Tell us a fun fact about yourself
A friend and I once bought a car on eBay for £92, collected it from Birmingham back to Aberdeen, then drove it through Europe (through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy) to Naples and back for a charity rally raising £7500 for CLAN!
Tell us about your career journey so far
Primarily in and around IT in Aberdeen’s oil and gas industry, I’ve worked as an IT engineer for most of my working life.
Studied Computer Network Management & Design at RGU, straight into work as an IT Support Engineer. From there I internally moved to leading a team working on deployment of Oil Industry Safety Software, part of that involved travel to some interesting places such as Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and Basra in Iraq.
I now work for VERIPOS, a precise positioning service company in Aberdeen. We provide data to companies all over the world in Oil & Gas, Mining, Agriculture and Automotive industries to precisely determine where they are using it to centimetre level accuracy.
What was your favourite subject in school and why?
Computing – I’ve always enjoyed working/tinkering with computers, and before the internet was a major thing a friend at school and I managed to connect our home PCs together over dialup modems and send terminal command messages to each other!
What subjects/qualifications are useful in your role?
Computing, Maths, Physics – probably the biggest influence is Computing, but most of my skills and knowledge I’ve picked up over the years due to my inquisitive nature and varied jobs/businesses I’ve worked in.
What is your favourite thing about your job?
Its working with equipment on a truly global scale – we have a piece of equipment in most countries of the world, from Northern Norway to South Africa, Alaska to Japan, and many many more. Along with the “cool tech” we’re involved with such as autonomous cars/ships/tractors.
What is a normal day in your role like?
As we are global 24/7 operation, I’ll often start with checking systems status via dashboards and monitoring screens, followed up with checking emails from local colleagues or from our sister company in Calgary.
As a Project Engineer, I get involved in lots of different tasks, as we are forever running Projects to implement upgrades/new systems and new technologies. My role is to assist with the implementation of those, providing input to installation plans and more recently CyberSecurity requirements.
Suggest an activity that could be done at home that illustrates an aspect of your work?
A lot of what we do is powered by Python code – positional algorithms, calculations etc, a fun place to start is with a Raspberry Pi, and some Python code;
Finding something via precise position isn’t as easy as you might think, and Geocaching can be an example of that;
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