Articles by Jonathan Davies (Article: 1)

May 2013: Project Management distance-learning MSc completed. I looked at graphical languages in manufacturing projects. In 2011 I was modelling part and data flow through a new casting facility planned for the UK working with software from their Software Centre of Excellence. In 2012 I was project managing a part identification system to go inside the factory, mostly using data matrices: inkjetted, laser printed and dot peened.

The need to find some software design tools first led me to Object Orientated Analysis and Design (OOA and OOD) and then to the Unified Modelling Language (UML) with Rational Rose in 2002.

Having been asked to write Windows image-processing s/w for new Bacterial Colony Picking robots for use on the Human Genome Project in 2000 I turned to C++.

I then got introduced to COM by Dale Rogerson’s ‘Inside COM’. My first COM objects used MFC but I soon moved onto the Active Template Library (ATL), Windows Template Library (WTL) and Standard template Library (STL).

Whilst my software design targets have now expanded from ‘control’ into domains such as Windows, firmware and communications design, the more general Project Management route I’ve taken has brought me into areas where I can happily deal with corporate management and clients directly.

This move has, it seems, completed a circle. I’m now able to manage the technical aspects of multi-discipline projects whilst working with clients, suppliers and anyone else needed to keep a project on track and to use techniques such as value management to ensure that any code written by the team is code that the client wants and appreciates.

Along the way I’ve become a Chartered Engineer and a Member of both the IET, and the Association for Project and have just joined INCOSE UK.