Professional Experience
IT Specialist
IBM GLOBAL SERVICES, Denver, Colorado 02/1995-03/2010
Managed both batch and online programs for a major Energy & Utility company for both commercial Gas and commercial Electric Billing clients. Involved in projects from all of the various stages from initial concept and proposal prepation through system architecture definition, design, test/debug, deployment, and final client acceptance. Level of involment with supporting these applications was spread across designing, coding, testing, and implementation of changes, fixes, and enhancements.
* A business critical application wuth an availability of 24/7 had been experiencing unscheduled outages at an outage of once a month. I accepted the role as Technical Change Management Team Lead and began thoroughly testing all changes prior to implementation. Since taking this action, the application has experienced zero unscheduled outages for the past 10 consecutive years.
* The clients were using an intensive manual entry process that required that required over 30 minutes for completion. I created and implemented an automated process reducing the number of entries from 100 entries to one single keystroke entry for completion. As a result of implementing that new process, I was ble to improve processing time by 98 % reducing client interaction with an associated annual savings of $200,000.
* Providing an outside customer a daily report reuired the clients to generate, print, and then fax the report to the customer. I designed and implemented an automated process that emailed the report directly to the external customer. This resulted in no paper needed and no fax machine required allowing client intervention time to be reduced by 99 % and saving the client $40,000 yearly.
* The Billing clients had a need to transfer data from printed reports to EXCEL Spreadsheets. I crafted and implemented a process that automatically a File Transfer of the report data to the file server where it could be opened up in an EXCEL Spreadsheet format reducing a need for paper to zero, the possibility of manual entry errors dropped to zero, and client intervention and client intervention time was reduced by 99 % .
* In 1999, the Utility Billing clients expressed deep concerns about their critical system integrity and operability once the system date became January 01, 2000. I recruited and led a team of four individuals that researched 1500 program modules and corrected 50 potential program bugs. These actions allowed the system to remain operational and zero errors were deteced when the new millennium was encountered.
* 50 percent of the REMEDY change records created by the application support staff were being rejected by Change Management for numerous errors. Upon me being selected as the Technical Change Management Team Lead, I began reviewing and correcting each change record, which reduced change records classified as "Rejected" or "Unsuccessful" down to zero for the last 10 years.
* When a critical 24/7 application needed a support staff, I acted as a member of a three-person team. Which support and enhanced this particular Billing application that was a $4 million application that generated $50 million annually in natural gas transport revenue for a majoor commercial gas utility.
* Contractual reuirements directed IT staff to perform Disaster Recovery drills annually on all of the customer's computer systems with a goal to increase recoverability each year. I acted as the Lead representative and sole participant for my division's team for these exercises. This action resulted in my division to exceed the Disaster Recovery drill goal for 15 consective years by recording a 100 % database recoverability and 100 % application recoverability within the targeted Service Level Agreement.
* The Gas Transportation clients made a decision to migrate their application and data from an IMS Database environment to a DB2 Database environment. I designed and created batch jobs that extracted billing data from IMS Databases and in addition I created and implemented software to load more than 70,000,000 archived bills from tape to the DB2 Databases, resulting in the client saving approximately $400,999 in licenses and support costs.
Computer Programmer
XCEL ENERGY, Denver, Colorado 06/1987-02/1995
Analyzed, designed, constructed, maintained, and enhanced mainframe applications for the Rate Revenue Reporting system, Electric Distribution Facility system, Railcar system, and Gas Management system for both Commercial Gas and Commercial Electric clients in the Utility industry.
* Created and maintained the Rate Administration Filing System. This application tracked communications between the Company and the Colorado Public Utilities Commission.
* When there was a need for a business critical 24/7 application to supply company executives with reports involving Rate Revenues, I designed, created, maintained, and executed the Rate Revenue Reporting system, utilizing IDEAL, PL/I, and SAS programming languages, and a DB2 database to store the data.
* Utilizing my in-depth knowledge of computer analysis, programming and systems development, I designed high level business requirement documents and detailed technical specifications.
* Accepted the position and acted as the sole team member providing 24/7 Mainframe Support for four legacy application that were written in PL/I and DL/I, utilizing VSAM and IMS Databases.
* Involved in the analysis and proposal planning stages for a proposed update to the current existing Mainframe legacy systems, which required preparing detailed documentation of the existing systems and documenting current system requirements. This process involved detailed interaction with the client to prepare documentation of existing system performance.
* Enhanced MVS/JCL to load DB2 Tables.
* Redisgned several unstructured, spaghetti code, and batch COBOL programs in structured format. This project reduced batch processing time by 10 % and problem analysis and resolution time by 25 %.
Electronics Manufacturing Technician
STORAGETEK, Lousville, Colorado 01/1980-12/1985
Involved in testing and troubleshooting production and field returned Disk Drives, Disk Controllers, and Tape Drive equipment. This position required extensive knowledge of electronic theory and construction. A through familiarity with various types of test equipment such as RF Service Monitors, Spectrum Analyzers, Oscilloscopes, Power Meters, Digital Multimeters, and RF Power Attenuators. A knowledge of high reliability soldering was required.
* Responsible for reading and interpreting schematics and block diagrams.
* Repaired electrical/electronic cables and connectors by using test equipment and hand tools.
* Localized malfunctions and repaired or replaced faulty parts and subassemblies.
* Operated, aligned, adjusted, calibrated, and performed preventive maintenance on equipment.
* Involved with failure analysis, board testing, chip verification, and characterization.
* Developed test plans and procedures and performed failure analysis on PCBA and ASIC issues.
* Characterized different interfaces and components (Flash, DDR, and SDR memories).
* Verified new features and other functions work per design and per specification.
* Performed signal integrity work for memory interfaces, Flash, DDR, and SDR.
* Incorporated special test boards with VHDL, programmed parts, and developed an automated process resulting in less time and more reliable data.
* Worked with Boards Shops addressing problems to improve production yields.
* Tested and troubleshot circuit board assemblies down to the component level.
* Performed various design verification, shock and vibration, environment and acoustic tests on computer disk drives
* Reduced in-house inventory by performing failure analysis in production failures.
* Assigned a wide range of jobs including unit testing, system testing, performing stress testing, and working with board layout designs.
IBM GLOBAL SERVICES, Denver, Colorado 02/1995-03/2010
Managed both batch and online programs for a major Energy & Utility company for both commercial Gas and commercial Electric Billing clients. Involved in projects from all of the various stages from initial concept and proposal prepation through system architecture definition, design, test/debug, deployment, and final client acceptance. Level of involment with supporting these applications was spread across designing, coding, testing, and implementation of changes, fixes, and enhancements.
* A business critical application wuth an availability of 24/7 had been experiencing unscheduled outages at an outage of once a month. I accepted the role as Technical Change Management Team Lead and began thoroughly testing all changes prior to implementation. Since taking this action, the application has experienced zero unscheduled outages for the past 10 consecutive years.
* The clients were using an intensive manual entry process that required that required over 30 minutes for completion. I created and implemented an automated process reducing the number of entries from 100 entries to one single keystroke entry for completion. As a result of implementing that new process, I was ble to improve processing time by 98 % reducing client interaction with an associated annual savings of $200,000.
* Providing an outside customer a daily report reuired the clients to generate, print, and then fax the report to the customer. I designed and implemented an automated process that emailed the report directly to the external customer. This resulted in no paper needed and no fax machine required allowing client intervention time to be reduced by 99 % and saving the client $40,000 yearly.
* The Billing clients had a need to transfer data from printed reports to EXCEL Spreadsheets. I crafted and implemented a process that automatically a File Transfer of the report data to the file server where it could be opened up in an EXCEL Spreadsheet format reducing a need for paper to zero, the possibility of manual entry errors dropped to zero, and client intervention and client intervention time was reduced by 99 % .
* In 1999, the Utility Billing clients expressed deep concerns about their critical system integrity and operability once the system date became January 01, 2000. I recruited and led a team of four individuals that researched 1500 program modules and corrected 50 potential program bugs. These actions allowed the system to remain operational and zero errors were deteced when the new millennium was encountered.
* 50 percent of the REMEDY change records created by the application support staff were being rejected by Change Management for numerous errors. Upon me being selected as the Technical Change Management Team Lead, I began reviewing and correcting each change record, which reduced change records classified as "Rejected" or "Unsuccessful" down to zero for the last 10 years.
* When a critical 24/7 application needed a support staff, I acted as a member of a three-person team. Which support and enhanced this particular Billing application that was a $4 million application that generated $50 million annually in natural gas transport revenue for a majoor commercial gas utility.
* Contractual reuirements directed IT staff to perform Disaster Recovery drills annually on all of the customer's computer systems with a goal to increase recoverability each year. I acted as the Lead representative and sole participant for my division's team for these exercises. This action resulted in my division to exceed the Disaster Recovery drill goal for 15 consective years by recording a 100 % database recoverability and 100 % application recoverability within the targeted Service Level Agreement.
* The Gas Transportation clients made a decision to migrate their application and data from an IMS Database environment to a DB2 Database environment. I designed and created batch jobs that extracted billing data from IMS Databases and in addition I created and implemented software to load more than 70,000,000 archived bills from tape to the DB2 Databases, resulting in the client saving approximately $400,999 in licenses and support costs.
Computer Programmer
XCEL ENERGY, Denver, Colorado 06/1987-02/1995
Analyzed, designed, constructed, maintained, and enhanced mainframe applications for the Rate Revenue Reporting system, Electric Distribution Facility system, Railcar system, and Gas Management system for both Commercial Gas and Commercial Electric clients in the Utility industry.
* Created and maintained the Rate Administration Filing System. This application tracked communications between the Company and the Colorado Public Utilities Commission.
* When there was a need for a business critical 24/7 application to supply company executives with reports involving Rate Revenues, I designed, created, maintained, and executed the Rate Revenue Reporting system, utilizing IDEAL, PL/I, and SAS programming languages, and a DB2 database to store the data.
* Utilizing my in-depth knowledge of computer analysis, programming and systems development, I designed high level business requirement documents and detailed technical specifications.
* Accepted the position and acted as the sole team member providing 24/7 Mainframe Support for four legacy application that were written in PL/I and DL/I, utilizing VSAM and IMS Databases.
* Involved in the analysis and proposal planning stages for a proposed update to the current existing Mainframe legacy systems, which required preparing detailed documentation of the existing systems and documenting current system requirements. This process involved detailed interaction with the client to prepare documentation of existing system performance.
* Enhanced MVS/JCL to load DB2 Tables.
* Redisgned several unstructured, spaghetti code, and batch COBOL programs in structured format. This project reduced batch processing time by 10 % and problem analysis and resolution time by 25 %.
Electronics Manufacturing Technician
STORAGETEK, Lousville, Colorado 01/1980-12/1985
Involved in testing and troubleshooting production and field returned Disk Drives, Disk Controllers, and Tape Drive equipment. This position required extensive knowledge of electronic theory and construction. A through familiarity with various types of test equipment such as RF Service Monitors, Spectrum Analyzers, Oscilloscopes, Power Meters, Digital Multimeters, and RF Power Attenuators. A knowledge of high reliability soldering was required.
* Responsible for reading and interpreting schematics and block diagrams.
* Repaired electrical/electronic cables and connectors by using test equipment and hand tools.
* Localized malfunctions and repaired or replaced faulty parts and subassemblies.
* Operated, aligned, adjusted, calibrated, and performed preventive maintenance on equipment.
* Involved with failure analysis, board testing, chip verification, and characterization.
* Developed test plans and procedures and performed failure analysis on PCBA and ASIC issues.
* Characterized different interfaces and components (Flash, DDR, and SDR memories).
* Verified new features and other functions work per design and per specification.
* Performed signal integrity work for memory interfaces, Flash, DDR, and SDR.
* Incorporated special test boards with VHDL, programmed parts, and developed an automated process resulting in less time and more reliable data.
* Worked with Boards Shops addressing problems to improve production yields.
* Tested and troubleshot circuit board assemblies down to the component level.
* Performed various design verification, shock and vibration, environment and acoustic tests on computer disk drives
* Reduced in-house inventory by performing failure analysis in production failures.
* Assigned a wide range of jobs including unit testing, system testing, performing stress testing, and working with board layout designs.