Nova Incepta | Associates

Nova Incepta’s key strength lies in the experience of the engineers, telecoms professionals

and trainers it has brought together. Our people have worked for the UK’s leading telecoms

companies in senior positions and their experience spans a range of disciplines. They are

drawn from both the operator and vendor communities from companies such as BT, Cable

& Wireless, Virgin Media, Ericsson and Marconi

Nova Incepta has over 170 Associates. Below are a selection of our people:

Registered in England with Number: 05910429. Registered in Saudi Arabia with CR Number: 1010257713

John Bexon Andrew Taylor Paul France Tony Dunn Andy Wyatt Ian Turner Mike Bick Andy Watson Ian Peacock Paul Evans John Simister Nick Ireland Annette Kilbourn Andrew Whitehead John Enoch David Down Phil Thompson David Leddy Tom McGrane Bob King Eddy Van der Wal James Turley Neil Turner Clyde Watkins David Wilcox

Mitch Reynolds

Keith Dawson

John Bexon

GM Operations KSA John has a long background in telecoms both in consultancy work and working

for BT. John is responsible for running the Nova Incepta Saudi Arabian Organisation

and working with STC on their Broadband Rollout and Interconnect Policy.

• In BT he was in charge of the Regulatory Compliance organisation for BT

Wholesale; setting up a new organisation and ensuring the people

working there fully understand their regulatory obligations.

• Developed and implemented the strategy for BT to deliver Interconnect

traffic to its Wholesale Customers and BT's standard interconnect

agreement, Planning and Operations policy for interconnecting BT's

network with the 120 Operators other operator in the UK bringing in

revenues of £645m.

• Managed the Technical Account managers dealing with all technical

aspects of interconnect with BT's network for all UK

• Developed and produced the restoration policy for dealing with

catastrophic failures of BT's network. Evaluated options for recovery,

trialled and implemented these for national use. This provided BT with a

cost efficient process for catastrophic network recovery.

• Led the team that managed BT's network structure and traffic routeing.

• John also led a workshop for Uganda Telecoms, in Kampala, considering

the new regulatory environment in Uganda and specifically how to build a

relationship with and influence their Regulator together with the

importance of Complying with regulation.

Mitch Reynolds General Manager Independent Technology Assistance

Mitch has over 20 years experience in the telecommunications industry.

Prior to joining Nova Incepta Mitch worked for Ericssons where he worked on a

variety of projects including:

• securing a major managed services deal outsourcing the operation of a major

UK network

• the UK's first multi-vendor managed spares and repairs contract

• the transfer and integration of 100 support and repairs staff into Ericsson

Previously Mitch had held a number of positions within Marconi including Head of

Support Development focussing on both delivering and improving support to next

generation networks.

From 2003-2006 Mitch also managed the delivery of training and education to

Marconi's customers and had previously worked in production, planning & forecasting

and on customer projects.

Paul France

Senior Associate In the mid 70s Paul joined BT and became part of a team involved in early pioneering

work in optical fibres, including the development of fibre lasers and amplifiers.

He built up an international reputation within his field and became an acknowledged

expert, publishing two books in the field, sitting on several international committees

and giving invited papers at international conferences.

This technology was licensed out to several US companies and Paul was involved in

the licence negotiations and technology transfer. The work was acknowledged

externally with Society of Glass Technology Redstone Award, Science and

Technology prize from the Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers, and a Queen's

Award to Industry in 1986.

Paul was responsible for the Solution Design of all BT UK internet and data services.

He was directly responsible for the design of IPStream, the Wholesale broadband IP

service which has now sold over 8 m lines, working with major vendors such as Cisco,

Alcatel and Fujitsu etc. In addition Paul led the formation of the ‘Broadband’ ADSL

programme for BT.

Paul was also responsible for the delivery BT Retail broadband programmes which

initially included the trial of LLU technology, but more recently involved leading the

delivery of the FTTP and ADSL2+ programmes, as well as the new OpenWiFi service

BT-FON

Since September 2008 Paul has been working as Programme Lead for a new FTTP

project in the Middle East. This involves bringing Saudi Telecom Ltd up to a state of

operational readiness for a large-scale deployment of FTTP for up to 70k premises in

2009, including:

• Development of new fibre cable and PON standards, practices and planning

rules • Definition and development of new customer environment with lower fault rates

• Design of operational support processes and systems for FTTP

• Performance monitoring of end-to-end service benchmarked against

competitors • Cost and RoI modelling for FTTP business case

Paul has over 100 published papers across the field of fibre optics and has presented

at numerous international conferences, including keynote presentations at Supercom.

Paul is a Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology

Tony Dunn

Senior Associate Tony has a long background in telecommunications, both in consultancy work and

working for BT.

Tony had many roles in BT but his last role was as the Chief Designer UK Networks

(Design of UK Core and Access Networks, Network OSS, Evolution of PSTN from

TDM to ATM/IP networks). Selected Achievements

Chief Designer

• Identified migration path for BT PSTN to an IP centric Voice and Data network

• Re-negotiated FRIACO with Oftel almost doubling the price charged to OLOs

for this service

• Led BT’s response to Oftel on Local Loop Unbundling

• Led New NTE (network terminating equipment) project team, gained financial

authority for £100m deployment contract

• Developed and delivered Leadership Development Programme

Architect • Initiated and managed Invitation to Tender for BT’s Next Generation Switch,

financial authority £120m over 18 months (project team of 50 people drawn

from across BT, plus 100 directly reporting staff).

• Delivered Route Factors for inclusion in Report & Accounts

• Responsible for BT’s Network Restoration capability

• Responsible for the Access R&D Programme; £16m pa direct expenditure with

BT Labs Strat Options • Invented, developed and successfully trialled New Network Terminating

Equipment • Author of BT’s Radio Strategy

• Invented, developed, project managed and successfully launched Expedient

Temporary Access Using Cellular Technology • Managed Colchester DECT Radio Trial, which led to the development of BT’s

OnePhone (world’s first dual-mode DECT/GSM phone) and which

subsequently led to development of BT Bluephone (launched as BT Fusion)

As well as working for Nova Incepta, Tony is the owner of TD Consulting, whose

clients include: • Ardlin Systems Ltd / Fluke Networks • Corning Cable Systems GmbH

• ECI (UK) Ltd

• McAlpine Infrastructure Services

• McKenna Communications

Andy Wyatt Senior Associate Andy is ex BT and the positions that he held were: • General Manager Wholesale Product Development.

o Andy led a team of product specialists, and was responsible for in

excess of 70 major concurrent product development projects that

generated ~£1.5bn revenue across the Broadband, Ethernet, and VoIP

portfolio. He also was responsible for the 21CN product developments

for this portfolio.

• GM, BB Strategy and Development.

o Andy led the strategic debate and developments for BT Wholesales

expansion of Broadband services during the LLU and 21CN Industry

consultations. He worked closely with the Wholesale Board members,

BT Group Portfolio and Industry leaders to establish the future plans for

BB in the UK. • Service Platform Manager for the UK IP & Data Networks.

o Andy led the delivery development and improvement programmes for the

IPstream, IPVPN, DialIP, and Direct Managed Internet Services. He was

a founding member of the UK Network's IP Management Team.

• Broadband IP Platform Manager.

o Andy pioneered the early trials of DSL based IP services, and delivered

a scaleable network solution for IPstream from inception through to the

first 1 million customers. Andy is currently working with Nova Incepta on the Saudi Telecom (STC) Fibre to the

Home programme, where he is delivering the Operational Readiness project and

Customer Experience performance measures.

Ian Turner

Planning Consultant

Ian Turner has over 30 years experience in the telecoms industry working for BT

where his last role was 21st CN Voice Transformation and Strategy Manager where

he was part of a matrix team responsible for establishing and assuring the delivery of

the Telephone Network transformation within the 21CN programme to meet business

imperatives within time, cost and quality. He also created the network strategy and evolution plans for the transformation.

Producing plans for all BTs Legacy systems interfacing with the 21st CN. Developing

solutions for the UK defence Network for 21st CN.

Ian also led the team responsible managing the legacy transition for all System X

aspects. Ian has also been responsible for Managing the Policy which dealt with all the System

X Equipment (Including Locals and the Trunk Network) , Restoration planning and

Regulator options.

Previously Ian had been responsible for the project that ensured the infrastructure for

the equipment modernisation of London was in ahead of installation. This included

power, accommodation, MDFs and data cleansing.

Ian was also part of the team which delivered FAS (Flexible Access System) for the

fibre Networks in London.

At one time Ian was also responsible for a Transmission Construction team working

on TV Systems, Kilostreams, Megastreams plus all Transmission items. This included

planning and installing the TV Broadcast System in Wembley Arena. Ian also

managed a large team of Clerk of Works in the London Region.

Mike Bick Senior Associate Mike has been deeply involved in the evolution of NGN from the earliest days and has

over 10 years of active involvement and experience in this area.

His career in BT lasted over 40 years during which he undertook a wide variety of

high-technology and often forward looking roles. These included equipment design,

product support and strategy development. He started his career as a designer of

digital equipment, moving to software development and made a major contribution to

the development of one of the first processor controlled TDM switches. Following this

he moved to product support including that for AXE10.

He was an early advocate for network transformation to IP using soft-switches and

later IMS architectures both within BT and in the wider telecoms community and has

been part of the team developing the BT NGN voice strategy (21C) since 1998. He

was the BT technical representative to the MultiService Forum (MSF) for nearly 10

years and has been a major contributor to that organisation where he has presented

many papers.

Key achievements include:

1. Key contributions to the BT NGN Voice architecture. 2. Facilitation of development of the H248 profile used to support the UK PSTN

feature set.

3. Major participation in the technical adjudication of several strategic ITTs which

lead to procurement contracts with values in excess of £500m.

4. BT Technical lead within Consult21 for agreeing Voice Line Control (VLC)

requirements with industry. 5. Development of the MSF access architecture.

6. Development of the BT interconnect standards engagement strategy.

Andy Watson Associate Andy has a wide experience in all aspects of the telecommunications industry, ranging

from manufacturing to the implementation of sophisticated networks projects. Much of

his work has been in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Russia, Poland, Taiwan and China,

including Hong Kong. His work has often involved the management of multi-national

teams which had to be motivated towards common goals.

This wide experience was particularly useful when working on a World Bank funded

project in East Africa where the objective was to develop technical and process

specifications covering a range of technologies. These technologies ranged from

digital switches and transmission in the metropolitan areas to simpler technologies

best suited to harsher, rural environments.

Throughout his career, Andy has been involved in network design, network

development, support infrastructures and business plans including capital investment,

cash flow and return on investment.

His most recent assignment was to audit the access network of Saudi

Telecommunications Corporation (STC) The objectives of the audit was to assess the

current capability of delivering broadband services to the end user and to recommend

policies (technical solutions, HR requirements, marketing policies and support

mechanisms) enabling STC to introduce Triple Play.

As a Senior Project Manager with Ericsson, Andy had total responsibility for delivering

a £100M project into the Belgian national operator (Belgacom) This project included

the management of hardware and software specification and eventual delivery,

development of processes (disaster recovery, change management, type approval

and in-service software and hardware upgrades) The aims of the project was to

deploy a managed network delivering triple play whilst maintaining service through the

legacy network. The project was financially complex and included stringent delivery

timescales with heavy penalties for failure. The project was successfully concluded.

Ian Peacock Associate Ian Peacock joins Nova Incepta after over 30 years in BT with extensive experience

of the provision process, access network including Hands Off Access Network project

(HOAN) and managing the installation and commissioning of new equipment and

plant. Ian project managed the BT trial of HOAN which reduced the cost of provision of

service to customers saving BT over £100m pa.

As Access Project and Process Development Manager in BT Retail Ian managed the

full life cycle delivery of the Left in Jumpers project. Introduced process and system

changes to reduce customer dissatisfaction on PSTN non visit order types.

Implemented bespoke PSTN provision process to new houses and established

managing churn measurement suite to enable understanding and segmentation of

churn components.

Overall Ian is an experienced change manager with a proven track record in

managing business improvement through project management of process and system

driven programmes of work.

Andrew Taylor

Associate Drew Taylor joins Nova Incepta as Director of Operations Saudi Arabia.

Drew previously worked for BT for 26 years and is a versatile planning and budget

manager delivering results in business changes , processes and projects.

Prior to BT he had a ten year career with operational management posts in the oil

industry inspecting pipelines, food production and horticulture.

Drew specialises in economic planning/analysis, forecasting/modelling, capacity

management, project management/delivery, solution design, data management and

auditing, cost management accounting.

Drew’s final role in BT was as a Design Authority for PSTN voice services where his

role was to act as an internal consultant , to author and deliver Network Design

guidance to Operational Units and to determine policy for uses of the main BT

network infrastructure ; migration to new technology, transfer engineering, platform

updates and large customer orders, regulatory issues and capacity studies. Many of

the solutions on which he lead , resulted in highly lucrative customer orders on the

basis of network integrity and quality. Prior to this in BT Drew had been Budget Manager for Strategic Capital Planning in

Scotland then for all the BT northern regions. He also lead the tactical planning team

for the whole of Scotland providing capacity and traffic management.

Drew was also chosen by Telconsult and sponsored by the British Council to deliver a

series of lectures to NITEL staff in Nigeria on economics and Network planning.

He has a degree in History and a Masters degree in Business Administration from the

prestigious Strathclyde University Business School.

John Simister

Associate John Simister joins Nova Incepta as an Associate after a career where he worked

within both the Telecommunications and Defence market sectors.

John is an experienced and highly versatile Programmer / Developer / Analyst with a

proven track record of successful contract and project delivery.

John excels in being commercially astute and results orientated and has a strong

technical background / strong emphasis on goal directed solutions.

He has a wealth of System Engineering experience and Telecoms expertise in

development of network image reconciliation and modelling, call routeing and

distribution simulation, network utilisation, data sieving, shell scripting, risk analysis,

project management, auditing, control system, troubleshooting, issue resolution,

reporting, technical documentation, installation, software development, preparing &

presenting training, coaching, efficiency, reliability, configuration & change

management, business development, management support & resource planning.

Amongst John’s achievements are:

• Designed search engine to receive & compile manageable data from various

sources • Implemented ‘repeat run’ process to collect results from periods of time

following a query

• Successfully compressed & stored all data for future reference for business

analysis • Identified several billing errors due to 3rd party hardware timing anomalies,

saving £Ms

• Collated information for rate negotiations with Line Operators & gaining £25M

rebate

• Reconciled data from 8 different databases to create 1 & cleaned up all

databases

• Reduced processing of 1 million calls from 1 day to 20 mins by speeding up

existing codes • Introduced ‘memory dumps’ and restart facility after every 1 million calls to

prevent wasted time following hardware issues

• Championed changing of annual run rate to quarterly to provide greater

accuracy of data

Keith Dawson

Associate Keith has over 12 years' technical experience in the deployment and management of

telecoms networks, the first 10 years of which were spent with BT, specialising in

access networks. His experience includes planning and designing OSP and ISP networks, managing

fault reduction programmes, managing field staff, Operator training and contract

management.

Keith is an expert in SQL database design, Crystal reporting and is technically astute,

with an understanding of a wide range of telecoms technologies and networks, such

as: xDSL, IPTV, FTTx, System X, AXE10, 21CN, IP, NGN and MSAN. One of his major roles in BT involved the introduction of ADSL, in terms of ensuring

that the copper plant was capable of delivering the new DSL-based broadband

service.

He also has a good understanding of CPE, including technology from Siemens,

Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei, from an access network perspective, as well as being

fully trained in all facets of customer service and workload systems, such as Oracle

and WFM. Whilst in BT, Keith was a gold cup winner of the prestigious BT "My Customer

Challenge", as well as the recipient of the BT Business apprentice award for hard

work/progress and good results.

Nick Ireland

Associate Prior to joining Nova Incepta Nick had an extensive career of over 34 years with BT.

Most recently as part of BTs 21C Network, where he worked with the UK industry

developing interoperability and network solutions between communication providers,

their services and technologies. In parallel Nick developed and wrote BTs technical

interconnect policy that was underpinned by commercial, regulatory and compliance

foundations.

Nick has a deep understanding of the UK industry, the way interoperability standards

are developed and the compliance and regulatory environment in which they work. He

has been Secretary of the Technical Steering Group under NICC; Chairman of the

Test Specification Working Group under TSG; BTs representative at NICC Working

Groups.

• Working with industry on MSIL Resilience and announcements, Isolation

Working and Service VLAN.

• Developing the options for the process for Communications Providers to

access the BT Data Structures and Network Inventory, including security.

• Legacy switch planning hardware and software.

• Technical strategy experience for switch and transmission

• Developed planning and implementation of the Blind and Disabled planning

service for BT

• Developed the routeing plan, switch data and OSS data for BTOSS

Paul Evans

Associate Prior to joining Nova Incepta Paul had an extensive career of over 38 years with

British Telecom, where his final role was to coordinate with all of BTs current Line Test

System suppliers. Paul ensured that new requirements specified by BT, had been

correctly understood and implemented.

This role included such matters as security issues, telemetry, number portability and

test access matrix (TAM) trials, in Battersea and Mayfair. A large element of this role

involved documenting processes and procedures, to enable field technicians to

complete their work.

From his time in BT Paul is knowledgeable on 21CN, Project Management, Rollouts,

Line Testing, Broadband, Security issues, Telemetry, Number Portability, Test Access

Matrix (TAM) trials, Rollouts, Training, CoW, Installation, Commissioning, Software,

System X, AXE10. As a field engineer he has extensive knowledge of a wide range of switches including

those supplied to BT from Marconi, Ericsson, Teradyne, JDSU (previously Acterna),

Spirent, Tyco, and Porta Systems As a consultant Paul has planned and implemented a model test network for BT

Group, which will help them rollout their new “21 Century Network”. This test network

will help them understand better what happens on the night of transfer.

Annette Kilbourn

Resource Director

Annette is the Resource Director in Nova Incepta.

Annette began her career in BT, where her final role after over 23 years was

Senior Regulatory Compliance Training Manager. In this role she was

responsible for promoting proactive compliance throughout BT by the

development and implementation of a programme of regulatory compliance

training and company wide communications.

A few of Annette's accomplishments in BT were:- • Project Management of a number of major projects including Interconnect

of the Channel Isles and elements of UK code number changes.

• As Data Protection Manager for BT Wholesale, ensured that BT

Wholesale people (10,000 +) adhered to the Data Protection Act. Whilst

she undertook this role there were no major Data Protection breeches in

this area and CBT training levels were up at 99.9%

• Created BT's first joint extranet site with external Suppliers for which she

won a recognition award.

• Event Management for the new Regulatory Regime TSR Road shows

(Changing Regulatory Requirements). Where she rolled out the

programme for delivery of 39 events.

• Organisation of the first meeting of a new 'Regulated Industries Forum'

by identifying legal council or regulatory directors in over 70 of the top UK

industries • Event managed BT Wholesale Compliance Week.

• Assisted in organising an event at the BT Tower for the Regulatory

Compliance community in the Telecommunications industry. Amongst the work areas that Annette specialises in are Project Management,

Data Protection, Communications, Event Management, Quality Management,

Regulatory Compliance, Training, Resource Planning and Records

Management.

Andrew Whitehead

Senior Associate Andrew worked for Plessey, GPT and Marconi corporation for over 25 years in a

wide variety of high-technology roles from R&D to Product Marketing. After

starting his career with the development of silicon integrated circuits, this

progressed to product management, marketing and business development for

System X, Intelligent Networks, Broadband Access and Softswitch technologies.

Andrew has worked closely with most of the UK and many international

operators and been involved in collaboration with Italtel, Alcatel and Ericsson in

transformation projects for both BT and Telecom Italia. Key areas in which

Andrew specialised are: Network studies, competitive analysis, life-cycle

management and business planning.

Key Achievements • Collaboration with several major operators and PTT's on network

transformation strategies

• Development of economic solutions for the sustainment of narrowband

switching during transformation phase

• Realisation of over £0.5bn of sales over a seven-year period to BT and

other UK operators

• 5-year Unified Business Plan for System X and final completion of the

product life-cycle

• Catalyst Project–development of a new competitive threat model for BT

Wholesale strategy • Implementation of a Life-cycle management process for the entire

Narrowband product range

• Project management of a major cost reduction project involving

replacement of all NMOS ASIC technology

• Devised and realised a new strategic planning process for MVS Product

Division

John Enoch

Senior Associate John has 34 years experience within BT from apprentice to senior manager,

followed by 10 years as VP of a telecoms equipment supplier

Selected Achievements

• District Manager Access for East Anglia serving 3M customers, a team of

over 2000 people, a Capital budget of £75M and very exacting Quality of

Service targets.

• Lead a team of BT senior managers carrying out a strategic study of the

Access Network requested by the BT Main Board.

o Market trends o Technology roadmaps o Competition and Regulatory Issues o International benchmarking

o Process and Systems The recommendations were accepted in full, organisational change

implemented and budgets reset accordingly.

• Appointed GM Access with National responsibility for £750M of capital

spend and a brief to implement a “World Class Access Network” in line

with agreed Strategy Network.

On leaving BT John was appointed UK VP of a Telecoms Equipment supplier.

Highlights in this role included;

• Supporting ADSL contracts in France and Germany

• Winning SDSL contracts in the UK • Winning the first FTTH trial in BT which has now led to the supplier being

short-listed for a national GPON contract as part of BT’s 21st Century

Network

Since September 2008 John has been working as joint Programme Lead for a

new FTTP project in the Middle East. This role includes the

• Development of new fibre cable and PON standards, practices and

planning rules

• Develop Plan, Build, and Repair processes for FTTH

• Definition and development of new customer environment with lower fault

rates • Design of operational support processes and systems for FTTP

• Performance monitoring of end-to-end service benchmarked against

competitors • Cost and RoI modelling for FTTP business case

• DSL Fault Rate reduction

John is a Member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology.

David M Down

Senior Associate As well as working for Nova Incepta David is the Managing Director of DMD

International, a company set-up in Singapore specialising in consultancy on the

business planning lifecycle encompassing, strategy, market and sales planning

including business performance management and balanced scorecards. David

also leads workshops on Strategic Selling, Balanced Scorecards and

Consultancy Skills. In addition David is currently involved with running risk

assessment surveys for Telkom Indonesia .

In his extensive career, David has specialised in sales planning, strategy

planning, business planning, forecasting, budgeting and performance

measurement including balanced scorecard. He has extensive international

experience having worked in the United Kingdom , United States , UAE, Nigeria

, South East Asia, Japan and Australia . He is well known for his ability to

integrate and present technical information in a highly analytical, collaborative

and consultative style which enables clients to enhance the strategic value of

their products and service delivery and make significant contribution to

organisational objectives.

Prior to his current position, David directed the Asia Pacific commercial office

for Concert Communications, a joint venture company between British Telecom

(BT) and AT and T. With Singapore as the headquarters, he was responsible for

overseeing the sales operation and for maintaining all strategy, business, and

market plans together with responsibility for reporting on all sales performance

and revenue. He developed sophisticated global forecasting methodologies for

global use. From 1991 to 1996, he was the regional business and market

planning manager taking the lead within the Regional 'Top Management Team'

for business, marketing and sales planning in BT's Asia Pacific region. Within

this role, he was responsible for direct selling to top 'strategic customers' and

developed all regional market plans, five year plans and short term operational

plans

Phil Thompson

Senior Associate Phil worked for BT for 29 years, starting as an apprentice and rising up the

ranks to senior manager. He then spent 5 years with an equipment

manufacturer as an Account/Project Manager.

Phil has worked as a consultant for the last 5 years and a sample list of some of

the roles that he has performed are as follows:

• APAC – advising on a 5 year Vision & Strategy to move an incumbent

Operator from legacy to NGN. Lead role on access technologies, data

migration and transfer engineering.

• Middle East – advise on the strategy and implementation of a USO policy

to encourage more competition in the market. Lead role in analysis of the

core and access networks and advise on technology selection for

expansion of the access network. Provide governance and programme

management structure to deliver the USO including tender, adjudication

and performance monitoring frameworks.

• UK (BT) – project lead for the migration of product & customer data off

legacy OSS onto new target architecture including physical systems

separation to meet Regulatory requirements. Project manager

responsible for developing project plans, resource model, comms plans

and financial tracking, risk & issue management, developing and

implementing mitigation strategies.

• Responsible for relationship management, responding to RFI/RFP’s and

managing sales of circa $20M

• Project managing new technology trials for ADSL, SDSL,VDSL including

rural deployment, MSAN, LLU& FTTX.

• Access network strategy, targeted uplift programmes and operational

process improvement.

• Programme manager for major OSS development projects

• Senior field operations manger for provision and repair

• Senior planning manager for access networks

• Delivery manager for site rationalisation, staff reduction and cultural

change programmes

David Leddy

Senior Associate David has 35 years’ technical experience in the telecoms industry. He has extensive end-to-end knowledge and design experience of legacy and next- generation PSTN voice switching, transmission and access networks. David has held many UK and international roles during the many transitions of GEC Telecommunications, from being a field support engineer, through to being Director of Customer Engineering for Marconi’s international business, Network Design Director and CTO of Marconi’s North Asia operations, to Head of Softswitch and IMS Development at Ericsson. He currently provides consultancy advice on a wide range of telecoms technical areas.

Tom McGrane Associate Tom is a well respected member of the UK telecoms industry. He had a long

and varied career with BT during which time he developed a reputation as a

manager possessing sound technical expertise and judgement coupled with

good strategic and leadership capabilities.

He was BTs Strategic Voice Lead Architect and later developed his thought

leadership skills while reporting directly to BTs Chief Technology Officer. Tom

led the BTUK team working to integrate BT, Concert & AT&T voice networks

and led the voice team which introduced and developed the concept of Multi

Service Access Nodes (MSANs) while working on a multi million pound ITT

initially intended to procure broadband access DSLAMs. This became one of

the basic building blocks of the transformed 21C voice network architecture. He

is recognised as someone who can develop and drive forward ideas and

concepts from initialisation to production and works well as either a singleton or

in a cross disciplinary team. Tom later worked as one of a small team which developed and drove through

BTs first 21CN end-to-end voice architecture and has a sound knowledge of its

component parts. He has had significant involvement in several associated

large NGN ITTs at all stages.

During his final few years in BT, Tom was BT’s Group Chief Technology Office

representative at standards setting committees in the UK. In particular he was

BTs representative at NICC standards bodies in both the Architecture and the

Naming, Numbering and Addressing teams. He introduced and authored

several NICC specifications in the area of internetworking (including Voice Line

Control) and drove them through to become significant national standards and

the likely basis for European equivalents.

Specific areas of note are as follows:

• Extensive experience working in a technical strategic CTO functions

involving considerable thought leadership capabilities

• Introduced the concept of MSANs into a DSLAM ITT later to become a

building block for BTs NGN

• Part of a small team which developed BTs 21C voice architecture

• Extensive involvement in ITTs from initial information requests through to

vendor recommendation

• Has represented BT with vendors, at UK Standards bodies and with

OFCOM

• Has authored and driven through several technical NGN interconnect

specifications including Voice Line Control.

Bob King Associate Prior to joining Nova Incepta Robert had an extensive career of over 30 years

with British Telecom, where his final role was Senior Technical Support manager

responsible for second line technical support to British Telecoms NGS Voice

over ATM Toll and AXE10 local switches. Previously Robert was Intelligent Network Support manager responsible for

second line support for BT's Advance Voice services platforms consisting of the

Intelligent Contact Manager (ICM) Platform, Horizon (NIP/VIP) platforms,

BTGain, BTPay&Call platforms and the Message services platforms. He

managed the multi vendor supplier relations including incident management.

He was also responsible for the introduction of the Common Intelligent Service

Layer (CISL) , which will replace the Horizon platform.

He was also the Senior Manager responsible for developing the BT Operation

processes for the introduction and maintenance of both the Marconi and

Ericsson softswitches trials. Robert has also lead teams responsible for International Service Quality and

Core Networks Field Performance. During which times he has lead teams with

up to 12 Field managers and 240 field engineers.

As a field engineer he has extensive knowledge of a wide range of switches

including those supplied to BT from Marconi, Ericsson, Alcatel, Siemens and

Lucent.

Eduard Van der Wal Associate Prior to joining Nova Incepta Eduard has had a varied career in civil works,

voice telecomm, electro engineering and fibre optics.

Eduard's last role was in Stesa (Saudi Arabia), where he was responsible for

the initiation of a 1000km long distance OSP O/F installation project along the

East-West oil pipeline for Aramco. This involved Design, Audit, Procurement,

Management and Supervision of extensive OSP civil and cable works through

the mountains and desserts of Saudi Arabia.

Eduard has a vast knowledge of Logistical Support and Construction Material

Distribution Management, Project Management, Project Delivery, Training,

Budgeting, Resource Management, Knowledge of Broadband, Cabling,

Installation of cable routes, Rollouts, Voice Network Installation and

Maintenance, Copper and O/F, Exchange Transfers, Engineering Designs,

wrote technical documentation, External Planner, Jointer & Fitter.

Eduard has extensive experience of working abroad in such places as Nigeria,

Middle East, Sierra Leone and Botswana.

James Turley

Associate Prior to joining Nova Incepta James has had 33 years experience of working in

the Telecommunications industry both in the UK and abroad.

One of James s last roles was as Director, Operational Performance for Cable

and Wireless Europe, where he managed a team of specialists responsible for

the collection, production and analysis of key Business Operational and HR

metrics as well as the design of eEnabled business tools in support of the

overall objectives of the Senior Vice President (SVP) Global Network Services.

James has extensive skills in business, Telecommunications, People

Management, Project Management, Training, Planning and Design, Budgets,

Bid Management, Change Management, Microwave radio, Fibre optics,

Upgrade programmes, Customer Apparatus and Line Maintenance.

Currently James is working on behalf of Nova Incepta for Saudi

Telecommunications (STC) on the Customer Service Training Programme,

where he is up skilling the installation and repair technicians to provide

customers with a first rate broadband repair service.

Neil Turner

Associate Neil Turner joins Nova Incepta as an Associate after a career in BT which lasted

over 35 years and here his final role was Senior in the 21C Release & Upgrade

Programme Office.

Neil is a well respected Telecoms executive with established contacts across

the business and with vendors. He also has a unique blend of experience in

both Legacy architecture and the new technology deployed in BT’s 21st Century

Network.

Amongst Neil’s many achievements in BT prior to joining Nova Incepta were:-

* Introduction of the concept of Business Releases on BT’s 21C Network

(comprising in excess of 170 hardware elements and 768 software variants

from 29 external suppliers) to streamline the conformance testing, deployment

and upgrade processes

* Driving internal thinking on the 21C Network Release Management Process

and implemented the process across BT Design and BT Operate

* Managing budgets of ~£20M per annum

* Recognised as a Legacy expert on System-X and the Ericsson NGS

technologies and having authored an article in ‘The Journal of The

Communications Network’ on the introduction of NGS into BT’s 20C Network

* Developed the 21C Network Voice requirement specifications in the 21C

Network ITT and adjudicated the prospective vendor’s responses.

Clyde Watkins Head of HR

Clyde Watkins is the Head of HR in Nova Incepta.

Prior to joining Nova Incepta Clyde had an extensive career in BT.

During his career in BT he undertook many roles like Network Planning,

Customer Service, Regional Digital Trunk Network Planning, and Head of

Management Development in Procurement.

During his time in Network Planning Clyde became involved in management

development with the objective of improving management skills in the regions.

This experience led to his selection as Head of Management Development for

BT's Procurement Directorate.

After leaving BT, Clyde was a freelance Management and Training consultant

and later became Project Manager (Switch) for a new digital network for the

Saudi National Guard for two years.

David Wilcox

Associate David was in BT for almost 44 years and his last role was the lead for 20C &

21CN Installation Requirements & Strategy.

This role involved David working with other divisions, suppliers and contractors

to reduce installation timescales. He also: • Evaluated new ideas

• Identified and developed new works execution processes and courses

• Reviewed the Site Representative role and identified additional areas of

improvement and developed processes to achieve those improvements.

• Program managed the rollout and industrialisation of two of his own

ideas, a) Exchange Cable Hole Guard b) Vertical Runway support

system, the development of the Cable Hole Assessment Tool (CHAT) for

use by Designers and particularly the installation teams involved with

21CN. Developing and managing the rollout program for DC/AC cable

sheath colour changes.

• Monitored the Installation courses sponsored by BT and developed with

Accenture HR Services a range of courses to cover the re-use of System

X equipment into the 21CN transition period.

Throughout David’s career within BT he had been involved with producing

procedures for Switch Construction and Internal Planning and Programming,

representing London at National “Build The Core Network” meetings,

implementing into London “Early Gains” from Break-Out initiatives, including

introduction of “Best Practise” into London.

Whilst working on these projects he developed practical solutions to operational

problems, investigated working practices and procedures and programmed the

implementation and monitoring to ascertain their effectiveness thus reducing

costs and overheads.

David lead a small Ironwork Virtual Team in developing a new Rack and Cable

Support System (RACSS), Low cost fibre cable runway solution, an improved

copper cable runway system, A new Modular MDF ,and a pricing bench price

for ironwork installers. All these initiatives were adopted by BT, resulting in

considerable cost reductions and decrease installation times and improved

quality David is registered CDM Co-ordinator with the APS and is one of a few

registered CDM Co-ordinators with a Telecommunication background, he is

also a Fellow of the IET.

NGN & NGA
FTTH
Network Interconnect
Network Optimisation
Legacy Technology
Training & Education