Curriculum Vitae

Robert (Bob) Sutherland

Since 2002 I have concentrated on offering private tuition in mathematics to a variety of students including Year 5 schoolchildren upto and including those taking A-level Further Maths.This has proved very successful with nearly all my students achieving results well beyond their expectations. Although during my career I have done a great deal of teaching and lecturing, I do find one-to-one tutoring extremely rewarding. I have every sympathy for the many students I have met who have been let down during their school years by patently inadequate mathematics teaching from an early age. Trying to rectify this and give them a fighting chance at an acceptable mathematics qualification is a most stimulating challenge.

Prior to this I had been carrying out a variety of self-employed enterprises in parallel, including starting my own digital printing business printing personalised gifts, a couple of years dabbling in the antiques trade and selling bronze horse-racing statues at horse racing meetings. From 2000-2002, I also ran my own small IT consultancy company. This had two areas of interest: Ada training and web design. To fill the gaps when no Ada training was required I developed websites and provided web design and HTML  training for the small business community. At a more complex level, however, I also provided Ada83/Ada95  programming language training and software engineering training with a leading Ada training company. This involved the delivery to industrial clients of 5 day Ada courses covering both Ada83 and Ada95 to a fairly advanced level and included Ada philosophy, object-based and object-oriented approaches, Ada implementation of these ideas, generics, exceptions, tasking and low-level representations. The instruction I have provided has included lessons, lectures, tutorials and practical sessions. I have been involved in training on and off throughout my career.

From 1973 until 2000 I worked mostly for the RAF and the Ministry of Defence. In the early Seventies, whilst studying for a BSc at the Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham, I learned to fly with the RAF and, after graduating in 1974, the first six years of my RAF career were spent as an air traffic controller.  I became fully qualified as both a controller and a supervisor and shouldered the associated man management and operational responsibilities.  In 1980 I expressed a desire to actually use my Degree in some way and secured a transfer to the RAF's Education Branch. In this role I had full responsibility for the management, design and delivery of the various software engineering, software management and programming courses run for RAF engineers, overseas students and civilians. I have 10 years experience of designing and delivering training courses in the RAF. I initially taught maths and electronics to apprentices and, after spending a year at Birmingham University gaining an MSc in Computer Science, moved on to teaching real-time computing and programming (initially machine code, assembly languages and Pascal but ultimately the Ada programming language) to RAF Engineers. I completed my service in the RAF in 1990 as the Senior Instructor in Computer Systems Squadron at the RAF College, Cranwell in Lincolnshire

From 1991 until 1996 I was a self-employed consultant and, for most of that period I was sub-contracted to a small company called DISC Ltd. As such, I worked full-time as a software engineering and systems engineering consultant to the Directorate of Intelligence, Simulation and Information Systems within the Ministry Of Defence Procurement Executive (MOD(PE)).  Initially providing technical advice on their research programme into Project Support Environments (PSEs) and subsequently providing consultancy to their research programme into improving MOD's ability to procure software-intensive systems, the Software-Intensive Projects Improvement Programme. This involved acquiring a wide-ranging knowledge of all aspects of software and systems engineering and, also, a comprehensive knowledge of the MOD's procurement processes.

Subsequently, I was employed from September of 1996 by the VEGA Group PLC and worked as the Senior Consultant to the (MOD(PE)) Millennium Team in MOD Abbey Wood , Bristol. This role involved full-time consultancy to all of MOD(PE) on all matters pertaining to the Year 2000 date change problem.  In addition to my Y2K role with the MOD(PE), from 1996-mid 1998, I was also the Manager of the MOD(PE)’s Land Systems Support Bureau, a technical and managerial support organisation for all MOD(PE) Project Managers, especially those concerned with Army systems. This involved the provision of both technical and managerial guidance on all aspects of software engineering to Project Managers, especially in the area of tender evaluation.

In July 1998, I left Vega and the MOD and went on to complete a year as the Year 2000 consultant to the German airline, Lufthansa Cargo AG in Frankfurt. This work involved the design and initiation of a full Year 2000 programme and all aspects of Year 2000 work necessary for a major cargo and logistics company. After successfully getting their Year 2000 efforts off the ground, I was retained by the Board as a consultant to oversee the progress of the programme and to continue the development of an auditing regime and to advise on Business Continuity Planning. For the remaining 6 months of 1999 I was back in the UK working as a Year 2000 consultant to the Ministry of Defence Central Y2K Project and for the UK Government’s Action 2000 National Y2K Mentoring Scheme.

Keen on watching nearly all sports and playing a few, notably squash and table tennis. I also have a keen interest in canal boating, fine wines and natural history, especially ornithology.