisys implementation of high availability SQL Server using 4-node clusters on 64-bit Windows.

    A very successful project featuring a joint testing exercise from a 20-man test team (50/50 from Unisys and Nationwide) and culminating in a client presentation where Nationwide confirmed the solution met all their requirements.

    As senior PM, Andy's role was to pull together the resources (hardware, software, facilities and staff), motivate the team, lead all client meetings and presentations, and of course, ensure the project was completed and signed off.

  • Transition Manager

    Alliance & Leicester

    (Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; AL.L; Banking industry)

    October 2005 — December 2005 (3 months)

    This assignment was for due diligence and transition to a new managed service for A&L, providing tier-2 IT help desk, PC provisioning, break/fix support, software packaging and distribution.

    Andy's role was to lead the due diligence and transition activities relating to the help desk and software packaging / distribution whilst at the same time taking on 7 ex-A&L employees transferred under TUPE legislation.

  • Senior Project Manager

    Centrica

    (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; CNA; Utilities industry)

    July 2005 — September 2005 (3 months)

    I took over this project after the PM was taken ill due to stress. I carried out a project audit to discover that there was a problem around clarity of deliverable sign-off. I remedied this by implementing a RAG chart and clear instructions for what needed to happen next to resolve and sign-off.

  • Senior Project Manager

    Lloyd's of London

    (Privately Held; 501-1000 employees; Insurance industry)

    January 2005 — June 2005 (6 months)

    Andy was called in as a project troubleshooter to find out why this project had been unable to deliver a properly-configured spam filtering service in the required timescales. He reviewed the issues, took corrective actions then presented his findings to Lloyds of London’s CIO and his management team, as well as implementing changes to ensure the problems could not reoccur in the future, thus protecting the relationship.

  • Test Manager

    Vodafone

    (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; VOD; Telecommunications industry)

    January 2002 — December 2003 (2 years )

    This project provided Vodafone with a high-end database solution (SQL Server on Unisys ES7000 cluster) capable of recording and analysing performance data about their mobile phone network, enabling them to meet their obligations to OfCom. The Unisys team implemented the infrastructure, made custom modifications and additions to the Ericsson software and carried out a substantial programme of testing.

    Andy's role was to run the testing project and deputise for the Unisys programme manager. In recognition of his work he received a Unisys quality award in 2002 and a Unisys achievement award for 'complex test management' in 2003.

  • Project Manager

    Norwich Union

    (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; AV; Insurance industry)

    March 2001 — December 2001 (10 months)

    Andy was one of 7 supporting PMs on a very high-profile programme to deliver NU’s on-line wealth management service. His 3-man project team delivered 150 high-quality technical documents. NU’s programme director provided a written appraisal of Andy's performance as follows;

    “Andy brought the requisite expertise, established the team, defined the framework and then chivvied and chased the technical gurus into getting their knowledge down on paper so that it could be challenged, checked and followed by all. This was the job he was asked to do and he did it very well indeed”.

  • Senior Project Manager

    Technosys

    (Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

    July 1995 — October 2000 (5 years 4 months)

    Beginning as a managing architect and progressing to senior project manager, Andy performed lead roles on the London Underground and Abbey National accounts, proving his ability to substantially grow services revenue in a 3 year relationship with the latter.

  • Project Manager

    London Underground

    (Government Agency; 10,001 or more employees; Transportation/Trucking/Railroad industry)

    August 1999 — August 2000 (1 year 1 month)

    A 12-month involvement in the London Underground account during which time I managed 6 projects with up to 3 of them running concurrently. They ranged from station-based year 2000 upgrades to a desktop PC replacement programme.

  • Lead Architect and Project Manager

    Abbey

    (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; Banking industry)

    August 1996 — June 1999 (2 years 11 months)

    Andy commenced his assignment with Abbey (then Abbey National) in the role of lead architect and continued by managing multiple concurrent projects during a 3-year relationship. These projects delivered Windows NT, Microsoft SMS, Citrix thin client and year 2000 testing to Abbey, Abbey Treasury Services and Abbey's Italian subsidiary based in Milan.

    The thin client project made 32-bit applications available for the first time to 7000 Abbey users spread across 80 UK sites.

  • Project Manager

    British Gas

    (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; CNA; Utilities industry)

    1991 — 1995 (4 years )

    Andy successfully delivered multiple Windows and mid-range infrastructure projects, plus day-to-day staff management of a 10-person team responsible for 5,000 PCs and all related servers and services.

Additional Information

Andy Lawrence’s Websites:

Andy Lawrence’s Interests:

5-a-side football, snowboarding, karting, cycling.

Andy Lawrence’s Groups:

APM Group - Prince 2 Professional,
APM (Association for Project Management),
IPMA (International Project Management Association),
MBCS (Member of the British Computer Society)

  •    Unisys - Ever Worked - Employees and Contractors
  •    Healthcare-IT/ EHR/ HIS
  •    Project Manager Networking Group
  •    PRINCE2 for project management in IT
  •    Health 2.0
  •    NHS Management Professionals
  •    Abbey (National) Alumni Network
  •    Unisys Reconnected
  •    PRINCE2 (foundation+practitioner) Certified Professionals
  •    Elite IT Contractor Networking Programme
  •    ITNET Alumni
  •    IT Project Managers (Midlands)
  •    NHS Professionals Network
  •    NHS IT Project Professionals
  •    Orion Health Ltd
  •    NHS Contract Professionals
  •    NHS - Healthcare - Networking
  •    NHS - Sharepoint Group
  •    NHS Interims
  •    Public Sector (UK) - Interim Managers and Consultants
  •    NHS CIO Network
  •    NHS Information Governance
  •    International IT Professionals Forum

Andy Lawrence’s Honors:

Prince 2 Project Management, 2009
Project Management - Agile Masterclass, Orion Health, 2008
Gold Award for Project Management, Unisys, 2006
Association for Project Management, Practitioner Qualification, 2004
Bronze Award for Complex Test Management, Unisys, 2003
Association for Project Management, APMP Examination, 2003
Achievement Award for Quality, Unisys, 2002
Microsoft MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer), 1996 - 2000

Andy Lawrence’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

  • career opportunities
  • consulting offers
  • new ventures
  • job inquiries
  • expertise requests
  • business deals
  • reference requests
  • getting back in touch

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