I offer my skills, chiefly as an analyst/programmer in Visual Basic and SQL Server plus .Net, but also in a wider context, calling on the experience gained over 25 years in the industry, and my previous quantity surveying experience, including management, contract law, financial control, cost control, buying, marketing and building construction.

I have been programming since 1983, specialising in Basic, and now Visual Basic, .Net and SQL Server.

Applications

My analysis and programming experience includes resource management and budgetary control for a national regulatory body, sales force territory management for an international pharmaceutical company, mail order processing for a major computer supplies company, portfolio management (including derivatives and unit trusts) for a leading software house, extraction licence monitoring for a water utility, pension needs analysis and investment illustrations for a major insurance company, and meter reading software for another water utility.

I have also worked on such diverse applications as builders' estimating, financial, book-keeping, educational, accounting, motor control, data import and of course Beltower.

Programming

I have been using Visual-Basic 6, since December 1998, more recently SQL Server and (VB/ASP/HTML/Java).Net web applications, and also have experience of VB5, VB3 and QuickBasic, not to mention VB for Applications and a variety of other forms of Basic, together with Btrieve, Excel, C++ and HTML.

Previously, I have worked on more technical projects including a Basic to C translator in C/C++, keyboard input through printer port in 8086 assembler, pop-down window system extensions in C and Z80 assembler, and a 6502 assembly language monitor.

Business

During my employment, quantity surveying, with various medium sized building contractors, I was responsible for the financial control of contracts up to £1m (30 years ago it was worth a bit more than it is today), and gained knowledge of management, contract law, buying and marketing. This experience was further consolidated in my own quantity surveying and estimating business, which prepared tenders for contracts up to £1m.

Outlook

My general philosophy is to keep things simple.   This is edited using a text editor, to control the content and the file size, and a variety of browsers have been used to test cross platform support.   But, which ever route one takes, there is always a compromise, between ease of development, ease of maintenance and ease of use.   The future, however, holds many exciting possibilities, including e-commerce, for which my broad range of skills are well placed.