Alan Howlett

Experience

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  BSRIA

  Jan 1987 - Jan 1989

  Research Engineer

  Software Development, Experimental Rig Operation, Building Energy Management System demonstrations.

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  Abba Consultants (Automation) Ltd

  Oct 1989 - Jun 1990

  Software Engineer

  I was employed to write software to capture data from a range of devices, such as a weather station, heat meter & others, so that clients with extensive sub-lets (eg airports) could accurately and easily bill tenants for utilities.

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  Rex, Thompson & Partners Ltd

  Jul 1990 - Jun 1991

  Software Engineer

  I designed, wrote and tested software for terminal ballistic modelling using Fortran on IBM PC's. I loved the job- the work was interesting and I had good colleagues, but the "peace dividend" of the collapse of the Soviet Union meant that defence spending was cut and I was out of a job.

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  London Electricity PLC

  Sept 1991 - May 1993

  Software Engineer

  Oracle database development using PL*Forms, Development of Coding Standards for Oracle programming,ObjectStar/Huron Programming, including training new developers.

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  Data Technologies Ltd

  May 1993 - now

  Director

  Director, but with responsibilities from software sales, design & development. Writing embedded software in C and business software in Delphi.

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  National Grid PLC

  Jun 1993 - Sept 1993

  Contract Fortran Programmer

  Developed Fortran software for capturing, storing and presenting data and for providing a calendar of special events (eg bank holidays). Some DEC Rally experience.

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  Stadshypotek

  Sept 1993 - Jan 1994

  Contract Huron/ObjectStar Programmer

  Wrote an extensive payment collection system to fund an "Individual Pension Savings" system. The code I wrote could talk to the Swedish banking system and to the Swedish Post Office system. In order to test it I also needed to write emulators for the banking & post office systems as the process of setting up payments was highly interactive over a period days to months: Simulations were the only way to provide realistic changes. I worked extensively with a Swede called Anna Ekelin of Origo Consulting and found her excellent. Show less

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  South Australian Housing Trust

  May 1994 - Dec 1994

  Senior Huron/ObjectStart Developer

  Various aspects of their "Accounts Receivable" system for processing payments from tenants of their large stock of social housing. We worked in a partially condemned building, but I had some good colleagues and we got the job done, taking it live towards the end of the contract.

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  Tesco Stores Ltd

  Mar 1995 - Feb 1997

  Lead Developer on Petrol Replenishment system

  Worked on the still-being-implemented Fuel System (FS), also called Scorpio. My first task was to stabilise the existing system (there were multiple fatal errors processing data in the batch jobs most nights largely due to bad data being inadequately handled), resulting in all the batch jobs running smoothly nearly every night. This was a priority because the on-call staff were being distracted with regularly fixing faults at 2-3am. Team productivity improved with proper night's sleep!I then rewrote all the overnight batch jobs to improve the quality of the code, and I wrote numerous extensions to the system. Show less

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  Experian (Formerly CCN Group Limited)

  Feb 1997 - Feb 1998

  Lead Developer

  Lead Developer on a Huron/ObjectStar project to provide a credit-card data processing system. I worked on the cardholder aspects, dealing with the capture of data for new applicants and amendments. Huron/ObjectStar was possibly the wrong tool to write this in as the execution performance wasn't as good as the client wanted. The project was cancelled.