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Personal Details

Name:                          Andrew Leeder

Address:                      2 Portledge Place, Fairy Cross, Bideford, Devon, EX39 5AW

Telephone:                  +44 (0) 1237 452152
                                    +44 (0) 7973 987471 (Mobile)

E-Mail:                         Andrew@ASLAssociates.co.uk

ICQ#:                           19201891

Skype:                         ASLAssociates

Status:                         Married, four children

Hobbies:                      Walking and Reading PMA Books.

Educational Details:     7 'O' Levels.
                                    'A' Level Pure Math's
                                    'A' Level Applied Math's
                                    Cert. Ed. Mathematics (London University - Goldsmiths) 

Recent Contracts

May 2006 – August 2006 Joy Mining Ltd., Worcester

Role: Software Engineer
Skills Used: C, Embedded, Real Time, PLM, Forth

Maintenance of embedded systems software for the companies RS20 and RS20s Shield Support process control system, used extensively in the mining industry.

June2006 – Ongoing Rhytec Ltd., Hungerford

Role: Snr. Software Engineer
Skills Used: C, Embedded, Real Time

Maintenance, design and implementation of a real time embedded firmware program for a Plasma based Cosmetic Surgery instrument, developed in C and including the development of a proprietary operating environment.

June2004 – Ongoing Ariane Medical Systems Ltd., Nottingham

Role: Technical Director
Skills Used: C#.NET, C, Embedded, Real Time

Design and implementation of Windows based GUI software for interface and control of a new X-Ray machine designed for the treatment of Rectum Cancer using the Papillon technique.  

Consultancy on the real time embedded firmware program for the control unit of the X-Ray tube above, developed with PIC processors and programmed in C, and including the development of a proprietary operating environment and communication protocols between the GUI and the Control unit.

August 2000 – December 2005 Gyrus Medical Ltd., Cardiff

Role: Senior Software Engineer
Skills Used: C, Embedded, Real Time, C#.NET, VB.NET, Fujitsu Assembler

I undertook Firmware Validation of surgical instrumentation systems including the development of documentation to FDA standards.

Development of a real time embedded firmware program for a Plasma based Cosmetic Surgery instrument, developed in C and including the development of a proprietary operating environment.

Development of a software tool to run on PDA’s running Windows Mobile 2003.  The software tool allowed engineering staff world wide to receive updated firmware via email and be able to re-program Gyrus’s surgical generators in the field.  The development was written in VB.NET.

I developed several in house utilities to assist development engineering staff.  These utilities were all written in C#.NET

In 2004 I received UML 2 training.

March 1998 – August 2000 Focus Business Solutions Ltd., Leamington Spa

Role: Business Consultant
Skills Used: Visual Basic 6, C, C++, HTML, Project Management, Team Leading

Maintain and develop a Point of Sale system for the insurance industry. Responsible for the day to day Project Management and Coordination of a 8 strong team of programmers and analysts working largely in Visual Basic 6 with some C++. Development was undertaken in a Windows NT4 environment, and the target system was Windows 98.

November 1997 – Feb 1998 Sensor Solutions Ltd., Manchester

Role: Consultant Programmer
Skills Used: C, Embedded, Real Time Process Control, M3770x Microcontroller.

Re-development of the firmware suite for a microprocessor controlled Amperometric Potentiostat instrument.

June 1997 – November 1997 Boots the Chemist, Nottingham.

Role: Analyst/Programmer
Skills Used: C, 4690 EPOS, FLEXOS, Year 2000

Awards: Recognised as "Runner-up" in the Innovation Category as part of the Boots "Excellence in Information Systems" award.

I was again invited to re-visit Boots the Chemist in Nottingham to develop modifications to their Pharmacy system and also some Year 2000 adjustments. This system is written in C with some Basic. The operating environment is IBM 4690 EPOS running under FLEXOS from Digital Research.

April 1997 - May 1997. AT&T Istel.

Role: Analyst/Programer
Skills Used: C, Informix, ESQL, Shell Scripts, UNIX

I worked on the back office database system for the implementation of a store reward card for a major corporation. The work was undertaken using ‘C’ in a Unix environment with Informix and ESQL as the database.

February 1997 - April 1997. Boots the Chemist, Nottingham.

Role: Analyst/Programmer
Skills Used: C, 4690 EPOS, FLEXOS

I was invited to re-visit Boots the Chemist in Nottingham to develop some maintenance programs for their Pharmacy system. This system is written in C with some Basic. The operating environment is IBM 4690 EPOS running under FLEXOS from Digital Research.

July 1995 - January 1997. Fame Computers Ltd. Birmingham

Role: Analyst/Programmer
Skills Used: C, VB 3 (Pro), Windows 3.11

I Worked as part of a small team enhancing the Standard Life system - Gemini. This development uses inter mixed C and Visual Basic in a Windows environment.

May 1994 - July 1995. NatWest Life Ltd., Bristol

Role: Team Leader/Programmer
Skill Used: C, DOS, Actuarial Math's

I lead a small team of programmers to re-write the company’s entire portfolio of Term, Unit Linked and Pension Quotation systems, targeted to run in both a Windows based PC and on the NatWest Mainframe systems. The re-work was to take account of national legislation regarding Disclosure of Commission and Profits and the effect that these have on fund performance over time.

December 1993 - April 1994. Boots the Chemist, Nottingham

Role: Analyst/Programmer
Skills Used: C, 4680 EPOS, FLEXOS, Comms

Pharmacy system maintenance and development. This system is written in C with some Basic. The operating environment was IBM 4680/4690 EPOS running under FLEXOS from Digital Research.

July 1993 - November 1993 Microcomputer Technology Inc., USA

Role: I evaluated a new and innovative British designed RISC processor for a large USA based development house.

May 1993 - July 1993 Empirical Research Ltd.

Role: Analyst/Programmer
Skills Used: VB 3 (Pro), Access 2.0

I completed the design and implementation of an order processing system written in Microsoft Visual Basic 3 (Professional Edition) which used the Microsoft Access Database engine.

Late 1992 Fame Computers Ltd., Birmingham

Role: Analyst/Programmer
Skills Used: C, AT&T Email, Comms

I completed development of the communications element of a new system for Fame Computers Ltd., which uses the AT&T Email system for processing both Email and data files from remote offices to a central system.

Early 1992 HIDAR Ltd., Swindon

Role: Programmer/Analyst
Skills Used: C, 80x86 Assembler, DAC/ADC Design, Embedded

I developed the control firmware for an Optical Vision Trainer system, originally to be used to train Air Force pilots to re-focus from visor and head-up based displays to outside vision. It was also destined to have impact on the care and treatment of Myopic sight, and was intended to allow sufferers to develop "negative accommodation". Unfortunately due to the economic recession, this project was cancelled shortly before completion.

1991 Fame Computers Ltd., Birmingham

Role: Analyst/Programmer
Skills Used: C, DOS, DB-Vista, Novel NetWare, Comms, Multi-User

I developed a multi-user back-office system, running in a Novel NetWare environment, which acted as a scheduler and central resource diary for Financial Planning Systems (FPS) used by Financial Advisors (FA) in the field.

Each FA is issued with a laptop system running the FPS system which is nightly connected via a communications link to a central administration system, for the transmission of post interview updated client data from the FPS system and the updated weekly diary and current client data from the central system.

Queries, diary activities and new business enquiries are handled by a team of Tele-sales operators at the central site, and work for individual FA's is scheduled from a multi terminal "pick list" of work to do. All the Central System activities are multi user access with real time update across all workstations. I also developed the communication software used on this project.

1990 BOC Medicare, Swindon

Role: Analyst/Programmer
Skills Used: C, Z80 Assembler, Embedded, Real Time

I developed the control firmware for a Neo-natal Blood Oxygen sensor designed by BOC Medicare. This project was destined for sale in the US and so all documentation and testing was done to US FCC standards, to enable the selling agent to apply for an FCC Class 3 (Critical Invasive Technology) license.

1988 and 1989 Q.A. Training, Cirencester.

Role: Associate Consultant
Skills Used: Teaching C and Pascal both on site and at Customer sites in UK and Ireland.

I delivered training courses in both 'C' and Pascal programming, both at Q.A.'s headquarters and at various customer sites throughout the UK and Ireland.

1987 Fame Computers Ltd., Birmingham

Role: Analyst/Programmer
Skills Used: C, DOS, Panel Plus, DB-Vista, MDBS, Actuarial Math's, Expert System Design.

Since 1987 I have acted as a design and development consultant to Fame Computers Ltd., and have been involved in several generations of their FPS system, including the conversion of the FPS database from MDBS to DB-Vista, the development of many Insurance Product Quotation systems and Fame's own BS 5750 certification.

The Quotation Systems involved very close contact with the Actuarial departments of many of the large players in the Insurance Industry.

In 1987 I was contracted by Fame Computers Ltd., to produce an Expert System to the Financial Planning Industry. This was initially for a Mail Order style marketing system for Automobile Association Insurance Services (AAIS).

This system produced much of the basic technology for Fame's FPS (Financial Planning System) which is currently used by Commercial Union, City of Westminster, Standard Life, Scottish Mutual, Scottish Amicable and NatWest Life.

1986 Plessey, Towcester

Role: Programmer
Skills Used: C, UNIX, Device Drivers, Firmware

I was mainly involved in the development of disk device drivers together with aspects of system tuning in Unix System III & V environments.

1985 Empirical Research Group Inc., USA

Role: Chief Programmer
Skills Used: C, 68000 Assembler, Event Driven Real Time OS, Multiple Processors, Comms Protocol Design.

As chief programmer, I designed and implemented the complete firmware suite for the US. Army's MCIU II tactical communications unit. This was a project that was sub-contracted to a small design house based in Seattle WA., and was designed around multiple 68000 microprocessors. MCIU offered serial communication facilities between participating Military Computers via a roaming mixture of Private Land-Line and Multi-Route PBX, Public Exchanges, Vincent Secure Radio Communications Channels and Private Satellite Link.

The system required the development of a custom Event Driven Real Time Executive, together with Device Drivers to manage each class of Communications Channel. Finally I designed and implemented the overall end to end communication protocol including a complete test harness and error recovery mechanisms.

 

Late 1970's early 1980's

In 1980 I designed and implemented a Disk based Operating System for the 6800 computer. This system was based on CP/M, and offered the company an environment for the development of Application Software such as Spreadsheets, Databases, Communications etc.

I developed device drivers for UNIX V6, V7, Sys III & Sys V, including Kernel Maintenance on UNIX Systems.

I designed and produced dedicated Firmware for Real Time Process control applications, which includes those for which I designed the hardware as outlined below.

Programming Languages

I am proficient in the following languages:-

'C'
C#.NET
VB.NET
HTML
Visual Basic
Java (not recent)
680x0 Assembler (not recent)
80x86 Assembler (not recent)
680x Assembler (not recent)
650x Assembler (not recent)
COBOL (not recent)
BCPL (not recent)
Pascal (not recent)
FORTRAN (not recent)

I have programmed in the following operating system environments:-

Various RTOS’s
WINDOWS 3.11/95/NT4/2000/XP/XPe/Vista
MS/PC-DOS
UNIX (not recent)
FLEXOS (IBM 4680/4690 OS) (not recent)
SDOS (not recent)
RT11 (not recent)
RDOS (not recent)

I have utilised the following commercially available packages:-

Sybase
Informix & ESQL 
MS Access
C-Tree (ISAM)
Panel Plus
MDBS
DB-Vista (Raima Database)
TCXL
BT Filer
FoxPro

Career History - Teaching

1988 – 1989: Associate Consultant in 'C' & Pascal with Q.A. Training in Cirencester.

1974 – 1978: Peripatetic Teacher of Computer Science for Birmingham Educational Computing Center.

1970 – 1974: Teacher of Mathematics at the Blake High School, Hednesford, Staffs.

Career History - Industrial

After leaving Britannia Computers in 1984 I formed my own company, and began to market my technical expertise and experience as both a software and hardware design consultant in the microprocessor field.

1982 – 1984: I was appointed Managing Director of Britannia Computers Ltd., in 1982. I was responsible to the Deputy Chairman of the holding group, Armstrong Automotive Plc. During this two year period I was exposed to Marketing, Financial Budgeting and all the other aspects of running a small to medium sized company. I resigned in 1984 because I was no longer enjoying my work.

1978 – 1982: Technical Director for Computer & Data Machines Ltd. (later Britannia Computers Ltd.) in Dudley. During this time I developed Hardware and System Software for both Process Control and General Purpose Micro-Computers based on Motorola 6800, 6809 & 68000 processor technology.

Hardware Design Experience

I have designed and implemented the following pieces of Hardware:-

 A High Capacity memory board conforming to IEEE 696 (S100) bus standards.

 A Disk Controller Subsystem for a dedicated 6800/6809 micro computer.

 Several Complete single board Computer Systems, several of which were destined to become general purpose office computer systems.

 Various dedicated process control microprocessor systems based on 6800 and 68000 technology, including two to enhance the connectivity of CNC machine tools in a CAM environment.