Virtua Team Talk

Virtua UK Limited, a leading Swindon based supplier of expertise to the telecoms industry has set up a triathlon club. The club is made up of the employees of the company and is a part of wider scheme, invigorating the company‘s work culture with fun and sports.

Andy Watts said: “The tri-club has been set up in response to the fact that we now have around a dozen members of staff interested in the sport and even considering race entry.  As keen tri-athletes ourselves, the directors wanted to help develop staff members’ interest in the sport and allow them to progress beyond their own training regimes.  It is also part of our wider health and safety policy to encourage our employees to take up sports and remain healthy.”

Love for sports, in particular has been an integral part of Virtua’s growth as all three directors are keen athletes. Two of the company’s directors, Andy Watts and Brian Watt have competed in the Ironman triathlon in Switzerland, whilst Brian has also taken part in the London marathon 16 times in a row.  Brian and Rob Brown (the third director) are also currently in training for a 250 mile charity bike ride for Multiple Sclerosis Research.

To help team members train and improve the company has also established a leader board in the office for times on the local measured 10 mile time trial route.

Virtua UK Ltd, a leading Swindon based supplier of expertise to the telecoms industry has been taking extraordinary steps in their health and safety practices that go far beyond the usual requirement of a company of their size.

Andy Watts, chief executive of Virtua comments: “For us people are our most important asset. As a telecoms company some of our staff do work in risk prone areas and we want to ensure that we take all measures to keep them safe. We don’t want health and safety to be just text book rules but want to incorporate it into our daily work culture.  This ensures everyone is aware of H&S requirements and has the resources and training necessary to not just deal with accidents but avoid them in the first place.”

The company is investing heavily in their staff health and safety by providing training and facilities that would be seen by many as radical steps, particularly in a company of less than 200 staff.  Some of the unusual steps taken by Virtua are as follows: •    The company has recently trained six members of staff in first aid, with plans to train others who show an interest in the subject. •    Virtua is sending its entire management team for IOSH training, which is a chartered body for health and safety professionals.

In addition to the above, the company has set up an in–house triathlon club to encourage employees to take up sports and maintain a healthy life style.  The club currently includes eleven staff members, including all three directors.  Andy Watts comments further on this: “Health and safety is about the well being of our employees wherever they are, which is why we are also encouraging them to maintain good health through sporting activities.  We even have a leader board in the office for times on the local measured 10 mile time trial route!  Above all we are focused on transforming health and safety from mere guidelines to part of Virtua’s work ethos.”

Over the last few weeks the News has been full of alarming updates about the Gulf of Mexico oil slick, now covering an area of sea the size of Scotland. Now, according to news reports, a rig worker has told the BBC that he identified a leak in the oil rig’s safety equipment weeks before the explosion. He said the leak was not fixed at the time, but that instead the faulty device was shut down and a second one relied upon.

BP has responded that rig owners ‘Transocean’ were responsible for the operation and maintenance of that piece of equipment and Transocean have said that the device was successfully tested before the accident.

No doubt the finger pointing and recriminations will go on for years, as will the environmental consequences of this catastrophe. At the heart of the matter though is the simple fact that the most critical piece of safety equipment on the rig – called the “Blowout Preventer” failed. More alarming is the revelation that the disaster could have been avoided by switching to a second ‘contingency backup’ Blowout Preventer. This apparently was not done for ‘economic reasons’.

Whatever the final outcome might be this news story resonates with me because it is all about testing equipment and health and safety. Time and again we read of companies cutting costs or cutting down testing time in order to save time or save money. Then something goes wrong and lives are lost as a consequence. In simple terms, profit has been put before people.

In the Telecoms industry a lot of our time is spent on testing – in fact it is one of the most critical elements of all the projects we work on. Testing is not just about ‘proving something works’ though. Undertaken properly it is about testing every tiniest component of a system as well as all the system interfaces. It is about understanding potential ‘points of failure’ and safety parameters. It is about contingency planning and rehearsing ‘failover’ scenarios etc. Only when every aspect of a system has been thoroughly system and integration tested will we sign it off as ready for deployment.

In an interview on TV some of the BP executives admitted that one of the major problems was the fact that working in deep water posed much greater technical challenges than fixing shallow water oil spills. My reaction to this sort of comment is “So how did you test for deep water problems and what was the disaster contingency plan?”

I’m probably not alone by asking this type of question. Henry Waxman, a House of Representatives Democrat, who is overseeing congressional investigations into the rig disaster, has openly accused BP of taking safety shortcuts to save money.  “BP appears to have made multiple decisions for economic reasons that increased the danger of a catastrophic well failure,” Mr Waxman said.

I think we can all learn something from this sad state of affairs. There is not just the environmental catastrophe that will linger, or the tragedy of eleven lives lost during the initial explosion. I hope we will also learn that putting safety before profit will always be a recipe for disaster and that testing for every possible scenario is time well spent – as we have learned from long experience in the Telco sector.

Please give a warm welcome to Radio Frequency Engineer Ian Jenkins the newest addition to the Virtua team at the Swindon Head Office.

Ian has been appointed Head of RF Design and is currently being kept busy as the ‘design authority’ for the Cable & Wireless FMC Programme.

Ian graduated from Plymouth University in 2000 with a degree in Electronics and Engineering and then joined the Cheltenham based Telecoms company Alan Dick & Co where he worked for 10 years as a “cellular design antenna engineer”.  This enabled Ian to build up a wealth of experience, particularly in relation to GSM, UMTS and site design and build.

During his time with Alan Dick & Co he also had the opportunity to grow his expertise in such areas as indoor networks and RF design engineering. This led to projects for Vodafone and 02 where he came to be considered the ‘design authority’, a very laudable achievement!

Ian’s knowledge of the telecoms industry and his wide network of contacts soon made him aware of Virtua who were recommended by a number of his colleagues. So when Ian was ready to further develop his career it was to Virtua he turned and Virtua, recognising his talents, brought him on board. Fortuitously, Ian is already familiar with some of the Virtua projects, and some of the people involved, through his background in the industry which he feels is a big plus.

Ask Ian about what it’s like to be part of the Virtua team and he is very clear: “Virtua are a great bunch of people” he says “I like their dedication, efficiency, attention to detail and the opportunities they provide. I’m really looking forward to working with them.”

Ian lives in Bristol and has a passion for both music and sport. He is a self-taught guitarist and also plays classical piano. When he’s not making music Ian enjoys playing squash and yes, just like most of his Virtua colleagues, he is also another enthusiastic snowboarder!

Welcome to the team Ian!

Please give a warm welcome to Senior Systems Architect Rob Davies who has recently joined the Virtua team at the Swindon Head Office.

Rob has been assigned to the Operations team and is currently busy working on a number of initiatives, in particular assisting with RF design for the Cable & Wireless FMC Programme as well as some database process design.

After five years working for Ferranti and then twenty years in Motorola as a systems engineer Rob has a wealth of experience within the telecoms industry. Specialising in cellular development Rob has been involved in almost every aspect of the business including design, architecture, testing, designing new products and developing GSM standards. He has also gained a lot of experience in signalling, core network systems (soft switching, IMS, HLR) and wireless access networks. His most recent work at Motorola involved him in product management of UMA and HLR/HSS databases.

This vast body of experience has given Rob a broad view of the telecoms industry which he now plans to use within Virtua by helping the management team to grow the business and develop their commercial business model.  Something he is really looking forward to.

Ask Rob about what it’s like to be part of the Virtua team and he is very clear: “Being part of the Virtua team is like being part of a family. In many companies it’s common for people to be thought of, and referred to, as ‘resources’. At Virtua everyone is a respected as an individual rather than considered as a resource and this makes a huge difference. It’s also great to be part of an organisation that is viewed as ‘the best’ in its field of expertise.”

Rob lives in Swindon with his family and keeps himself busy as a school governor at his son’s primary school. He also helps out at his son’s diving club and a local swimming club where his daughter swims five times each week.  Rob is also a keen skier and likes to get away twice a year for some quality skiing or snowboarding.

On a recent camping safari in Namibia you might have thought there was little chance of Rob finding any good skiing, but not so! The Namibians are very enterprising and have adapted standard snow boards (formica and lots of furniture wax) and consequently invented “sand boarding” on the vast Namibian sand dunes. “Although the sand boarding is great fun” says Rob “there are two downsides. Firstly there are no chair lifts to get you back to the top and secondly you might encounter a lion or two if you are not careful!”

Welcome to the team Rob!

Virtua UK Ltd, a leading supplier of expertise to the telecoms industry, achieved additional sales amounting to 20% of turnover in first four months of 2010.

To meet the demands of this growth, Virtua has employed industry heavyweights –Rob Davies and Ian Jenkins as well as Kevin Tillotson in a business development role.

Virtua, chief executive, Andy Watts:  “These are exciting times for Virtua, we are seeing fantastic growth in all areas of the business.  In particular, since the new year, we have made changes to our marketing and sales strategy.  These have directly affected our new-business activity but we want to carry on expanding for the benefit of our team, clients and the industry as a whole.  To achieve this we are investing in some of the best people available, people with a passion and in-depth knowledge of the industry, the technology and our client’s needs.”

•    Rob Davies takes on the role of senior systems architect.  After five years working for Ferranti and then twenty years in Motorola as a systems engineer Rob has a wealth of experience within the Telecoms industry specialising in cellular development.

•    Ian Jenkins takes on the role of head of RF systems design.  After 10 years at Alan Dick & Co as a “cellular design antenna engineer” he focused on projects for Vodafone and 02 where he came to be considered the ‘design authority’.

•    Kevin Tillotson takes on the role of Business Development Director.  With 20 years experience across a variety of sectors, he has grown businesses both organically and through acquisition.

Watts continues: “Virtua is a fast moving company going through exciting changes and performing at the top level of the telecoms and mobile telecoms industries.  To move forward we need to work with the best.  Rob, Ian and Kevin have the right attitude and are already working closely with both long-term and new clients”.

On the 13th April Microsoft unveiled its new “Kin” mobile phone in a bid to lure the Twitter and Facebook community. With hardware built by Sharp, the Kin comes in two models: the basic “Kin one” and a more powerful model called “Kin two”. Initially the devices will be sold exclusively in the U.S. by Verizon, starting from May. In Europe, Vodafone will be the exclusive provider with the first phones becoming available in October 2010. Speaking at a San Francisco launch event last Monday, Microsoft’s Robbie Bach described the devices as “smartphones designed for social-networking and video-obsessed users”

Even though I work in the Telecoms industry the pace of change still manages to astound me. It seems that even with the phenomenal success of the iPhone and the Blackberry and the ever increasing range of add-ons now available from Apple’s App store, mobile phone innovation is still breaking now boundaries.

Social networking is currently a hot business topic with a lot of the top sites now moving firmly out of the realms of teenage bedrooms into the boardroom. Already companies like Coca-Cola and Unilever have announced that they are cutting their traditional massive marketing budgets for Radio, TV and billboards to focus instead on marketing via social media. Little wonder then that the mobile phone industry has jumped on the bandwagon and added social networking facilities to its already impressive list of phone apps.

If you are a great fan of Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and Twitter etc. then the appeal of having instant access to these sites via your mobile is completely understandable. Also, for those working in the Telecoms industry it means there are a lot of opportunities to get closely involved in the emerging technology.

But is all this innovation always a good thing? I think it depends on your viewpoint. On the positive side it is bringing people together as part of a thriving on-line community and open communication is always to be encouraged. On the downside, however, are the news stories we hear of susceptible young people being lured or influenced by the inappropriate behaviours of other social networkers.

Social media, therefore, can undoubtedly provide a powerful set of tools that can be used as part of an organisation’s sales and marketing strategy as well as an excellent medium of communication if used responsibly. And maybe that’s the key point. New social media apps on Kin phones might seem like a brilliant idea in principle but users need to take full responsibility for what it is that is actually being communicated.

Just when you thought every possible use of a mobile phone had been thought of, engineers in Japan have created a mobile phone that could be the perfect solution for prying bosses wanting to keep tabs on the movements of their staff.

Working in the Telecoms industry I’m always interested to hear of new innovations or new uses for mobile technology. This one though, is a real gem! Japanese phone giant KDDI Corporation has developed technology that tracks and monitors even the tiniest movement of the phone user and then beams the information back to HQ.

It works by analysing the movement of ‘accelerometers’, devices found within many handsets. Everyday activities such as walking, climbing stairs or even cleaning can be identified from the data the researchers claim. KDDI has announced plans to sell the service to clients such as managers, supervisors and employment agencies, though the possibilities for this technology are mind boggling.

Up until now, mobile phone motion sensors were capable of detecting only generalised repetitive movements, such as walking or running, but the KDDI phone, is able to detect more complex behaviours by using analytical software held on a remote server. For example, say KDDI, a mobile phone strapped to a cleaning worker’s waist can tell the difference between actions performed such as scrubbing, sweeping, walking an even emptying a rubbish bin.

According to a KDDI spokesman “We are now at a stage where we can offer managers a chance to analyse more closely the behaviour of staff.”

Now is it just me, or is there something a little sinister going on here? Sure, I can see some potential benefits in specific situations – like the medical profession for monitoring patients, or even in places like the prison service – but for the average office worker I’m not so sure…

Surely as a responsible employer we should be using trust, respect and encouragement to motivate our staff rather than snooping on their every movement? It hardly engenders confidence in either employer or employee!

In response to some initial human rights protests KCCI were quick to respond: “This is not about curtailing employees’ rights to privacy. We’d rather like to think our creation more of a caring, mothering system rather than a Big Brother approach to watching over citizens.”

Will these phones ever catch on in the UK? Somehow, I doubt it!

Anyway, it’s new technology so I’d like to get hold of one of these phones to check it out. As soon as it’s linked up to the server back at HQ I think I’ll head off to play some darts, then a little tennis and finally a swim.

Let’s just see what the clever phone will make of that!

Field Engineering Manager Mark Prictor is probably the most widely known member of the entire Virtua team  because of the crucial role he plays as prime contact for all the engineers working  ‘out in the field’ at client sites. It is the ideal role for Mark who has been one of the ‘core’ team at Virtua for over five years and has experience as a contract engineer as well as his head office responsibilities.

Mark’s background, like many of his colleagues, is in electronics engineering and it was during his time working in the telecoms industry for Motorola that he first met Virtua directors Rob and Brian. After getting on well together during their time at Motorola he was delighted when Virtua invited him to join the new company as Field Engineering Manager. Mark enjoys this demanding role because, as he says “Virtua is a very family orientated company and taking care of people and relationships is critically important”

Mark now looks after the welfare of approximately 50 engineers that work on a variety of client sites and he is the first point of contact for any concerns or issues that might arise. Not only does this mean that Mark gets to know the wider Virtua team incredibly well but, since he has done the role himself he has a great understanding of the issues. Whether it is booking holidays, sorting out contractual queries, allocating work or helping with technical questions; Mark provides that vital link between Virtua’s head office team and the engineers in the field.

When he is not busy in his role as ‘agony aunt’ to our team, Mark likes to spend his leisure time watching rugby, a sport he used to enjoy playing, or riding his Honda 600 Hornet motorbike. His other passion is winter sports and a few weeks ago he was off snowboarding in Austria with a few of his Virtua colleagues.  He had to be very careful not to break any limbs however, because his third child is due at the beginning of May and baby’s room still needs decorating!

Mel Dainton needs little introduction.  Whether out ‘in the field’ or in the office, he has been helping us on a number of projects on and off for over five years now and has seen our business grow from its humble beginnings to an industry leading force.

After serving an apprenticeship in electrical engineering Mel had a successful career as a self-employed service engineer, soon realising that his electricians skills were perfectly suited to the telecoms industry. In fact, it was during a stint at Motorola that he first met Virtua directors Rob and Brian. As is the case with many of Virtua’s contract staff it was the initial meeting and a shared passion for great engineering that sparked a partnership that continues to this day.

Mel has provided a number of project services for us in that time including field engineering services, network fault resolution, commissioning, integration and installation, GSM and Tetra projects, project design and documentation etc. He is equally at home whether working hands on at a client site or back in the office doing documentation.

When asked what it is about working for Virtua and their clients that he most enjoys, Mel is very clear: “It’s all about the people” he says “When you are a contractor most companies just treat you as a resource. At Virtua you are among friends and that makes for a great work atmosphere. Virtua genuinely care for their people… and there is a strong social element too.”

Before joining the Virtua team Mel worked and lived in Australia for six years, spending time in Sydney as well as travelling. Now he is married with two children, but when he’s not working Mel still enjoys keeping active – playing 5-a-side football, snowboarding, surfing, golf and fishing.