Speakers

Plenary Speakers

  • Colin Mair, Chief Executive: Improvement Service
     
    Colin Mair is chief executive of the Improvement Service, a COSLA/SOLACE partnership set up support local government improvement across Scotland. The IS’ aim is to help councils and their partners improve the health, quality of life and opportunities of all people in Scotland through community leadership, strong local governance and the delivery of high quality, efficient local services.

    Before joining the Improvement Service in 2004, Colin worked with Scottish councils as Director of the Scottish Local Authority Management Centre. Prior to that, he was Director of International Programmes at Strathclyde University where he worked on local government and public sector development in India, sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe.
  • John F McClelland CBE, Chair: Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council
     
    John has extensive experience across the private and public sectors. He was Vice President of Worldwide Operations for IBM’s personal computer company before joining Digital Equipment Corporation in 1995 where he was a Senior Vice President. He was also Global Chief Industrial Officer and board member of Philips Consumer Electronics and latterly President of 3Com's Business Networks Company.

    In 2006, John conducted a review of public sector procurement in Scotland (“The McClelland Report”) and in 2011 completed a Review of ICT infrastructure in the public sector in Scotland,on behalf of the Scottish Government.

    In 1994,John was awarded a CBE for his services to industry and education.
  • Derek Mackay MSP, Minister for Local Government and Planning: Scottish Government
     
    Elected an MSP in May 2011 representing Renfrewshire North & West, Derek was appointed Minister for Local Government and Planning in December 2011, having served on the Finance Committee of the Scottish Parliament and as PLO (Political Liaison Officer) to the Cabinet Secretary for Parliamentary Business & Government Strategy.

    Following his election as an MSP, he became SNP Business Convenor Chairman of the Party), responsible for chairing Conference, the National Executive and the management and administration of the party.
    Elected to Renfrewshire Council in 1999 at the age of 21 he was the youngest male Councillor in Scotland at the time. He won three successive ward elections, to become Leader of Renfrewshire Council in May 2007, taking the SNP from opposition to lead the administration for the first time. He became a national figure in local government leading the SNP group at COSLA (Convention of Scottish Local Authorities) 2009-2011.

    He studied at Glasgow University, but instead of completing his degree focused on local politics, becoming a leading figure in the SNP's youth and student movements.

    He served on Greater Glasgow & Clyde Health Board as a Non Executive Director and Chair of Renfrewshire Community Health Partnership (2007 - 2011). He was also previously chair of the Paisley Vision Board and Renfrewshire's Fairtrade Steering Group.

    Derek enjoys reading, running, swimming and time at the gym. He is married with two children and continues to live in the constituency he represents.
  • Colin Proctor, Accommodation Director: Scottish Futures Trust
     
    Colin is the Accommodation Director at SFT. In his role, Colin acts as Programme Director for the Scotland-wide hub initiative and is also leading SFT’s new initiatives in public sector asset management. Colin is a Chartered Surveyor with more than 25 years experience in property and construction.
  • Carol Summers, Managing Director: TerraQuest Solutions
     
    Carol is the Managing Director of TerraQuest, and has over 33 years of experience in working in both the public and private sectors. During her career, she has delivered numerous property management solutions, and has a profound understanding of the issues now facing local government.

    Previously, Carol was NW Regional Director for the NPS Group and Managing Director of NPS Stockport Ltd. During her time there, Carol was integral in developing the first Public Joint Venture Property Company, a unique model allowing the company to trade in both public and private sectors, providing additional income for the parent Authority and providing a more responsive and commercially astute service. Carol was also a member of the Carbon Trust team in Stockport MBC, delivering Energy Reduction Solutions to their property portfolios.

    Carol developed her skills extensively in the public sector, where she has improved business processes, driven out waste, and created more effective and responsive property related services. Now working in the private sector, Carol uses her unique insight to provide assistance to both public and private sector companies looking at property and business process solutions. As part of this work with TerraQuest, Carol has involved herself in many think-tanks, including the Westminster Sustainable Business Forum Inquiry Group.

    Carol is respected by her peers as leading the management of cultural change, providing coaching and mentoring of staff to ensure that they understand and embrace their new environment.

Work Session Speakers

  • John Dawson, Head of Business Change, CBS : Glasgow City Council
     
    John leads on delivering the business change that supports new ways of working for employee, finance and customer contact services. John has worked across private and public sectors, including work with the Cabinet Office and Alsbridge consultancy on organisational design, shared services and change management. His present focus is joined-up contact, and the implementation of lean management in support of delivering new ways of working.
  • Kenny Don, Contract Manager: Aberdeen City Council
     
    Kenny has spent 28 years working with Aberdeen City Council, and has spent the last 4 years specifying, configuring and implementing the Mobile Solution provided by Consilium, to suit ACC's business needs. His responsibilities also include Operational Performance and Income Management.
  • Dave Dunbar, General Manager: BT Flexible Working Services
     
    David began his career in heavy industry, automating assembly lines and creating production environments, before moving into telecoms and IT where he project managed leading edge wide area networks and switching systems. Then, after a period in Sales & Bid Management, he took responsibility for Contract Managing some of BT’s largest outsource and managed service contracts, both within the public and private sectors.

    Following this, he moved into BT Property with responsibility for all of BT’s flexible estate, and its home and mobile working programme. As well as managing this, widely recognised as one of the most successful global Flexible Working regimes, part of the role was the creation of externally facing propositions in support of BT’s core services. This resulted in the creation of BT Flexible Working Services, which now offers a range of managed services around agile working for mobile & home enabled workers, as well as those operating flexibly within the fixed estate. This has evolved to include intelligent buildings, corporate social networks and e-Learning.

    Alongside his practical experience, he has separate degrees in Electronic Engineering and in Psychology along with a Henley MBA. He brings this eclectic approach to Flexible Working where Technology, People and Organisational Processes combine with space to produce agile organisations.
  • Yvonne Dunn, Partner: Pinsent Masons
     
    Yvonne Dunn leads our public sector practice in Scotland. She specialises in delivering strategic transformational projects for local authorities, and has led our teams who are carrying out projects linked to innovative service delivery methods for local authorities. Yvonne combines her own specialist commercial contracts and IT expertise with a sound knowledge of the issues affecting public sector bodies. Yvonne has significant experience in public sector work and has represented a number of bodies in central and local government in Scotland and England. She is commended by clients for her commitment to delivery and commercially-focused advice.
  • Graeme Fyfe, Legal Director: Pinsent Masons
     
    Graeme Fyfe provides strategic advice to organisations in central government and the wider public sector on their options for developing new commercial models for delivering services. He has recently been working within the Cabinet Office in London to help further this agenda. He has advised several Scottish local authorities on transformation projects and regularly trains boards and senior management on corporate governance issues. He also advises on corporate law generally, including on company acquisitions and sales, fundraising and commercialisation of technology.
  • Harjinder Gharyal, Head of Change & Development, CBS Glasgow City Council : CBS Glasgow City Council
     
    Responsible for the implementation of SAP across c.40,000 employees, and associated set up of the shared service centre, subsequently managing that operation. Current focus is driving organisational capability and continuous improvement across the entire back-office and contact service, including initiative on channel shift and new ways of working. Previously held senior commercial roles with the Royal Mail.
  • Zoe Humphries, Workplace Consultant: Steelcase
     
  • Robert Hutchison, Director: Exactive
     
  • Gavin Innes, Infrastructure Team Leader: Scottish Borders Council
     
  • Kate Jack, Head of Public Sector & Health: Everything Everywhere
     
    Kate has been with EE since 2010. Her focus has been to first develop Everything Everywhere strategy for protecting, acquiring and growing market share, revenue and margin. To deliver this strategy she and her wider teams are now focused on developing the right solutions, partnerships and plans for the public sector customers. At Everything Everywhere, we have recognised that we need to be the mobility partner of choice for customers and partners and work closely with our channels to market (direct sales, online and partners) to ensure we’re driving the transformation to deliver our strategy.
  • Geoffrey Keal, Director, Business Process Solutions: TerraQuest Solutions
     
    Geoff is the Director for TerraQuest’s Business Process Solutions. His background in surveying, large scale conversion programmes and corporate IT systems provided a solid foundation to enable subsequent public and private sector clients to benefit from his depth of knowledge and skill in business transformation.

    Having worked for more than 15 years in the service industry, Geoff has experience working with senior civil servants, chief executives and directors building meaningful relationships based on integrity, trust and assured delivery.

    Geoff joined TerraQuest in 2002, as a project manager, delivering complex business process solutions on behalf of a Tier 1 service provider to a large government department. From there he progressed to delivery manager, implementing many large scale process contracts across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, including Land and Property Services Northern Ireland and Disclosure Scotland.

    Geoff is a highly experienced business director, who understands his clients business and service requirements providing clear operational strategies and solutions to innovate and transform. With his strong background in the delivery of large and complex client projects, Geoff now lends his expertise to those teams of project and programme managers on client sites throughout the UK, and is responsible for the overall growth of our Business Process Solutions sector in all markets.
  • John Kos, Transformation Consultant: NDL
     
  • Duncan Mackison, Chief Executive Officer: ACCESS
     
    Duncan Mackison has been the Chief Executive Officer of ACCESS LLP since it was formed on 1 April 2008. ACCESS is a joint venture between Glasgow City Council (GCC) and Serco plc based on a 10 year contract to deliver ICT and property services. In this role Duncan is part of the Corporate Management Team of GCC; highly unusual for a private sector employee. Duncan’s experience includes delivering a range of services to the public sector including BPO, FM, ICT and Property within a variety of contracting models. Prior to his 14 years in business, Duncan was a Royal Marine Commando.
  • Nick Makin, Principle Consultant: O2
     
  • Ciaran McClintock, Mobile Working Specialist: Consilium Technologies
     
    Ciaran has spent the past 14 years working on a wide range of IT projects in the Public and Private Sector, including a broad mix of Facilities/Contract Maintenance, Environmental Services and Social Services. He has also a wide range of experience across the enterprise in Finance, HR, Contact Centres, Document Management and Performance Management. Mobile working has been at the forefront of all this work.

  • Dave Meikle, Senior Solution Architect: Sopra Group
     
    Dave Meikle is a Senior Solution Architect at Sopra Group. As a member of Sopra Group’s Innovation & Solutions Group, he works across the UK and the wider Group to explore new technologies and leverage their experience across sectors for the benefit of their customers.

    For the past six years Dave has been helping Public Sector organisations shape their technical strategies to meet the needs of their citizens, and has worked on a number of significant Scottish Public Sector projects including Customer First and Transforming Renfrewshire.

    Currently responsible for Sopra Group UK’s collaborative solutions and agile business offerings, Dave is interested in leveraging technology to support service evolution whilst improving efficiency.

    Outside of Sopra Group, Dave is part of the Edinburgh Napier Employer Mentoring scheme helping students prepare for themselves for the workplace, and he retains a direct link to technology through his work as a committer and PMC member at The Apache Software Foundation.
  • Andrew Nicholson, Consultant: Asidua
     
    Andrew has worked for Asidua for 1 year. His prior experience includes over a decade working in strategic marketing consultancy and market research, so he is familiar with the concepts behind customer insight and how to align organisations to their customers and marketplace. He also has several years experience working as a CRM Consultant in the private sector, during which time he helped organizations with their non-technical, people related and cultural readiness for CRM. Whilst he is a big fan and user of CRM, Andrew acknowledges it’s limitations and was delighted to see how Asidua has overcome these in delivering efficient, easy to use, customer contact and integrated end-to end customer facing and customer fulfillment services to public sector organisations.

  • Dr Claire Penny, Smarter Buildings Lead - Europe: IBM
     
    Current position is IBM Smarter Buildings lead. Previous roles include global lead for Green Integrated Supply Chain, which encompassed leading an advanced statistical analytics project which optimized the use of energy within buildings. Also I have 8 years previous experience in Real Estate with many responsibilities including Regional Environment and Energy Manager (UKISA).

    PhD attained from Liverpool John Moores University researching the heavy metal stress responses in conifers. At the time, Brownfield site development was a hot topic, and there was a view that growing conifers on these used sites could stabilise the environment.

    Other external commitments include:
    - Non-executive Director of WEEE (Waste Electrical & Electronic Equipment) Ireland,
    - Vice-Chair of the ROI IEMA (Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment) Regional Steering Committee.
    - Council member of the recently ended COMHAR Sustainable Development Council (March ’09 – Dec ’11)
  • John Porter, Service Development Manager: South Ayrshire Council
     
  • Louise Richardson, Director of Property Solutions: TerraQuest Solutions
     
    Louise is the Director for TerraQuest’s Property Solutions. Her background in policy and partnership organisations has given her a broad range of public and private sector experience, and a greater understanding of the issues currently facing the public sector than many to date.

    With over 20 years of experience working with senior politicians, including Council Leaders, Executive and Scrutiny Members, members of sub-regional bodies, and Council Members, Louise has a strong background in the public sector. She has also worked extensively with various Government Agencies and Departments on projects including the Unitary Development Plan, Single Regeneration Budgets, Capital Challenge Budgets, Public Services Agreements and two Local Area Agreements. Her past work spans the London Borough of Newham, Stockport MBC, and the NPS Group partnership.

    Louise led the development of the Stockport Partnership, bringing the public and private sector together at a time when the partnership had no funding to attract involvement. Alongside this, Louise gained in-depth experience of Change Management when establishing the Policy and Resource Procurement Sections at Stockport Council, bringing together a number of department’s resources. In the wider context of Local Government, Louise has also been involved heavily, running a Policy Department, and working on a number of development projects with the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities, including the forerunner to the Total Place pilot.

    Outside of work, Louise is an avid musician, being a member of two local choirs, as well as an expert piano player. She has also played hockey from an early age, and continues to be involved in the sport, guiding her two daughters to international level within the game. Louise is also a Board Member at Stockport College, guiding the development of the College for future generations.