Richard started his career as a planner in 1978 at the Military Vehicle Establishment in Surrey, UK, helping to develop the next battle tank, and quickly learned how not to run a project. It overran cost and schedule so badly it was cancelled! It was at this time he learned Artemis (on system No.2 !) or Apollo as it was then called, which effectively guaranteed him employment for the next 20 years. MVEE used ICL PERT and barcharts were lengths of colored tape stuck to the page!

His break came in 1982 when appointed as Lead Planner on a project in Saudi Arabia….here’s a piece of desert, build a city! Great experience, a 20,000 activity network on Artemis, with the $300m contract value spread across the activities, and the monthly invoice was an activity listing, allocated $ value, percentage complete and thus earned value! A 20mb storage disc was 12 inches in diameter and one inch thick, for the old HP 1000 machine!

Subsequently he has worked in Holland, USA, Qatar, Sarawak, Germany, UK, France, Iran, UAE, Oman, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Thailand 2005-2010, and currently Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Of all the projects he’s worked on, the two that stand out are the European Transonic Windtunnel in Cologne, because it is the only one of it’s kind, operating at -270o C and Mach 1.5, and a one week assignment to advise on planning systems became three very fruitful years, and the Airport Railway in Hong Kong, 1994-1998, completed on time, and arguably within budget.

Richard got his MBA in 2003 after two very intense years studying out of hours in Hong Kong, and became Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers in July 2011

Richard has a Filipina wife and a young son.

Skills: Richard firmly believes that if a planner knows the principles of his profession they can be applied to any project, so in the last 25 years he has been able to switch between Petrochem and Rail projects. This can be an advantage when job hunting. He is also very much a hands on planner who tries to handle the whole spectrum from data entry to Board presentations.

Forensic Planning | Teaching Project Controls and planning software | Software | Artemis – All versions expert (but not up to date) | Primavera P3 (expert) and P6 | Microsoft Project | Office