ALAN NORMAN WALKER
43 Barrington Court, Winton Street, Bristol, UK, BS4 2BT
+44 (0)117 972 4180 - awalker@hemscott.net - www.awalker.hemscott.net

Summary of data communications experience

Network Specialist, thoroughly experienced in Wide Area Network, telecoms, network control, X25, Frame Relay and ISP equipment for five years, mature yet fit and hard working, quick to learn, team player able to work on own initiative. Respected by customers and telco engineers, wide skills set and significant responsibility for major successful development of London dialplant (247 x 2 Mbps E1 bearers plus related trunk lines over three Ericsson switches).

The future

I envisage my future post as being people-led but needing an excellent technical background, perhaps managing relationships with telcos and suppliers, including negotiating and monitoring service level agreements, with project management from time to time. My favourite cities for permanent work are Bristol, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Leeds, Newcastle, Nottingham, Zurich, Wien/Vienna, Paris, Nice, Milano/Milan and Budapest. Fixed term and contract work is welcome anywhere worldwide.

2000-2001 own employment

Returned to business analysis, successfully built up own investment portfolio for income and growth, home office using best of proprietary web tools and own unique database, 1993-date, though 11 September and after have proved very challenging. Part-time work with special needs and handicapped children in term time is also rewarding and contrasting.

Occasional more conventional temporary assignments has been taken to maintain contacts, the most interesting was short language/engineering involvement with Deutzer Technische Kohle GmbH, Berlin in the UK. I also work, expenses only, as Company Secretary for Barrington Court Bristol Management Co Ltd.

On a more personal level appearance for a full episode of Channel 4's Fifteen-to-One quiz show, including the final, proved a high point of October 2001, it was prerecorded for transmission on 19 November.

1995-2000 Network Specialist

UUNet WorldCom Advanced Networks European Network Control (ENC), Bristol, UK and Amsterdam, Netherlands. A major company reorganisation with office closure has permitted successful self-employment, and the opportunity to seek another rewarding position.

Detailed product knowledge - telecoms

Long line and bearer troubleshooting, loopback and BERT tests, WorldCom telco documentation, European telco fault procedures, disaster recovery (eg colocation powerdown), isolation of telco faults from customer and own hardware problems.

Testing and management of WorldCom and global partner rotaries for service level agreement (SLA) purposes - British Telecom, Global One, Equant.

Detailed product knowledge - branded hardware (OEM)

Network Control. Frame relay status and diagnostics, throughput and routing, customer and trunk problems. StrataCom IGX and BPX switches - installs, failures, monitoring, routing and throughput speeds.

Detailed product knowledge - 3Com

Quad modem racks analogue and digital, troubleshooting at card, DS0 (64 kbps) and E1 (2 Mbps) level, installation. Install project planning, firmware upgrades, 'Total Control' (SNMP) detailed diagnostics and alarms, quality control. Sonix AB7000 ISDN racks (Germany). Daily status checks and maintenance over six countries, temperature control. Able to configure, both manually or via Total Control, all parameters and country code flash change. Identification of hardware failures requiring engineering attention, avoidance of site callouts. Protocols used: V.32, V34, V34+, V.90, ISDN.

Teacher of basics to technicians, escalation point for technicians and specialists covering 75 rotaries worldwide, researcher/designer of standard SNMP troubleshooting for ENC team.

London dialplant - lead ENC project manager in install, upgrade, testing, telco design and daily examination of London dialplant 1995-2000, built up from 392 to 7410 ports. Up to 6200 simultaneous users, but 99.8% measured connectivity was maintained.

Detailed product knowledge - WorldCom proprietary wide area network

Node hardware and cabling, remote diagnostics & emergency tool, point of sale (Visa), 1022 protocol databases - status and diagnostics, documentation for installs, sites and inventory, node software design/upload. Fuller details.

Working knowledge

Cisco router commands at user and enable level - equivalent to CCNA with practical experience. Controlware and Citam ISDN dial backup. Telco switch databuild design, operation and load balancing. Competent HP OpenView, StrataView+ and Office 98 user. Developing country WAN and telecommunications problems. Pure IP based networks, Voice over Frame Relay.

Other skills

Two years' customer service experience and external training prior to the establishment of separate first level customer service. The entire WAN chain from customer home PC setup to our network to customer host was covered.

Fluent French, good German (perfected in Switzerland) and basic Italian were a key feature of my original employment. Allocation to French and German language calls developed my skills in that area, maintained now by engineer and technician contact.

Full clean UK driving licence; good travel knowledge, including Eastern Europe.

Flexibility towards colleagues and manager regarding work rota changes. Selected to train technicians in new Amsterdam office for extended period, on replacement of Bristol control.

Documentation coordinator with meticulous English from earlier employment. Procedures were checked or written from time to time, however main efforts were later directed to audit and improvement of mission-critical documentation, especially that used by the Network State Monitor and technicians investigating alarms.

My Bristol role also involved handling more complex second and third level questions posed by customers and technicians, where information or the source of a fault was incomplete, escalating to other teams when ENC limits were reached. A high work output was measured in terms of customer tickets opened/closed and number of log entries.

Network State Monitor (alarm) work over some weekends and evenings provided variety and enhanced earnings. Reliablity and thoroughness were necessary here, also capability of prioritising in very busy situations without missing key failures.

Earlier employment history summary

Distribution/logistics management in Bristol, large multinational (SmithKline Beecham) and small private company (Pearson), with team of twelve drivers. Improved control enabled better customer service and vehicle availability.

During 1994 I updated my technology skills and learned new ones as trainer, teaching adults the basics of computing for City & Guilds NVQ3 qualifications, then working on business analysis and relational databases in government service. Fixed term contracts as business analyst in London, also business author in privatised electricity industry occupied 1992-1993, after gaining distinction as Master of Science (see below). Full details available on request.

Education summary

MSc with distinction, Energy Systems Management, University of Sunderland 1992.
BSc(Eng), Engineering Science, Universities of Cambridge and Aberdeen.
City & Guilds Advanced Diploma, Information Technology
GCE 'A' level: three all at grade A. 'O' levels nine.

ANW 11 October 2001 Unsolicited telecoms commendations Return to home page

To copy CV in Windows without virus risk - Shift + Ctrl + Home from here, then Ctrl + C, then paste into your wordprocessing program.