How do you spend most of your time at work?
Most of the time I spend working remotely, supporting the sales and engineering teams. I always have at least three screens on my desk, which enables me to track everything, and also flag anything urgent that I need to deal with instantly.
As CTO I try to find what’s the new trend across different industries, and how we can use them to deploy new solutions, using the latest new technology.
What’s the one gadget you can’t live without?
My watch. Time is the most valuable and important ‘asset’ that we hold, and we can't get it back. When planning and designing new systems and trying to implement them, it's the one resource we cannot afford to use incorrectly.
Could you describe your most unforgettable project.
I would say the migration of a large shopping centre, in central London. We took them from a previous radio infrastructure using Hytera XPT multi-site, to a linked capacity plus multi-site.
The biggest challenge was to migrate the system, over a quiet period of eight hours, while trying to mitigate to make sure that no quality of service was compromised.
Since we had to migrate some components to the new system, careful planning and critical time management was the most important factor on the day of the deployment.
Also we needed to maintain the previous system, which we had done for over five years, without any disruption, then reaping the reward of upgrading this for our client. The new system is similar but with a more feature-rich infrastructure, with Motorola LCP, TrboNet Plus and TrboNet Watch.
This enabled us to even be more pro-active in getting the necessary reports on the health of our infrastructure, as well as raising the support process to higher standards, and bringing disruption down to a virtual zero.
What’s the most unusual thing you’ve seen while working in the business communications sector?
Using antennas as coat hangers - that was an interesting one.
But I believe what I see daily is how important communication is, through everything we do. Plus, seeing sometimes how different environments lack a decent communication system deployed on-site, maximising work efficiency and helping with H&S.
I’ve been amazed, too often, on site visits, where processes are in place, but there is no way to get the information to a centralised location, so everyone can be aware of what’s happening.
What advice would you give to someone who’s starting their first job in the industry?
Let yourself feel completely comfortable on choosing what you want to do. Nowadays, with digital technology, radio is no longer a boring job or a one skill set only job.
You will need to learn a bit of networking, radio, and any new technology in the market. So I assure you, it won't be boring -you can make it as interesting as you want it to be.
I started at Chatterbox Ltd [now CSECrossom] as a radio technician, 10-plus years ago. I'm always fascinated with what [those in the industry] can learn, on a daily basis.
How has the sector changed since you first started working in it?
The sector now is much more driven on IoT and integration with third party applications. This is compared to a couple of years ago, where two-way radio was more for voice communication only.
Today, data is 80 per cent of all we send across our infrastructure, and only 20 per cent will be voice. More and more often we see this shift in the sector.
New technology has certainly created some challenges. For instance, integrating to SCADA, BMS, FirePanels, and PoC, and developing H&S solutions around lone worker and remote working.
However, once again, our team has researched, developed and deployed complex systems, learning from it every step of the way.
What are going to be the main challenges going forward?
Radio used to be a slow-paced industry until the digital era. New technology is now constantly being developed, which means we now always need to be up to date.
Fortunately, we do have an enthusiastic team and variety of skill sets. This allow us to grab information from different sources, and combine it all, on the solutions we provide.
