Steve's
CV Steve's
CV
Personal
Details
EDUCATION AND QUALIFICATIONS
1963-1968 : Hutt Valley High School
- University Entrance
APPOINTMENTS
1968-1970 : Griffins & Son Limited
- Accounts Clerk
- Trainee Computer Operator
- Computer Operator
- Senior Computer Operator
1970-1972 : Clyde Engineering Limited
- Programmer
1972-1980 : Computer Consultants Limited
- Programmer
- Analyst Programmer
- Consultant
1981-1985 : Mobil Oil New Zealand Limited
- EDP Auditor
- EDP Consultant
- EDP Business Analyst
1985- Now : Moores Valley Systems Consultants Limited
- Self employed software consultant
Hardware
Since 1985 I have specialised solely in the Personal Computer environment, although my experience prior to this was primarily in the mainframe area.
Software
The areas in which I am most skilled are the development languages from Borlands, primarily Pascal, Delphi and Paradox, I would consider myself to be amongst the country’s leading developers in these. I develop software for both DOS and Windows (16 and 32 bit) environments, although today the 32 bit Windows environment dominates.
Below are listed many of the more popular software packages which I have used over recent years:
- Pascal
- Delphi (all versions)
- Paradox (Dos / Windows)
- Visual Basic
- Visual dBase
- Lotus 123
- MS Access
- MS Excel
- MS Powerpoint
- MS Project
- MS Word
- Word Perfect
- Basic
- Hot Metal Pro
- Crystal Reports
- MS SQL Server
1968-1970 Griffin & Son Limited
My first full time job, where I began as an accounts clerk and progressed to become a senior computer operator.
1970-1972 Clyde Engineering Limited
My first exposure to programming. Here I began programming on a Burroughs E6000 machine which had a massive 4.8KB of memory. I was involved in the development of debtors and inventory systems in this job.
1972-1980 Computer Consultants Limited
This was my learning ground in the real world of systems development. In this job I was exposed to mainframe and mini-computer environments for a myriad of clients - CCL was a bureau company offering both processing and software development services. Most of the development I was involved in here was written in Cobol, although I was also involved in Fortran, BPL and Basic.
In this job I became an Account Manager responsible for a number of systems, many of these were widely used, for instance I was responsible for 27% of the power bills and 25% of the rate demands produced in New Zealand. Some of the systems I was responsible for are listed below:
· Rating
· Electoral Roll
· Electricity Billing
· Gas Billing
· Water Billing
· General Ledger
· Payroll
· Loans Ledger
· Inventory Control
· Job Costing
· Miscellaneous Accounts Receivable
1981-1985 Mobil Oil New Zealand Limited
At Mobil I was appointed as an EDP Auditor, a new area at that time, it was here too that I had my first introduction to in-house politics - an aspect of the corporate environment that I detest to this day.
After completing my assignment as an EDP Auditor I became involved as Mobil’s representative for the evaluation, selection and implementation of systems for a joint venture oil terminal between oil companies at Wiri, Auckland. After that project I was involved in a business analyst role in a project to redefine Mobil’s Marketing and Operations systems including Order Management, Invoicing, Inventory Management, Accounts Receivable and Credit Control; this project carried me to various parts of the world looking at systems used in other Mobil affiliates.
It was in the final part of my assignment at Mobil that Personal Computers came on the scene and I developed a lasting affinity with this type of machine.
After leaving Mobil I set up my own company offering software development services in the Personal Computer environment.
Listed below are some of the clients for which I have developed systems:
1985 - 1986 New Zealand Dairy Board
· Systems Analysis on the MIS Stock System and MIS Export Sales System in a mainframe environment
1986 - 1989 National Mutual Group
· Life Insurance Marketing Systems in a DOS based Pascal environment
1989 - 1990 Sun Alliance Life Ltd
· Life Insurance Marketing Systems in a DOS based Pascal environment
1989 - 1994 AMP Society
· Life Insurance Marketing Systems in a DOS based Pascal environment
1992 Wellington Area Health Board
· Personal computing environmental study
1992 Homedale Autocourt
· Service station daily balance sheet system, Stock recording system, Debtors system using dBase II
1992 BP Oil
· Gas Delivery System in a DOS based Paradox environment
1993 – 1998 Lower Hutt City Council (Environmental Laboratory Services)
· Prototype for Laboratory system in a Paradox for Windows environment. Although this contract was ultimately won by a competitor I was called upon to provide some sophisticated custom reporting which I continued to support for some time.
1993 - 1994 NZ Dairy Board
· Production Planning Systems in a DOS based Paradox environment
· Product Profitability System in a Windows based Paradox environment
1993 - 1994 AWA (now Radiola Corporation)
· Real time meat processing system in a mixed DOS and Windows environment using both Paradox and Pascal
1994 - 1995 Commercial Union Insurance
· Travel Insurance system in a Windows based Paradox environment
1995 - Now Cigna Insurance
· Life Insurance Marketing Systems
· Specialised investment portfolio statement printing system
· Cigna have adopted my Life Insurance Marketing System for use by their affiliates worldwide
· Point of Sale and automated underwriting system
· Investment Statements printing
· User support for POS system
· Internet / Intranet Point of Sale system
· Live updating from the internet via FTP
· I continue to support these systems which are in a Windows based Delphi environment
1995 - 1996 The Training Solutions Company Limited
· Training Authoring System, this is a system which enables authors to develop training courses which are compiled as an EXE file for distribution. It is written using Delphi and it actually generates Delphi code which is passed back through the Delphi compiler to generate the course as an EXE file.
· Through Training Solutions I also developed touch screen systems for the ANZ Bank and the Telecom Technology Roadshow.
1997 - Now Information Management Services
· IMS Payroll System in a 32 bit Windows environment. My involvement has been to provide maintenance and support while IMS attempted to recruit their own staff. This is an on-going role.
· Writing package add-ons, which are basically features that can be distributed as stand-alone modules to give added functionality to the system; two such examples are features to enable the interface of various time-clocks, and the ability to e-mail payslips to employees.
1997 New Zealand Fire Service
· Financial Reporting System maintenance and support in a Paradox for Windows environment.
1998 New Zealand Dairy Board
· Production Planning System using Paradox for Windows.
1999 New Zealand Post
· Short contract producing Crystal Reports from a Sybase back-end.
1999 - 2001 New Zealand Customs Service
· Revision of statistical reporting system in MS Access.
1999 - Now Millenium Technology Limited
· Shell Fuelcard administration System interfacing to card encoder hardware.
· I continue to support this systems which is in a Windows based Delphi environment
· Various local bodies, including Hutt City, Porirua City, South Taranaki District Council with a receipting application to read bar codes and MICR and interface data directly into existing applications.
1999 - 2001 National Bank of New Zealand
· Short contract to convert Paradox systems to a NT environment.
· Y2K conversion of Paradox systems.
· Y2K support of various Paradox systems
2000 - 2001 Fujitsu NZ Ltd
· Integrated Repair Centre Database to record details of "swap out" equipment, based in Delphi with a MS Access backend database
2001 - Now Marlborough Seafoods Ltd
· On-going support of an existing Paradox based system
· Gradual replacement of existing system with a Delphi based system interfacing to a MS SQL Server back-end.
2003 - Now Industrial Research Ltd
· On-going support of an existing Delphi based system, with both Paradox and MS SQL Server back-ends.
I am able to offer considerable experience in software development over a broad spectrum of applications using a variety of development platforms.
From my Job History it can be seen that I have considerable experience in the insurance industry, I have developed my own systems that I have marketed with considerable success in that industry. In order to keep up to date with technology in this market area I have invested considerable resources in developing demonstration systems.
My main development languages have been selected from those produced by Borland. I began using Turbo Pascal back in 1985 and have continued using it through its various versions; when Borland started developing Delphi, it was a natural extension that I be involved in the beta test programme, which began some twelve months before Delphi was publicly released. About three months before it was publicly released I, along with a few others from New Zealand, was invited to Sydney to a workshop hosted by Borland to learn more about Delphi from the people who actually developed it, the prime purpose of this was to provide a pool of resources that could be called upon once the product was released.
Somewhere along the way I found a need for a database product, I selected Paradox. MS Windows had not been released at this time so we worked in a DOS environment; as with Delphi, when Borland were developing the Windows version of Paradox I was invited to join the beta test programme - I continued to be on the beta test programme for Paradox up until the time that Borland sold the product. I currently use Delphi for most systems development, now days normally coupled with an Access database via OLEDB where required.
I have recently dabbled with MS Visual Basic as a means of expanding my areas of expertise. The method I use to bring myself up to speed with new technologies is normally to convert an existing system to use the new technology - I have found this to be an excellent method of learning the capabilities and "incapabilities" of the new technology. More recently I have started using SQL Server as a back-end database – this has occurred as a result of my work with Marlborough Seafoods and Industrial Research Ltd.I have an extensive home-based office including various machines running in a network which can be used to test developments in differing environments, I have laser printing and colour scanning devices, as well as a dedicated data communications line in addition to my voice line.
Over the years I have tried to keep abreast of the advances in the industry and I believe that my experience shows that I have been reasonably successful.