About

Watton Consulting

Delivering IT and Business Transformation

HISTORY

Formation - Watton Consulting was formed by its owner Eur Ing Paul Watton MBA BSc CEng MIET in July 2011 to allow businesses to benefit from his 40 years experience in Engineering and Information Technology.

First Assignment - Paul's first assignment was to provide Project Management leadership and consultancy to the Food Standards Agency in considering the business case for outsourcing IT Services, managing the procurement process, transitioning to the selected Supplier and setting up the internal organisation and business processes to support delivery of the outsourced services. Key to success was identifying, managing and satisfying a complex set of stakeholders with very diverse requirements including the Chief Executive, Board of Directors, senior management within the FSA business, staff and their associated union representation along with the Cabinet Office to gain approval for the contract.

The project was delivered 2 months ahead of schedule with very positive comments received from the Chief Executive and Board of Directors.

INNOVATION

A feature of Paul's management style is that he is always looking for creative ways to bring additional business benefits to the customer or his own organisation even if it means working outside of his direct areas of responsibility. When working for GEC Sensors as a Software Manager leading a team developing embedded software for avionic systems he came up with the idea of interfacing a transportable PC to the system boards to allow re-programming of the boards in the field. The previous solution had been to return the boards to the factory for re-programming, (this could take days when working in the USA). There were also costly plans in place to build a fully customised programmer.

The implementation of the PC interface and supporting software proved highly effective and was used in the UK and the USA to support development trials providing flexibility to change parameters and programs during the trials that was not previously possible. The functionality gradually extended far beyond what was originally envisaged, it became an essential piece of test equipment and avoided the cost of developing and supporting a customised solution.

Early Career

Paul's early career was focussed around the hardware and software design, development, testing and manufacture of civil and miltary avionic and communciations systems.
This included systems used on Concorde, Rolls Royce RB211 jet engine on the Boeing 757 aircraft, Secondary Surveillance Radar and in other military applications.
As a Systems and Communications Manager at British Gas he changed his career direction to the application of IT and Networks technology in more commercial office based environments.
Paul's knowledge and experience in leading high integrity hardware, software and system design and development teams has provided him with a detailed technical knowledge which has been applied successfully in many troubleshooter situations where he is able to adopt both a high level business perspective combined with an informed technical understanding of the problem at hand.