Outcomes that hold.
Eight engagements, nearly two decades.

The principal consolidated a national broadcaster's Redshift, Athena and Snowflake estates into one governed platform and one unified data model under sponsorship from the organisation's most senior technology executive - migrating corporate KPI reporting without interrupting it, standing up dedicated data marts for product analytics, marketing and media, and decommissioning the legacy AWS estate behind them.

The situation

The broadcaster carried multiple fragmented data environments that had grown up separately, each with its own tooling, reporting and cost base. The organisation's most senior technology executive sponsored a program to consolidate them into a single shared platform and a unified data model - without interrupting the corporate KPI reporting or the analytics the business depended on day to day.

The approach

The principal led the workstreams that consolidated the Redshift, Athena and Snowflake environments into the shared platform. He managed the migration of corporate KPI reporting onto the consolidated model and established dedicated data marts for product analytics, marketing and media, so each function drew from the same platform without cutting across the others. Once the new environment was carrying the load, he oversaw the decommissioning of the legacy AWS environment and its associated infrastructure.

The outcome

Corporate reporting and analytics moved onto a single governed platform and a unified data model, replacing the fragmented environments that preceded them. Dedicated data marts gave the product analytics, marketing and media teams a consistent, function-specific view without re-fragmenting the platform and retiring the legacy estate removed duplicated infrastructure and its running cost.

The platform vendor set the deadline and would not move it: the incumbent analytics platform switched off on 1 July 2024, with no extensions. The principal migrated a national broadcaster's entire digital analytics capability to Snowplow inside the six-month delivery window, coordinating 100+ staff across product, data and engineering while the organisation kept publishing and broadcasting. The cutover on 30 June raised no incidents and audience insight continuity held on every platform the broadcaster operates.

The situation

The sunset of the incumbent analytics platform created a fixed, externally imposed deadline that could not move. The broadcaster, with thousands of staff across television, radio, digital and on-demand services, had to replace its core digital analytics platform without losing audience insight continuity in any business unit, on any platform, at any point. More than one hundred staff across product, data and engineering had to be coordinated through the change, while the organisation continued to publish and broadcast.

The approach

The principal led the end-to-end program under direct governance from the organisation's most senior technology executive. The work spanned platform migration, a full rebuild of event tracking and tagging across the web, mobile and app estate, SDK upgrades across mobile, tablet and connected-TV environments and the creation of new analytics data models and dashboards in Superset and Power BI. Metric definitions and event schema standards were redefined as part of the migration and tagging was moved off the previous tag manager into the broadcaster's presentational layer, so the new platform started clean rather than inheriting old debt.

The outcome

The platform migrated within the six-month delivery window and cut over on 30 June with no incidents raised, a day ahead of the vendor's switch-off. Full audience insight continuity was preserved across every business unit and every distribution platform and the rebuilt data models and dashboards gave the product, data and engineering teams a single, consistent view of audience behaviour on the new platform.

When repeated platform-vendor outages threatened the launch of a university's new corporate website, the easy call was to ship anyway. The principal made the harder one: he took the go-live decision to an executive checkpoint, re-baselined the date, held the vendor to escalated commitments and then delivered the Sitecore headless replacement - a 3,000-page estate, 100 rebuilt online forms and four integrations - at a clean cutover with no incidents, all while advising the director group on digital strategy.

The situation

A large multi-campus Australian regional university needed to replace its corporate web platform without breaking ongoing student recruitment or brand activity. A wide set of functional stakeholders had to be kept aligned through the program, and four integrations had to land cleanly for the new platform to function: Course Db, MuleSoft, Marketo and SugarCRM.

The approach

The principal led the end-to-end delivery of the Sitecore headless CMS replacement while providing concurrent senior strategic advisory to the director group. He held the platform vendor and the implementation partner to account through delivery, escalating to the vendor's executive line when platform instability began to threaten the launch date. Delivery covered a 3,000-page estate, including more than 450 study, discipline and course pages, 100 rebuilt online forms and the four integrations, and the advisory work spanned digital strategy, technology roadmap and sequencing across the multi-campus environment.

The outcome

The corporate website went live to the schedule agreed at an executive go/no-go checkpoint and cut over with no incidents raised. When platform-vendor instability threatened the launch, the go-live was re-baselined by two months through that checkpoint rather than shipping a platform stakeholders had lost confidence in. Post go-live support demand barely registered and the functional stakeholder groups stayed aligned through to go-live.

A federally funded cyber security research centre was tracking the nation's cyber research portfolio in spreadsheets. The principal replaced that with Salesforce CRM and a purpose-built research portal - one platform carrying every initiative from funding through milestones to intellectual property - and delivered it in parallel with an organisation-wide security uplift without missing a board-committed date.

The situation

The centre coordinated cyber security research across universities, government and industry nationally, but its own operations ran on Excel, Word and SharePoint with limited IT support. Research funding, project milestones and intellectual property - the assets the centre existed to create and protect - were tracked manually across disconnected documents. The board had committed to delivery dates that could not move and the same small organisation was simultaneously undertaking an enterprise security uplift.

The approach

As Head of Project Delivery, the principal established the delivery discipline the programs needed and ran both in parallel. For this program he implemented Salesforce CRM alongside a purpose-built project and research portal, designed so that every initiative could be tracked end to end: funding at one end, milestones through the middle and intellectual property at the other. The rollout had to work for a distributed national research community, not a single office, and it ran concurrently with the security uplift under the same delivery leadership, so the two programs were sequenced around each other rather than competing.

The outcome

The centre moved from manual tracking to a single platform view of its entire research portfolio. Researchers and project staff tracked their own initiatives through the portal, funding-to-IP visibility existed for the first time and both parallel programs delivered to their board-committed dates, within a combined program value of more than $1 million across the two.

An organisation whose business was cyber security research was running on Excel, Word and SharePoint with limited IT support. The principal closed the gap between mission and posture: he contracted a managed service provider and a security operations centre, designed the operating model that made two vendors run as one service and rolled Microsoft 365 E5 security with CrowdStrike threat monitoring across the organisation and cyber security research staff nationally - every device under one centrally managed solution, anchored to ISO 27001.

The situation

The centre's business was cyber security research, yet its own posture was Excel, Word and SharePoint with limited IT support. It held nationally significant research and intellectual property, its researchers were distributed across the country on unmanaged devices and its credibility with government and industry partners rested on practising the security it researched. The board committed to fixed dates and the uplift was anchored to ISO 27001.

The approach

The principal ran the program end to end and the first delivery decision was a sourcing one: the centre could not build the capability internally, so he procured and contracted two providers - a managed service provider for the platform and a security operations centre for monitoring and response - then designed the relationship and ways of working between them so the centre received one coherent service rather than two vendors with a seam. On that foundation he delivered Microsoft 365 E5 security across the organisation: Defender, Intune and Information Protection, with CrowdStrike actively monitoring threats. The rollout extended to cyber security research staff across the country, bringing every mobile and desktop device under one centrally managed solution, and ran in parallel with the centre's CRM and research portal delivery (case 04) under the same delivery leadership.

The outcome

A centre that had started with limited IT support ended the program operating as a security leader, with E5-level security across its own organisation and its national research community, every device centrally managed and every threat actively monitored. Two new provider relationships were contracted, integrated and operating as one service and the program delivered to its board-committed dates alongside the parallel CRM program.

The program was forecast at thirty-six months; the principal delivered it in twelve, for under half the forecast program cost. He took over a politically fractured platform program opposed by architecture, cybersecurity, development and business stakeholders at once, built the technical fluency to challenge it from first principles and re-scoped it into a delivery every one of those groups publicly endorsed. The university recognised the work with an excellence award in leadership.

The situation

A major Australian public research university, spread across multiple campuses with tens of thousands of students, needed to rebuild its enterprise web content management platform. The funded program definition forecast three years of work and the program carried a history that made failure the expected outcome. Four internal groups held material reasons to want it not to succeed: architecture, cybersecurity, development and major business stakeholders were each, in different ways, organised against it.

The approach

The principal built genuine technical fluency on the job - platform architecture, security requirements and integration dependencies - at a level that allowed real engagement with the architecture, cybersecurity and engineering groups rather than process management around them. That fluency let him challenge technical decisions and re-scope delivery from first principles. He rebuilt the fractured stakeholder relationships one at a time and established governance that surfaced the underlying conflicts rather than papering over them.

The outcome

• Delivered in twelve months against a thirty-six month forecast, for under half the forecast program cost
• Every previously resistant stakeholder group endorsed the outcome publicly
• Recognised with an excellence award in leadership, for positive change across individuals, teams and the business
• Opened a multi-year mandate at the same university, spanning Salesforce marketing automation integrating multiple institutional data sources, a Degree Finder overhaul on Oracle Cloud and the initiation, business case and procurement of an enterprise digital content and asset management platform

The provider's product was digital; its evidence culture was not. The principal instated the first digital strategy at Australia's first fully online postgraduate provider in 2010 and ran it for five years on proof rather than opinion: a 1,226-page estate audit with every finding paired to a remediation, acquisition-cost formulas on every campaign, a vendor panel run with purchase-order traceability, visitors up 40 per cent in two years against a defined baseline and revenue up approximately 16 per cent year-on-year. Other institutions asked to hear how it was done.

The situation

The provider served up to 5,000 students annually across 60 postgraduate programs, competing nationally as a fully online institution against campus-based universities many times its size. Its digital presence was the business, not a channel for it, yet the estate had grown without discipline and marketing spend ran ahead of evidence. There was no project framework governing the work - the rigour had to be brought in and applied by choice.

The approach

The principal instated a digital strategy in 2010 and dedicated digital resourcing in 2011, then ran the operation on evidence. A full audit of the 1,226-page web estate quantified the problems and paired every finding with a recommendation that was then driven to remediation. Campaign planning carried named benefit formulas - visitor acquisition cost, customer acquisition cost and gross return - with a stakeholder responsibility matrix across eight organisational units, and annual planning set numeric targets. Vendor management ran through a work-package register: 19 packages tracked with priority, purchase order number, quote number, deadline and payment status.

The outcome

Two years into the strategy, visitors had grown 40 per cent, page views 46 per cent and bounce rate had fallen more than six points, all reported against a defined baseline in annual master reports. Revenue was up approximately 16 per cent year-on-year. Application conversion was analysed to the month, day and time slot and student research fed program restructure decisions rather than sitting in a drawer. The strategy narrative was presented on request to an interstate university and to a global higher education services vendor - early evidence of the advisory capability that later became a service line.

Long before any framework required it, the principal was running marketing initiatives like governed projects. At a large Australian public university he introduced Salesforce CRM with Vice-Chancellery endorsement and ran it as its certified administrator, wrote initiation documents and business cases no one had asked for, bought under a NSW whole-of-government panel and measured everything: one trial he proposed and escalated to the Vice-Chancellor lifted peak-month sign-ups to 209 per cent of baseline.

The situation

A large public university competed for students across faculties with no CRM, no single view of prospective students and no mandated project framework on the marketing side of the house. Initiatives ran on relationships and instinct, so building the case for anything - a platform, a device, a media buy - meant creating the evidence discipline as well as the initiative itself.

The approach

The principal project managed the introduction of Salesforce CRM, a strategic initiative endorsed by the Vice-Chancellery, stood the org up with live lead data within months and completed Salesforce Certified Administrator accreditation in July 2009. He ran the platform as an operating system rather than a launch, with annual administration cycles rebuilding 26 dashboards and 54 reports each year. Around the platform he applied formal delivery discipline no one had asked for: initiation documents and proposals on the university's project office templates, a three-vendor evaluation across roughly forty criteria under a NSW whole-of-government panel contract and agency pricing challenged line by line.

The outcome

The CRM became the university's prospective-student engagement platform and remained under the principal's administration for years after launch. The measured loop returned its evidence: event sign-ups rose to 209 per cent of the baseline in the peak month, with the single trialled device matching what four of the previous setup had achieved in half the time. Eleven monthly marketing reports and roughly ninety campaign reports were authored across the window, each with year-on-year comparison and causal commentary - a reporting discipline most environments of that era did not have.