Christopher Best
1061 Shoal Point Rd, Ajax, Ontario, L1z 1K5
As a strategically focused, pro-active project manager with 10 years experience in the Information Technology industry, I seek a challenging and diverse role in the IT arena where my skills in managing projects, people, and tasks coupled with my technical history and experience can be effectively applied.
KEY
QUALIFICATIONS
Ø
Highly developed project
management skills
Ø
Strong technical background in
many realms including collaboration systems, application development and
distribution, systems support development, development platform environment
marketing and support, database
components, mainframe systems management
Ø
Well-developed people management,
leadership and mentoring skills
Ø
Highly motivated and
results-oriented approach
Ø
Diligent and hard working with
the determination to see tasks through to completion
Ø
Strong problem-solving abilities
and analytical skills
Ø
Independent self-starter with
demonstrated ability to be flexible, adaptable, to changing priorities
Ø
Proven track record in delivering
sound, stable, robust solutions
Career Overview
Pc/Lan
& Office Systems, RBC
The PC/Lan and Office Systems group
manages infrastructure systems such as messaging, collaboration, distributed print,
pc hardware, mainframe support, software and operating system release
management and implementation, etc for RBC and its various entities (Banking,
Capital Markets, Centura, Dominion Securities, Dain, Insurance, Liberty, etc in
Canada, the US, Europe, and Asia)
Project Manager,
PC/Lan Projects May,
2005 - Present
The
PC/Lan Projects group is a centralized Project Management group dedicated to
managing the larger scale, high profile,
and technically difficult infrastructure projects within the PC/Lan
& Office Systems organisation.
Ø
Managing
international email compliance review implementations for Capital Markets to
provide services for monitored users in Australia, Singapore, Japan, China,
Amsterdam, the UK, and
Ø
Managing
a messaging infrastructure upgrade (to provide a better tier of DRP,
robustness) for RBC Dexia, Capital Markets and Global Private Banking business
lines in the
Ø
Managing
personal email file (PSTs) elimination and data migration projects for Dominion
Securities (Head Office & Branches across Canada) and the general North
American RBC population (70,000 people)
Ø
Managing
personal email file (PSTs) elimination component of the RBC Dain infrastructure
integration with RBC (6,000 people)
Ø
Implementing
back-end infrastructure utilities for the RBC Centura printing environment
Ø
Co-managing
vendor pilot program at RBC Centura – working with the vendor and RBC Centura
back office and branch staff to implement complete new printing support system
pilot
Ø
Co-managing
pro-active emergency security ActiveX upgrade and its impact as it applies to
all systems running at RBC
Ø
Managing
file-system archiving solution, evaluating vendors, planning tasks and
activity, determining feasibility
Project Manager of eMail
Archiving, Office Systems September
2004 – May 2005
Email Archiving refers to an
email retention, discovery, compliance review, mailbox management, and pst
elimination infrastructure to support RBC and its various entities.
Ø
Project
Manager and Operational Manager for this project – 3 full-time and 2 part-time
technical analysts
Ø
$8
Million project cost, 45 server implementation, 32 terabyte worm storage,
within 2 computer centers
Ø
Capturing
email from 75,000 users, providing email compliance review services for 10,000 monitored
employees in North America and the UK, enabling the ability to search 75,000
users email for legal, HR, subpoena, and regulatory requests
Ø
Presentations
to senior management, executive review committees, architecture review
committees, support groups, business
heads, specific business groups
Ø
End-user
enterprise communications and support chain process development
Ø
Engaging
legal, compliance, records management, and records publication groups
Ø
Engaging
a significant number of IT groups (telecom, storage, network, strategic
sourcing, help desks, computer centers, finance, all major business heads,
usability, intranet, messaging)
Ø
Various
PST elimination sub-projects to move towards elimination of locally stored
desktop email as well as elimination of PST data on file-servers
Ø
Dealt
with implementation issues and roadblocks encountered due to the significant
size of the implementation with the vendor – largest implementation of
Enterprise Vault (KVS) in
Senior Technical
Analyst, Collaborative Application Systems January
2003 – September, 2004
The
Collaborative Application Systems group manages the evaluation, implementation,
analysis, development and 3rd level support for systems such as
Sharepoint, Outlook/Exchange Applications, Lotus Notes, Domino, eRoom, and
Centra Web Conferencing.
Ø
Implemented
Windows Sharepoint Services within RBC
Ø
Managed
all aspects such as security walkthroughs, implementation of servers,
usability, intranet adherence, and all
other work to implement the system into production
Ø
Developed
processes for administering the system in regards to the user community and
various business units
Ø
Managed
the Outlook/Exchange Application production and development platform
Ø
Assisted
many groups in automating applications resulting in millions of dollars in FTE
and redundancy savings
Ø
Responsible
for process development, best-practices, developer community base (work groups,
knowledge bases, lunch and learns, documentation), business group
presentations, and overall marketing of
the application platform within RBC and its various business lines
Senior Technical
Systems Analyst, Office Systems February
2001 – January 2003
The
Office Systems group manages the evaluation, implementation, analysis,
development and 3rd level support for infrastructure systems such as
email messaging, instant messaging, collaboration, and electronic forms.
Ø
Designed,
developed, implemented various application systems to support messaging
environment within RBC including the “RBC ccMail Automated utilities”, used by
RBC worldwide to manage the maintenance of its ccMail environment
Ø
Supported
and promoted the Application Programming Interfaces for messaging for both
distributed and mainframe environments to allow applications to support system email-enablement
Ø
Designed,
developed, implemented various enterprise systems including applications to
determine resource availability, instant online survey systems, etc used by
70,000 users worldwide
Ø
Mentored
and assisted many business groups within RBC to utilise tools
Application
Administrator of Host Office Systems November,
1997 -February 2001
Host
Office Systems was a series of infrastructure applications encompassing RBC’s
original email, calendaring, global directory, fax, messaging API, and
world-wide message routing systems.
Ø
Managed
the evaluation, implementation, analysis, development and 3rd level
support
Ø
Worked
with vendors from around the world on issues and new products
Ø
Implemented
all y2k readiness planning and upgrades
Ø
Assisted
in new product determinations and assessments
Ø
Developed
utility and sub-systems to support all office products
Ø
Managed
and scheduled all software upgrades/implementations
EDUCATION
Masters
Certificate, Project Management, Schulich School of Business, York University 2004
Programmer/Analyst
Diploma, Centennial
College of Applied Arts & Technology 1997
AWARDS AND RECOGNITION
Royal Ideas
President’s Award - 2002
Royal Bank of
Canada Staff Suggestion Award - 2001
GT&O Royal
Performance Awards - Oct
2000, June 2005, Feb 2002
GT&O Team
Excellence Awards - Dec
1999, June 2005
GT&O Special
Achievement Award,
June 1999
+ 14 Various Group Performance Awards 1997 -
2005
PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS
Project Management Institute – Active Member
Durham Highlands PMI Chapter – Active Member