Crossroads and Since I’ve been gone…

This blog post should have been completed last year but with all of the changes I have been through I wanted to wait until I had settled and could find the time to put the appropriate amount of time in to write a meaningful post. This isn’t the standard type of post this blog was built on but I wanted to thank the people who were on my previous journey as well as a thank you to those on my new one.

Change is a foot and the end of an era, my role with Apogee Corp/CityDocs has come to an end; heightened only by CoVID-19. I was furloughed in April, though I had a feeling that I had worked my last day at the firm and that I would soon be looking for a new role, which turned out to be prescient, and thankfully I have found one. More about that later.

This post isn’t about a disgruntled employee but about necessary change and a thank you to some of the great people I have met along my journey, initially with CityDocs – who were acquired by Apogee in December 2016. I have to thank Peter Lawson who gave me an opportunity to jump from being a senior project manager to director. I was trusted with setting up something from scratch; challenging myself to see if I could choose the right vendors so that we could cover all aspects of the EDRM, and build an infrastructure that would be up to the task.

The CityDocs days were great to be part of the sales team, specifically Azhar Husain were very receptive to the department and the new opportunities that it would offer the client base. Azhar was also very welcoming to me. Darren Cannell was at the heart of the operation and Peter’s right hand man. I have always been able to sit down with Darren and get the support I need, and he continues this for all the employees now part of Apogee’s Digital Document Services division. Sameer Patel has helped me with every single IT problem, we worked together on sourcing the initial equipment to build the Relativity infrastructure and Nuix processing servers. He brought balance to the “How much?” response when Peter had to open his cheque book. Tim Harrison joined us after the first year and together we hit the ground running and working with a friend is always a bonus! Tim is now running his own consultancy, with his drive and determination should do very well. Ben Hammerton really helped bring the department on with his contacts across the industry. Ben had a real influence on me and I now consider Ben a good friend and someone whom I would love to get the opportunity to work with again. Finally, I must mention my long-suffering colleague Nick Nunekpeku – he has been there since late 2015 and is the most hardworking individual I have met. We spent many hours working late through the evenings and he continued to work on client requests through the night.

When my venture first started, I was all alone in the CityDocs DR site in Bermondsey and the only people who I would speak to on a daily basis were the London Relativity team. Without the likes of Graham Jackson and Paul Gordon I would have driven myself mad! They were very supportive and always made sure that I was looked after. Graham moved on and was replaced by Tom Alexander who had a very big pair of shoes to fill – he has done a good job too!

I got to build a good working relationship with our processing vendor Nuix and specifically Rikki Gorman. Rikki has always helped me get the support I needed from Nuix and helped push the message through CityDocs/Apogee about the capabilities and power of what Nuix could offer.

Once the acquisition happened I met a few good people within Apogee, none more so than Simon Walsh. This guy wasn’t from the industry (but has worked in printing legal documents for 20+ years and understands the client base), and he didn’t have a background in FTE but he wanted to learn and when we didn’t have any business development managers representing the department he strived to learn so that he could go out and sell what we did. Simon was rewarded with a trip to NYC and Legal Week and we started to build interest in our work only for CoVID-19 to bring the world to a grinding halt and sad to say that this brought down the curtain on a five year journey. 

The full furlough effects on me…

Being furloughed has had a huge effect on my mental health. The uncertainty surrounding my job hit me extremely hard. I had gone from making lots of decisions daily on how to manage projects and contacting clients to win new work to changing nappies and daily walks round the local hills. I did not know for certain if there was a job to go back to and it was a very difficult period of time to try and find work. Whilst my salary was severely reduced and no sign of it returning to full level I still had to obey a 3 month notice period in my contract.

I had several interviews during my furlough months, and I feel a big reason for not getting offered some of these roles was due to being tied into a 12 week notice period. I couldn’t just walk away and leave on bad terms as it is not the way I like to conduct myself.

I don’t think the ultimate exit policy adopted by Apogee helped and I also don’t agree with them or any company using a job retention scheme to part pay redundancy. After the service I put in over the five years I should have been PILON.

I wasn’t the only one affected by my furloughing in my household or by the uncertain times caused by COVID-19. My fiancée who should have been my wife on June 26^th was made redundant and from May until July worked out her notice from home while I was on Daddy Day Care duties. I didn’t realise how much I missed the stresses and pressures of work until those three months of uncertainty came along, and my fiancée was incredible throughout. The positives I can take out of this forced break was the time I got to spend with my daughter but due to the stresses of uncertainty around my job security I didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have.

What next?

So where does this leave me now?…. Straight into an incredible new challenge with CCL Solutions Group and finally getting the opportunity to work with Lisa Burton. I met Lisa a couple of years ago and new that I wanted the opportunity to work with her. I joined CCL in August 2020 on a fixed term contract to cover the maternity leave of Laura Geddes. I have to say I am very lucky to inherited such a vast array of talented people to work with.

CCL is a fabulous company based around mobile and PC forensics, with a sizeable eDiscovery team and Cyber capabilities. The forensic labs provide excellent resources to Law Enforcement agencies(LEA’s) around the country and some of this work runs through to the team I am managing. I have been tasked with helping to build the Data Discovery and Analytics corporate capabilities, and this started with onboarding RelativityOne.

My long-suffering colleague Nick Nunekpeku has joined me for the third time and we are now leading our corporate work in Relativity while the rest of the team are working with our law enforcement agencies and public sector clients.

CCL has a fantastic SLT (senior leadership team) and from the moment I first walked through the doors I knew that I had landed at the right company. There is always something special when you can see that your new colleagues are extremely satisfied in their roles and politics doesn’t intrude on day to day work. This is the first time I have worked outside of London in this industry, and moving away from the humdrum of London is very different. The approach the management team take is different to management teams I have worked with in the past. The Head of HR Sam Marklew puts a focus on employee happiness which I haven’t quite seen before. I think all in all the company is a breath of fresh air.

The Future…

Whilst I am working on a fixed term contract here, I hope that I have the opportunity to stay with CCL for the long term. I see a big future for this company in continuing what they do best with LEA’s, and also their moves into the corporate client space.