Meet the team

Chris Burne, Key Account Manager

Chris has over 10 years experience as a consultant working up to board/ministerial level in both the private and public sectors, specialising in Programme & Project Management. Most recently he has delivered a Shared Services Implementation project for the Department for Transport, to provide shared services for the whole of DfT and its agencies.

Chris is an OGC accredited Gateway reviewer at high risk level, with SC clearance, and has completed numerous health checks on business change programmes. He is an MSP Practitioner able to work at both the strategic and tactical levels to pragmatically advise on OGC best practice. Additionally, Chris has worked with numerous Mission Critical programmes mentoring senior management and providing interim support.

Previous experience includes automotive product development and operations management, working with UK, US and Far eastern Companies. Chris has an M.Sc. in Engineering Business Management and is a Chartered Engineer.

Michael Charles, Managing Consultant

Michael is a programme manager with over 20 years experience of IT and business change programmes, gained largely in the telecommunications, IT and Government sectors. Michael’s ability to see the big picture but retain a “hands-on” approach allows him to work at all levels in an organisation. He has set-up and run Programme Management Offices, developing and implementing all necessary supporting processes, with an emphasis on skills transfer to client staff. Recent key assignments include roles within major programmes for HM Prison Service, Department for Education and Skills and ABN Amro Bank.

Michael’s prior experience also includes responsibility for implementation of ERP products, telecommunications software/systems design and development, IT applications engineering (pre and post sales) and the successful delivery of major multi-site infrastructure programmes, from bid stage through to implementation.

Luci Corbett, Principal Consultant

Luci Corbett is a principal management consultant with a degree in mechanical engineering and a masters in business administration. She led a team to review the capability of Infraco JNP Ltd to achieve the line upgrades required by the PPP contract with London Underground Ltd, and helped develop and implement a strategy to meet these requirements.

More recently she has been working as part of an internal cross-functional team carrying out tactical and strategic initiatives within Atkins Management Consultants. In particular she has set up account management to support our key customers and has been co-ordinated the ongoing process; reviewing monthly account plans and organising networking and briefing sessions for account managers. She has also been involved with developing several market sector strategies and generating a 5 year business plan for the business.

Philip Everest, Key Account Manager

Philip is an experienced manager who has successfully delivered a wide variety of consultancy assignments and projects within commercial, financial services, local and central government sectors. His core skills and expertise span strategic planning, programme and project management, change management and process re-engineering, systems design & implementation and outsourcing. He is highly experienced in delivering enhanced business performance for blue chip and multi-national client organisations by envisioning, facilitating and successfully implementing strategic change programmes.

Recently focused on CRM, call centre and front office environments, Philip has also developed methodologies and managed an Information Systems Department.

Andy Gilchrist, Key Account Manager

Andy Gilchrist specialises in the design and direction of programmes that implement public sector programmes to deliver measured changes in behaviour.  He combines an engineering background, that demands development of rigorous propositions and measurable targets, with a marketing approach to generate enthusiasm for action.  He has worked across many sectors including industry, transport, environment and the voluntary sector.

In any spare time, Andy juggles ferrying and entertaining two young children with playing classical violin and a variety of sports.

Terry Knowles, Managing Consultant

Terry has extensive experience of information security over the last 20+ years. He has undertaken assignments covering risk assessment, security policy definition, security architecture, encryption and key management, authentication, data protection and identity management.These assignments have been in the banking, insurance, defence, travel, Government and utilities sectors.Terry has contributed to a number of reference books on information security, including the Computer Security Reference Book and has been chosen to be the UK principal expert to a number of ISO security standards committees.His last two assignments have focused heavily on the benefits planning, feasibility and security aspects of information sharing for two major change programmes for the DfES.

In his free time Terry dabbles in stone carving and stone sculpture and also collects sculpture in a small way but is not a rival to Charles Saatchi yet!

Helen Lovick, Consultant

Helen holds an honours degree in Geography from the University of Wales Swansea, in addition to a Masters in Geographical Information Science (GIS) from the University of Nottingham. Helen has over three years’ experience in GIS, as well as Consultancy and Project Management experience, working with both public and private sector clients. The most recent project she managed, involved the provision of a suite of online tools, dedicated to providing timely and accurate information on regeneration indicators for managers in the public sector.

Robert Powell, Key Account Manager

Robert joined the Management Consultancy division of Atkins in December 2005 having worked as a consultant project manager at Associate Director level for two London based project management consultancies over the past 8 years. Prior to this, Robert worked as a Project Manager for a Brighton Based Surveying Practice and before that spent 5 years as a Project Manager within the NHS.

Robert’s broad, client focused experience gives him the ability to bring extensive project knowledge and skills to evaluate and address the critical issues of a project, helping clients to achieve their business objectives.

Phil Rowbotham, Principal Consultant

In his ten years with Mantix (now Atkins), Phil Rowbotham has specialised in helping organisations to improve visibility and control of investment programmes. He has worked with organisations whose investment programmes range from £12Million to £6Billion pa.

At The Strategic Rail Authority, he was engaged to map and improve the investment and project development processes.

At SP Power Systems, a key benefit of his work was to save 94 man days per month manual effort producing reports for management control and regulatory submissions. Phil and the Power Systems team rapidly defined a system to plan and manage the complex interdependencies between asset policies, regulatory submissions, business programmes and service providers.

At East of Scotland Water (ESW), he implemented the system to enhance visibility and control of the annual programme addressing £2Bn worth of infrastructure improvements. At the time, the ESW Capital Planning Manager said they now have "a best of breed system …. to help them respond to changing circumstances more effectively".

Ian Symonds, Managing Consultant

Ian has over 25 years experience in consulting and IT, specialising in business change and IS engagements with clients from a wide range of sectors. He is a specialist in managing major programmes and projects involving the development of e-business services, post-merger integration, shared service centre implementation and business re-engineering. He also spent a year on secondment at principal level in a major government department structuring a £500M programme of business change and introducing good programme management practice.

Dale Vearncombe, Service Line Leader

Dale is an Engineering graduate from Loughborough University, who has a strong and practical background in technical Project Management having worked for a specialist Electrical Engineering firm.

Currently Dale is a member of the Microsoft Solutions Business team, working across all industry sectors with PPPM, EPM and BPM methods & tools.

Previously, Dale worked as a Technical Consultant in the e-Learning sector providing enterprise training solutions to global organisations. This role required full life-cycle involvement in key accounts from pre-sales to successful implementation and on-going support.

In his spare time Dale is a keen sportsman, playing hockey, squash and golf.