Martin Farrar

Positive, dynamic, and results-orientated Project Management Professional with over twenty years’ experience, in delivering end to end Business and IT large scale projects ranging in value from £500k to £15m with full knowledge of project management principles from concept to delivery. Possessing excellent people skills including written and verbal communication, effective leadership of cross-functional teams in a matrix management style; leveraging excellent emotional intelligence coaching techniques, the ability to communicate in technical and non-technical language to a wide variety of audiences using a variety of methods and combined with detailed knowledge of project methodologies such as Agile, Waterfall and Managing Successful Programmes. Highly resilient and achieves consistently strong results, used to managing multiple tasks simultaneously, often working in pressurised environments and delivering successful project outcomes and benefits realisation.

• Successfully implemented the migration of the telephony solution from Skype to Teams for whole of the University in an aggressive three-month timeframe, this included data mapping and working with data migration specialists, third party suppliers and decommissioning infrastructure and included training and communication activity and realised benefits and cost savings of a total of £300k per annum for the next three years.
• Executing a successful implementation of a portfolio of IT Infrastructure projects under the Data, Digital and Infrastructure programme including Back Up Infrastructure and Cyber 24/7 Monitoring solution, successfully delivering project outcomes, and realising benefits more than £1m collaborating with colleagues from the IT team and third-party suppliers from tender to delivery
• Successful execution and achievement of Cyber Essentials Accreditation for the University by cross management of business and IT team to deliver a network segregated solution and realised clear operational benefits to enable research colleagues to achieve significantly enhanced contract values and research income by over 40% to £10m.
• Defined a successful business case approach working in tandem with a management consultancy and delivered with senior management in the Shared Service Centre a wide-ranging tranche of initiatives ranging from delivery of business change with team movement and process mapping to a complex telephony solution.
• Delivered a transitional plan for delivering of finance function into Shared Services working in conjunction with the Head of Operations in the Shared Service Centre to deliver successful people and process efficiencies, this realised an FTE saving of five and delivered £110k PA in cost savings.