Every now and then I find myself reflecting on some of the projects I’ve been lucky enough to be involved in over the past couple of decades.
They’re the sort of programmes that sound slightly surreal when you try to summarise them quickly.
Providing eyes on glass for a weather analytics supercomputer underneath the Microsoft Azure platform. Working with a Formula One team where split-second decisions genuinely change outcomes. Designing vast data platforms for the energy sector that quietly reshape how entire markets operate.
Having worked for some of the largest consultancies on the planet, I feel very privileged that enterprise assignments like this were part of our ‘every day’.
Of course, the requirements from one to the next were highly nuanced, as no two organisations are the same. But, peel back the layers of complexity, and at the heart of every transformation project were the same underlying principles. Instead of jumping straight to technology and expecting it to act as a ‘silver bullet’, we worked hard to understand the environments deeply, particularly the intricate and the needs of the people responsible for them.
That’s how you begin to transform how work gets done.
Here’s a look back at some of the most memorable projects I’ve played my part in over the years…
Monitoring a weather analytics supercomputer
Following Microsoft’s build of a weather analytics quantum supercomputer on the Azure platform, I provided eyes-on-glass support, monitoring system performance and offering architecture and engineering insights to help maintain platform stability for this complex big data project.
Rethinking data across the energy sector
Another fascinating challenge came from the energy sector – which is made up of complex contractual obligations between energy generators, transporters, energy providers and consumers.
Energy providers must predict consumers’ energy requirements and bid accordingly for the electricity they require. But the cost implications of inaccurate forecasting is eye-watering.
To address this, the team built a behemoth cloud-based ingestion layer, which pulled in all energy providers’ electricity meter data from millions of households, to understand actual versus forecasted consumption.
The system converted non-uniform data into a standardised form, analysed it through a sophisticated reporting layer, and then converted the data back into the formats required by each individual energy provider.
Responsible for designing, building and managing this vast platform, the team enabled the energy sector to shift from a three month ‘true up’ (reconciliation) to a 30-minute process. The result was a complete overhaul of how the energy sector operates, end-to-end, with vast financial savings, not to mention significant resource efficiency.
Cloud innovation that accelerated lap times for Formula One team
There was also the opportunity to work with the CIO of a Formula One team to accelerate the way the organisation captured, analysed, and shared data.
Given the importance of split-second decisions in the sport, teams depend on data from everywhere – back office, track side, and the car itself. But at the time, the team we were working with simply couldn’t process information fast enough. In fact, at one point they turned the car on and the multi-blade server blew up!
By building a cloud native DevOps build and release server, data could be routed back to the research and development team to make intuitive, micro-millimeter decisions – in ultra restrictive wind tunnel slot times – to enhance lap time performance.
The work also supported a broader evolution in how the team used cloud-native services. One example of the impact was the onboarding time for new mission-critical developers, which was reduced from three months to just four hours.
Digital transformation of three UK Councils
This programme involved delivering an end-to-end cloud navigator transformation for three UK county councils.
The work included building the clients’ target cloud Azure landing zones, aligned to what was (at the time) Microsoft’s newly defined cloud adoption framework, constructing the cloud platforms themselves, implementing Network Virtual Appliance security with defense-in-depth, and managing the migration of services into the new environment.
Programmes of this scale create the foundation for councils to modernise their digital services and operate more effectively.
Designing a cloud innovation programme for a major European energy company
Another major engagement involved designing an £11 million cloud innovation programme for one of Europe’s largest energy companies, a supplier to some of the biggest automotive manufacturers in the world.
As part of this three-year project, a detailed discovery phase saw the team work with department heads across the vast organisation – including 17 heads in the IT department alone. Only when they had truly got under the skin of the business, could they build an
Azure cloud landing zone perfectly aligned to their multifaceted requirements.
They then performed the migration of services and transformation of the application portfolio,to utilise more cloud native services as opposed to VMs.
Part of the work also involved redefining the delivery team structure. The organisation had previously relied on 30 offshore developers with narrow specialisms and was typically utilising only around 45% of the available resource capacity.
A new team model was introduced consisting of 50% premium UK talent, 25% nearshore and 25% offshore resources, creating a structure designed to support ongoing innovation more effectively.
Reflecting on the projects
Looking back across these projects – from supercomputing platforms to energy markets, Formula One teams to public sector transformation – the common thread is the complexity organisations are trying to navigate.
Every one has its own mix of people, processes and technologies, all interwoven over time. From the inside, that complexity can often feel almost impossible to untangle. But in reality, many of the underlying challenges are surprisingly familiar.
Over the years I’ve seen the same kinds of infrastructure challenges, similar problem statements, and many of the same cultural and operational hurdles appear again and again across different industries.
That doesn’t mean every organisation is the same. Each one deserves to be understood in its own right. But with the right experience – and a disciplined discovery approach – those layers can be carefully unpacked and the productivity potential becomes VERY exciting indeed.
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