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The Digital Workspace of the Future
"Rod has a deep understanding of technology and is constantly looking for ways to update, future-proof and gain efficiencies using existing or new technology. Rod was instrumental in the delivery of data centre services and the management of technology services that lead to no outages in over 5 years. Rod provided strong leadership and knowledge to guild implementation of solid security controls that minimised business impact and kept us safe."
Trevor Barrenger
Chief Information Officer at WorkCover Queensland
"Rod is a true collaborator, combining his supportive and empowering leadership with his vast industry connections - resulting in outcomes that anyone would be proud of. It has been incredible to participate in the processes of continual improvement that Rod has initiated. His personal/professional balance is commendable. I am grateful to have Rod in the information, technology and security industry."
Ryan Ettridge
Partner at PwC
Defined and articulated strategies and vision to boards, executive management, business leaders and technical teams to achieve support and approval.
Development and application of strategies, enterprise architecture, frameworks, policies, procedures, standards, tools and services to deliver sustainable, innovative, secure and cost-effective business services.
WorkCover Queensland – Developed the 2020 Digital Transformation Strategy for IT services within WorkCover focussing on the 3 corporate strategic transformation areas of:
- Services – Improve experience and deliver efficiencies.
- People – Build trusted partner relationships.
- Process – Focus on business value.
WorkCover Queensland – Developed and delivered the Digital Services Strategy including the architecture and roadmap for digital services transformation. This enabled improved business operations, business led innovation and adoption of cloud applications for new business services. Delivered enhanced technology services improving business, customer and employee experience and engagement, improved flexibility, benefits and competitive advantage with lower costs and delivery time.
Virgin Australia – Development and execution of IT infrastructure strategy to improve operational availability and performance of IT systems, increase disaster recovery capability and enhance business user’s perception of IT services.
Queensland Police Service – Developed the telecommunications strategy for the telephone services and integration of Police stations to respond to community calls, 000 emergency call response across the state and the establishment of the 131 444 Police assistance service communications centres for non emergency calls.
Queensland Government – Developed the Mobile Computing Strategy to improve workforce agility and information availability by enabling remote access to government information and services.
"(Rod's) ability to build relationships both internally and externally a major contributor to his success in his position whilst at Virgin. Rod built a coherent team, developed his staff and led through some challenging situations. Rod also built strong partnerships with trusted external vendors to help him provide a stable IT environment. He understands company operational requirements as well as the business does, which helps bridge the gap between IT technical teams and others."
Jenson Spencer
A/Deputy Commissioner at Australian Taxation Office
Enabled enhanced business strategy and services through digital and technology innovation.
Delivered innovative digital transformation of customer and employee focussed services to achieve improvements across IT and the business using established, contemporary and emerging digital services and technologies to drive business value and performance.
WorkCover Queensland – Implemented digital transformation to cloud services for new and enhanced business applications including:
- Office Productivity and Collaboration
- Document Management
- Customer Relationship Management
- Claims and Policy Management
- Contracts Management System
- HR People Information System
- Risk management system
- Credit Card Reconciliation
- Customer Experience Insights
- Service Management
WorkCover Queensland – Delivered Digital Service Transformation as a digital workspace for the future by enabling coherent use of cloud services with management, security and backup platform migrating from legacy systems. Utilised a combination of cloud applications for identity management, performance monitoring, security, cloud storage, user and document rights management, integration, telephony and video conference and employee service interface to deliver consistent and secure corporate cloud application services.
WorkCover Queensland – Delivered strategy and implementation for the transformational of digital workplace services, migration of services to cloud platforms and native cloud application services and the adoption of agile DevOps methodologies to improve application development and operation lifecycle.
"Rod has a deep understanding of technology and the value it delivers to the business, and is constantly looking for ways to update, future-proof and gain efficiencies using existing or new technology. Rod also demonstrated his understanding of and full support to the cyber security program, resulting in major uplifts in cyber security maturity, reduction of risks and brand protection. I highly recommend Rod as a technology leader, business enabler and cyber security influencer."
Rafael Chiang
Information Security Manager at WorkCover Queensland
Developed risk-based security strategy, practices and technology to balance security risk with business benefits to manage increased security threats whilst enabling increased business functionality.
WorkCover Queensland – Identified deficiencies in security with unnecessary risk to the business and customers so I developed the security strategy to increase understanding and awareness, improve education, increase security controls (practices and technology) and apply appropriate risk management to decisions.
WorkCover Queensland – Delivered information security and governance framework, policies, procedures and technology aligned with ISO 27001. A security maturity assessment of 4 was achieved from initial assessment of 1.2 (independently assessed out of 5).
WorkCover Queensland – Improved the commitment and support from the business, employees and customers for improved security by achieving an acceptable balance between delivering services, an understanding of the associated risks and the application and acceptance of appropriate control mitigations combined with informed risk acceptance.
Suncorp – Identity management, user identity and application access review and strategy for improved user experience and secuirty control.
"Rod's vast experience helped shape our team into what it is today. Taking on a number of difficult requirements and demanding deadlines Rod has driven the team to deliver outstanding results. His ability to engage with all levels of the organisation and understand business issues and risk have been instrumental in his teams delivering solutions that provide real business benefit and reduce risk. Rod has been a driving force in embedding information security across the organisation and helping senior business leaders understand how the correct implementation of technology can reduce business risk. Rod’s mentorship has also ensured those around him are driven to improve themselves."
Dave Peters
Infrastructure Manager at WorkCover Queensland
"As a leader Rod understands that to lead a high performing team its imperative to build and maintain the relationship between the individuals, not just the technical skill. Rod is an innovative anticipator. His leadership style is collaborative but most importantly he cares about the individual. He's an empathetic leader, who's driven by passion and purpose - qualities that many organisations these days are desperate to find."
Vicky Tsang-Smith
Information Technology and Commercial Lawyer and Contracts at WorkCover Queensland
Leading technical, operational, project and consulting teams to deliver customer centric digital business services and outcomes within Australia and internationally.
Collaborative, empathetic, proactive and engaged leadership to gain strong relationships and support across technology, business and customers. Communicated and managed priorities across stakeholders with different levels of technical and business knowledge. Developing long term and mutually beneficial relationships with internal and external partners.
WorkCover Queensland – Delivered the ‘Innovative Anticipator’ initiative to move IT up the maturity curve to improve focus on technology innovation and improve the strategic value of IT as part of the business. The change program, training workshops and coaching successfully evolved the IT team from being a basic IT supplier, to not just be a strategic partner, but, to be an ‘Innovative Anticipator’ partnered with the business to realise organisational strategic outcomes. One example was a new business service delivered in less than 10% of the time and cost anticipated by the business.
WorkCover Queensland – Increased team engagement by 9% to 84% and innovation by 24% by providing good team communication, vision, values objectives, accountabilities, reward and recognition and providing opportunities to innovate.
Virgin Australia – Improved team satisfaction and reduction in staff attrition by 50% through improvements in leadership, management, direction, focus, empathy, objectives and staff training.
SMS Management and Technology – Increased profitability, engagement, retention and customer satisfaction by mentoring and developing consultants on customer assignments.
"Rod has strong knowledge and capabilities in IT and is always willing to engage across divisions to ensure that our organisational goals are being met."
Brendan Gribbin
Head of Risk and Assurance at WorkCover Queensland
"(Rod's) outlook and experience enabled him to make decisions, trusting his staff to make decisions and enabling business units both within IT and within the Airline to get on with delivering change and innovation. Rod welcomed innovation and encouraged his staff to work outside of their daily boundaries to help the business succeed at being one of the best airlines in the world. "
Thomas Julien
Head of Digital at Flight Centre
Managed operational and project budgets and expenditure with a high level of commercial and financial capability.
Proven ability to balance business benefits and risk through a holistic management and collaboration of business, operations, project, commercial, reputation, technology and security interests with the business, IT teams and vendors to increase customer satisfaction, reduce costs, decrease outages and improve security.
WorkCover Queensland and Virgin Australia – Reduced operational and project costs to achieve business requirements by reducing staff to meet agreed service levels, improved processes and efficiency, negotiating reduced commercial agreements with vendors, reducing licensing quantity to meet requirements, improved architecture design and infrastructure and software replacements.
WorkCover Queensland – Identified gaps in IT Governance so I developed the IT Governance Framework and rewrote all policies with associated procedures and standards to provide guidance for IT and the business to ensure all aspects of good IT management are addressed as part of normal operations.
WorkCover Queensland – Identified the need for improved information and data governance and developed the Information and Data Governance Framework, Policies, Standards and Procedures for the ownership, responsibility, integrity, security, privacy, quality and usage of information and data.
Virgin Australia – Established key performance objectives, service level metrics and targets, enterprise monitoring and reporting to better manage the operational environment and improve business services.
Queensland Government – Developed a whole of government guideline for ICT project outsourcing, option assessment and supplier engagement to maximise the value of industry skills, innovation and experience with appropriate risk sharing.
Queensland Rail – Developed and implemented service management processes to improve operational service delivery and availability.
Optus Communications – Managed the design and installation of the GSM mobile phone network base stations and data network worth $500m in capital city and regional Australia.
"Virgin Australia encountered challenges such as prolonged outages with key vendor hosted systems, the Brisbane flood that closed our head office disrupting the majority of essential business and airline operations, and complex performance and capacity related issues across a diverse technology stack. We overcame all these challenges successfully and professionally with clear guidance and professional leadership from Rod. I recall calling Rod at 5:30am when he was on holidays after discovering faults in legacy infrastructure with the potential to halt flight departures, without any question or delay Rod was on deck interfacing to incident management teams. Thanks to Rod one of the most challenging situations I have found myself in had the clearest path to resolution."
Duncan Lindley
Technical Architect at Virgin Australia
Optimised service management policies, processes and systems for the delivery and support of IT services to improve business services, operations, reliability and customer satisfaction whilst reducing costs and risk. Established and implemented business continuity and disaster recovery plans to maintain services during infrastructure and application failures as well as external crisis events.
WorkCover Queensland – Delivered renewal of data centre architecture, infrastructure and services worth with improved performance, resiliency, flexibility and operational costs within $12m budget, on schedule with no service impact.
WorkCover Queensland – Improved business continuity and service resiliency through improved risk management, contingency planning, change management and approval, standardised procedures, test scripts and regular testing resulting in no major unplanned service outages and decreased scheduled downtime by 30%.
WorkCover Queensland – Delivered remote access solution for staff to work anywhere improving staff productivity and satisfaction which enabled normal business operations during Corona virus isolation with all staff working from home without issue during the office shutdown.
Virgin Australia – Reduced likelihood and impact of IT failures through improved risk management and preparation of disaster recovery plans.
Virgin Australia – Managed operational budget and implementation of cost saving initiatives to increase value.
Virgin Australia – Managed disaster preparation and recovery activities during the Brisbane floods to successfully prevent impact to flights and maintaining full operational capability of the business despite the loss of the corporate head office and 300% increase in call traffic.
Suncorp/RACQI – Developed governance and operational processes for the RACQI and Suncorp joint venture to improve service delivery and integration. The transition of service support achieved a 50% reduction in IT staff costs.
National Transport Insurance – Developed the business requirements and vender selection for insurance underwriting, claims and financial management system.
Ergon Energy – Delivered an interactive voice response service for the business contact centre to improve customer service and experience.
Optus Communications – Designed and delivered the initial Optus GSM mobile phone base station network and communication links across Sydney, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and Regional Queensland at a cost of $200m.
"Rod has always maintained a positive outlook and a 'can do' attitude. Combined with his professional qualifications and track record of ICT consultancy work across various industry sectors, he is always a valuable person to have around. He is able to undertake strategic work and produce thoughtful results and is also able to roll his sleeves up and take on operaitonal management responsibilities. Rod is a person of high integrity and ethics."
Jamie Smith
Transport Industry Lead - Emerging Growth at Telstra
Successfully delivered major strategy, business transformation, infrastructure and application development and implementation projects up to $200M with 100% success. Engaged to remediate failing projects to ensure success.
Skilled at quickly understanding business requirements and expectations and then managing the project to ensure the delivery of the desired business outcomes are achieved. Rod is qualified in Prince2 and will use that methodology along with agile practices to work with stakeholders and project teams to agree delivery expectations and manage activities.
BHP Billiton and Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA) – Project managed downtime analysis and reporting solution at the Hay Point Coal Terminal.
Rio Tinto – Managed upgrade of telecommunications services for 2,500 users across Rio Tinto offices in Brisbane, Sydney, Northern Territory and remote mine sites.
Department of Natural Resources and Water – Developed the Project, Program and Portfolio Management Office for assurance and governance of major initiatives.
BHP Billiton and Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA) – Reviewed and improved project governance, project management practice and operations across major IT and dragline refurbishment projects.
Australian Communication Exchange – Managed the design and implementation of the $2 million IP telephony and data system for the unique telephony requirements for the deaf, hearing and speech impaired community National Relay Service.
Optus Communications – Managed telephone and data and contact centre solutions for corporate and government clients.
Aussat – Managed the installation of satellite earth stations and microwave radio networks within Australia and New Zealand for voice, data and video including TV and radio stations Nine, Seven, Ten, ABC, SBS and the Australian Radio Network.
"Rod took on the management of the IT Operations group at a challenging time and managed to quickly build the trust and respect of an over-stretched team of IT professionals. Rod developed and empowered his team to make decisions in the knowledge they would have his support and ensured IT Operations had a voice at the table whenever decisions were being made. (Rod's) contribution, enthusiasm and depth of experience were clearly demonstrated and valued."
Rob Excel
Enterprise Architect at Virgin Australia
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