Ken Owttrim is the author and publisher of this web site.  He has over twenty-five years of experience in project management.

"Ken is a highly experienced Project Manager whose career began in Manufacturing Operations and expanded into the field of Information Technology. He has a demonstrated ability and strong track record in managing the successful implementation of computing systems projects on time and on budget, in both the private and public sectors".

Reference

"Ken is a well seasoned leader in the Project Management field. He learned his art through practical experiences good and bad. He has an almost unnatural ability to simplify complex projects and environments into their basic manageable components. Ken is frank and honest. He communicates in simple, straight to the point, no nonsense terms that anyone can understand. Personable and humorous, Ken knows when to be firm. With his mantra "Plan the Work, Work the Plan" Ken can be depended on to deliver success every time."

Stephen J. Matthews, CMC, PMP
Regional Vice President
Sierra Systems Group Inc.
 

Major Project Management Experience

• A Program Manager with Sun Microsystems Education Consulting Services, responsible for a team of Project Managers involved with several Learning Management Systems implementations in major corporate environments.

• Project Manager for the Canadian House of Commons PRISM project, a multi-year project whose mandate was to replace all current legacy systems with a consolidated environment of new applications using a common database and based on a three-tier architecture. Responsible for all integration and development activities encompassing HOC staff and third party suppliers.

• Project Manager for a major system initiative at St. Lawrence College. The project’s mandate was to replace the legacy mainframe Student Information System with an implementation of PeopleSoft’s Student Administration product in a client server environment. Responsible for a multi-functional team made up of staff from three different organizations. This was a Y2K solution requiring a successful implementation in an eight month time period.

• Project Director for a large system implementation planning project with the Canadian Blood Services. This project lays out the strategy for replacing the information system in use in all blood centres across Canada. Working out of Ottawa, coordinated a team of business experts from across Canada, along with a systems vendor from France, in preparing a fully detailed and costed implementation plan which was approved by the CBS board of directors.

• Senior Project Manager leading a team of senior business analysts working with a major Canadian insurance company. This project involved the development of business requirements, application software, and subsequent implementation of a client-server based business system. The system was used for claims adjudication on dental, pharmacy, and extended health care lines of business. This system replaces a legacy mainframe environment.

• Project Manager for the development of the host computer system to support the Vehicle Pre-insurance Inspection program offering of one of  Canada’s major banks. Working in conjunction with the supplier of the client workstation software, developed the communications software and host data base server environment to allow the electronic capture and storage of automotive vehicle inspections as required by Ontario law.

• Assisted a major Canadian electrical / mechanical construction company in determining whether to develop or purchase a new enterprise-wide computing system.  This included; preparing the functional requirements, issuing the RFP, analyzing vendor responses, conducting vendor demonstrations, and participating in selecting the vendor of choice.

• Managed the implementation of an integrated financial, inventory, and order entry system for a Canadian subsidiary of a major international computer systems supplier.  This project encompassed all aspects of the Canadian operations and included all branch offices across Canada.  It also included an automated interface with the Corporate Accounting system in U.S.

• Managed the Canadian portion of a North American wide project which upgraded the Customer Service systems for a major computer systems supplier.  This encompassed providing the required application enhancements, acceptance testing, user training and roll out to all the field services offices in Canada.

• Participated in the selection of an ERP software package for a major Canadian computer manufacturer, and subsequently lead the team to a successful multi-division implementation.   This project encompassed all aspects of the Company’s operations from Engineering to Manufacturing, System Configuration, Customer Services, Field Engineering and Accounting.