When I left the Navy, I joined a local software consultancy company as a project manager. I was very happy with the change. My first assignment was with the UK’s Prison Service, which was worried about the possible impact of the Millennium Bug and what might happen as the century changed. So, I can safely say that I’ve been to prison. Actually, I’ve been to 25 of them, all in the West Country. It was work that was to last for nearly three years, and I had a marvellous team working with me. I think we all learned a lot, and we had a great time travelling around and sorting out the problems that we unearthed.
After the Prisons work, it was made clear to me that the company didn’t really value project management skills and they were were difficult to sell to clients. So, I was offered an assignment as a Safety Engineer, working for a rail client. I was first given a 2-day training course in preparation. the assignment was a success though, and so I was asked to teach railway clients the Yellow Book course, which provided me both with lots of client exposure and with a deep understanding of safety engineering. Eventually, I took the role of Secretary to the Yellow Book Steering Group, before the book was withdrawn in January 2012.
In 2008, I was asked to travel to Sydney, Australia, to work for Railcorp, which at that time ran the suburban railways there. Railcorp was having a new section of railway built (the Epping to Chatswood Rail Link or ECRL) and needed an acceptance process to be devised and implemented. I worked with Railcorp for 6 months.
After returning to Bath, I worked firstly as a Work Package Manager, and then as Modifications Manager for the IFACTS software development for NATS. Thereafter, I changed employer twice, before returning to Bath in 2019, where my employer (then Altran) was bought by Capgemini, a huge and growing organisation. I retired at the end of 2023.
Hmm. I spent longer working in engineering consultancy than I did in the RN (25 years vs 21) but this section is shorter…