
CTO - Chief Technology Officer
Construções Europa Ar-Lindo, SA
2011-05 » 2014-11
» Curriculum Vitae » Employments
Main activities and responsibilities:
- IT Infrastructure Management, Local Domain Administration, and Local Machine Support
- Machine Control, Configuration and Maintenance, using GPO and Scripting (ex. Email Signatures, File System Maintenance, Backups…)
- ERP’s Implementation and Development Supervision
- Improved Usability, Data Control and Data Integrity in our ERP’s implementation.
- Third-party's System Implementation and Automation
- Internal Processes and Work-flow monitoring, Auditing and Automation
- Application development for Auditing and Reporting, for our Decision Support (DSS)
- Development of an Internal Application Sample for Construction Work Management, using an internal Rapid Development Paradigm in WinForms, and matching Data Migration Tool. Developed with C# and MySQL and AD.
- Development of internal DSS software using C#, MySQL and Pervasive SQL.
- Paperless Office Environment enforcement.
- Improved inter-departmental communication, Departmental KPI’s Reporting, Performance Boosting and Accountability via Workflow Auditing, using Alert Messaging and Reporting. Some Workflow processes had 90% improvement in performance.
- Integration of the Third-Party’s HR Biometric System, and our ERP’s HR module, with automatic attendance processing development.
- Auditing and Reporting for support of our Monthly Objective executive meetings.
- Company Group's website development. See here.
- Development of our Corporate Website, using Html, Php, MySQL, CSS, Javascript (JQuery and project specific)
- Redevelopment of our table based web site, in order to add and improve functionality and performance.
- Replication of the website for the different companies in the group. Shared Resources, Database and Web Application.
- Fully multi-language capabilities.
- Development of our Corporate Website, using Html, Php, MySQL, CSS, Javascript (JQuery and project specific)
- Web-hosting management
- Telecommunications management
- €30.000 plus in annual communications savings.
- VPN implementation, for all the company's remote sites.
IT Infrastructure Management
During the time I was at Europa Ar-Lindo, I was responsible for all the IT infrastructure of the company. My main function, as a System Administrator, was to configure and oversight the servers, users, equipments and processes.
I had 3 headquarters servers, a remote server in a corporate own Hotel (The Lince) in the Azores, and about 70 workstations in the main company, and other 30 in the Hotel, at my direct oversight.
My main goal as a System Administrator, was to try and minimize support needs by the users, and I tried to automatize the most I could, both the servers as well as the user machines, in order to have to most fault-safe environment as possible.
Several GPO modifications were made, and scripts created, in order to reflect each user position in the corporation, and have the most coherent corporate image as possible.
ERP’s Implementation
The ERP's implementation, was developed with the same set of principals I used in the Infrastructure Management. What the user can't do, he/she can't be blamed for.
Designing and implementing good work-flows, user access control's that reflected the company's structure with correspondent application's configuration, error reporting, usability, conditioning and contextualizing user actions, data integrity checking, automation of processes, and overall application development oversight in order to ensure that the application met the company's needs, were my main functions in the ERP's implementation supervision.
Also developed and customized several financial and production reports, for the application, as part of our DSS (Decision Support System).
Application development for Auditing and Reporting
Due to the fact that our ERP was a closed-source solution, and it wasn't bespoke software, we had to extend it's functionality externally.
I developed a windows service, to execute in one of our servers, that provided that additional functionality. The main purpose of this program was to extended the limited control over database querying, but also to audit user actions and produce appropriate notifications for the participating users. It potentially allowed an almost complete paperless environment in the company, also saving user time spent in their usual tasks, with the help of a better work-flow implementation and correspondent user notifications.
The needed database queries, were much more complex than the ones the ERP could provide for BI purposes. We had reports that queried almost all aspects of the company's business, making the queries too complex and slower, making them also unfit for direct user access. Therefore, the report system would output both in PDF, or in pure HTML in an e-mail body, and send it only to the appropriate users.
The program also did maintenance jobs over the servers, and databases.
Company Group's website development
Due to a problem with their hosting service, the company had to change its cloud provider, and started to search on the market for a web development company that could update the web site's functionality, and create similar image websites for other companies in the group, in order to refresh its on-line presence in time for the migration.
What the company's administration wanted, was to implement separate web sites, for each of the group's companies, add more functionality, and have a web site that wouldn't break and behaved similarly in different browsers and devices. The administration also wanted information to be feed more regularly into the websites.
After several meetings, it became evident that a solution for every single company in the group, even if, using the same corporate imaging, wouldn't be cost effective. All the solutions presented involved information and resources replication and duplication, meaning that, it would exponentially increase the time spent inserting information in the websites. Endless meetings were also consuming the little time remaining for the project's deadline.
I proposed developing the solution internally, in a way that it would be very easy to create another instance of the current web site, for any other possible company, the administration could want to add in the future.
Due to a lack of access to our previous hosting company, I developed from the bottom-up the entire solution, sharing all the resources and database with the main site, using the same corporate layout, but adding new functionality, and correcting cross-browser compatibility.