Resume 16

Brendan has a total of 14 years of experience in IT. This includes over 12 years of extensive experience in Visual Foxpro and its preceding versions and the XBase languages. Brendan is a Microsoft Certified Visual Foxpro Consultant. His areas are business analysis, requirements gathering, applications design, implementation, database modeling, trouble-shooting and support of various database applications. Brendan is also knowledgeable in Visual Basic 6.0, ASP 2.0, Visual Interdev 6.0, MS Access, MS SQL Server 7.0, Crystal Reports, Office xp Automation and IIS 5.0. Brendan also has a good understanding of ERP systems including SAP and Siebel and knowledge of mobile enabling ERP or legacy systems on hand-held wireless devices. He has a working knowledge of Document Managements Systems, including online implementations of DMS s. Brendan has an excellent understanding of application development and its related activities, including hardware selection, technology selection, knowledge domain analysis and interpersonal relationship building.

Bachelor of Electrical Power Engineering from MIT, Manipal, India in 1986
Master of Science in Industrial Engineering from University of Houston in 1990
Entered IT industry with 2 year Master s Thesis Project in which he developed an Expert System to schedule a Batch Petrochemical Plant; Master s Thesis GPA was 4.0

• Gas Accounting and Trading
• Fuel Tax
• Plant Turnaround Quality Assurance Inspection
• Oil Well Materials Management
• Land Leases
• Property Taxes
• Oil Terminal Automation
• Hazardous Waste Management
• Seismic and Well Logging Information Tracking
• Batch Processing Plant Scheduling
• Electrical Power Generation, Transmission, Trading

• Languages: Visual Foxpro 7.0 and preceding versions, Dbase, Clipper, Visual Basic 6.0, ASP 2.0, Visual Interdev 6.0, MS FrontPage Express, COM, Java, HTML, DHTML, XML
• RDBMS: Visual FoxPro, DB2, SQL Server 6.5 & 7.0, Access
• O / S: Unix, Windows NT, and Windows 2000, Windows xp, Macintosh.
• Reporting Tools: Crystal Reports 7, R&R
• Wireless Technologies: Catamaran , WAP
• ERP: SAP MM, FI, CO modules , ABAP/4, Siebel CRM Call Center Module
• Document Management Systems: Worldox, Documentum
• E-Commerce Tools: Versata, VBExpress, CodeCharge

A software company needed to develop an Office Automation System to automate the contact management, marketing, project management, invoicing and accounting functions of IT consultants operating as small to medium-sized firms. Brendan played the roles of the lead functional consultant, lead architect and lead developer of this Office Automation system OAS . The entire OAS was written in Visual FoxPro 6.0 using the Application Development Framework Visual Promatrix 7.0.

• Elaborate study of new features of Visual Foxpro 6.0, 7.0
• Got training in Visual Promatrix 7.0
• Study of existing data model, development of ERD, performed database design and database modeling; wrote stored procedures, triggers;
• Developed several functionally helpful reports using the Foxpro report writer as well as many reports using Crystal Reports 8.0
• Developed several forms with lookup grids with sort and incremental search capabilities
• Implemented Audit Trail, Activity Tracking and Error Tracking Features in the OAS
• Implemented excellent group and user level security in the OAS
• Added new features to the OAS based on user feedback
• Performed detailed coding, trouble-shooting and Alpha and Beta testing
• The OAS is currently in use very successfully at the software company

Environment: Visual Foxpro 6.0, Visual Promatrix 7.0, Windows xp, Crystal Reports, Office xp, VBA, ActiveX

A mainframe based Materials Management System MMS was in use at the company, but it was not Y2K compliant. The manager of the mainframe based system, Mr. Bob Simons, was directed to create an enhanced, PC based, Y2K ready MMS. Whereas Bob was familiar with the business domain, he hired Brendan as the primary software engineer and VFP developer to develop the new MMS. The scope of MMS was vast. It covered the entire Procurement RFQ, PO , Inventory Management, Materials Movement, Inspection, and Retirement of piping, wellheads, valves, instrumentation and supplies for the oil and gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico. Bob and Brendan worked as a team, to successfully develop the enhanced MMS, which is still in use at company today.

• Numerous meetings of the team to discuss the business logic and analyze the requirements
• Performed careful data conversion from the mainframe system; incorporated historical data from previous five years; included an archiving feature for older data
• Built several intermediate prototypes which were used as building blocks for the final system
• Performed a normalized, non-redundant database design; created the database using Visual FoxPro
• Had 9 fields for a fully qualified piping description. These fields were sort-able and incrementally searchable. This feature and several other features made this system unique over an SAP or other ERP implementation.
• Several thousand lines of VFP code were written by Brendan in various snippets to incorporate the business logic; VFP controls and GUI environment was used to create user interface
• Many reports were designed and developed by Brendan using the VFP report writer as well as Crystal Reports; Some reports were very complex, with multiple report parameters, and sub-reports in the detail band
• Enhanced the system with OCX controls and API libraries for certain added functionality
• Elaborate security features were implemented; audit trail, activity tracking and error tracking features were implemented
• Conducted detailed Alpha and Beta testing; distributed test system to power users before the system went live
• Developed detailed user manual with attractive graphics and user-friendly diagrams; distributed user manual to every user
• Packaged installation of system using the Wyse packaging tool
• Conducted formal training sessions of several batches of end-users before the system went live
• Addressed a long list of support requests from various power users after system went live; occasionally scheduled new releases of software; always packaged installation using Wyse scripting
• Administered system for several months; added users; assigned security rights; provided ongoing training
• Provided on-site support with extended hours at the pipe-yard during crucial first two months of Y2K
• MMS is still in use at the company; It is robust enough to require very little support

Environment: Visual Foxpro, Windows, C++, OCX, API Libraries, Access, Excel, Crystal Reports, Wyse Packaging Tool, Visual Promatrix

Turnarounds are periodically performed on the petrochemical plants at Murray Chemicals. Sections of each plant are shut down for scheduled maintenance. Piping, instrumentation, electrical and mechanical components of the plants are tested, and based on the test results, maintenance is carried out. A turnaround costs the plant millions of dollars in potential revenue, so they are performed efficiently and effectively. Brendan was the primary analyst and developer of the Turnaround Quality Assurance Inspection System TQI at Murray Chemicals. He worked with the TQI coordinator and chief engineer as his domain experts and several about 40 inspectors as end-users. This was a ground-up development project. Brendan went through the entire software life-cycle with this project from inception to implementation and support.

• Gained a thorough understanding of the activities and workflow for a plant turnaround
• Learnt about various inspection tests which were performed on the pipes, valves, vessels, instruments, motors and electrical components; learnt about the data elements associated with each of these tests
• Participated in the turnaround as a engineer and an inspector to get a firm perspective of the process
• Prepared detailed design documents which had the database design and business rules
• Built the relational database with all the relationships, indexes and queries using Foxpro
• Built the system using an application framework called Promatrix; wrote API s in C for advanced functionality; used third party tool FoxSpell to perform spell-checking in the Memo fields;
• The system was designed to have multiple data sets; a test data set, a live data set and a training data set; provision was made for the users to toggle data sets on demand.
• Elaborate security features were built into the system; menu level, module level and button level security was implemented
• Brendan wrote, tested and debugged several thousand lines of FoxPro code to apply the business rules and functionality of the application
• Performed the role of a business analyst as well as of software designer and developer; designed and developed the user interface; and designed and developed the logic and layout of various reports
• Included a support module to log support tickets of the users, which were routinely addressed by Brendan;
• Provide real-time support with extended hours during the actual turnaround process
• Developed a user-friendly training manual, and conducted a three day training seminar for the users before every turnaround
• Administered a Novell network in the makeshift turnaround offices
• Started conversion of system to Visual Basic with an SQL backend to keep with corporate standards; wrote stored procedures, triggers
• Performed remote and on-site support of the system
• Change of management ended project

Environment: Windows, Visual Foxpro, Promatrix, C, Novell, Visual Basic, SQL, FoxSpell; PC Anywhere

ADS was a software consulting branch of Blue Lance Software. ADS implemented software applications for major Energy companies. As a software engineer with ADS, Brendan worked with multiple clients both individually and in teams. In this position he collaborated with other engineers to perform system design and optimize the software application framework developed by ADS. He collaborated with the documentation department to develop proposals, specifications and user manuals for the systems that he worked on. He had notable exposure to various knowledge domains in the Energy industry because of the software applications that he developed or supported.

• ADS was primarily a FoxPro applications development company, working with Oil & Gas clients
• Worked on the enhancements to a Seismic and Well-logging system; Simulated outerjoin while merging two or more databases using SQL; Enhancements to ad hoc report generator
• Designed and implemented simulation capabilities for the Lease Management System; Print current status and amortization schedules of company s leases based on user-defined fiscal year and date
• Developed solution for automated modem communication with remote site using batch file programming
• Enhancements to the Gas Accounting and Tracking System; used multiple windowing coordination; enhancements to user security, user interface, data validation, heuristics additions and several other changes per specifications
• Testing and trouble-shooting of an Accident Analysis and Safety application for Pipeline and Marine contractors; developed several reports being queried from the main database used as record-keeping, statistical analysis and decision-making tool by management
• Researched on requirements gathering and documented requirements into proposals and time and cost estimates for management and clients
• Software applications were multi-user; explicit coding was done for record locking functionality
• Visited client site to perform support tasks, installations, optimizations and user interviews
• Provided remote support to end-users using PC Anywhere
• Performed project management as technical team lead on 2 projects

Environment: Foxpro, COBOL, DOS, Carbon Copy, Batch File Programming, Novell

The scope of this project was to develop an Expert System using Artificial Intelligence AI techniques. The project was a collaborative arrangement between Wexon and University of Houston. Brendan was the lead developer, and one of two knowledge engineers working on this project. The domain expert in this AI project was a plant scheduling engineer from Wexon. The objective of the Expert System was to schedule the processing activities of a Batch Petro-chemical plant.

• Interviewed the domain expert extensively to develop the knowledge base
• Classified the knowledge base into the decision tree and heuristics
• Populated EXSYS, the expert system, with the decision tree and heuristics in the relevant firing sequence
• Compared the schedules of the Expert System with the schedules of the domain expert which were generated by the same initial data
• Iteratively modified the expert system so that software generated schedule was similar to the domain expert generated schedule
• Created a software model called BASH Batch Activity Scheduling Heuristic of the processing activities of the petrochemical plant using the Foxbase+ DBMS
• Represented the tank inventory levels, processing capacities of processing units, and desired product inventory levels in a data model
• Coded the heuristics and work flow with XBase code
• Integrated the output data with the FoxGraph tool to generate the graphical schedule Gantt charts
• Performed extensive coding, trouble-shooting, testing of BASH
• Wrote the technical specifications and user manual.

Environment: Foxbase+, Excel, DOS, FoxGraph, Batch files, EXSYS Expert System Shell

• Mobile enabling SAP and Siebel applications on wireless hand-held devices such as Compaq iPaq and Palm VII with Catamaran , Feb 2002 - Present
• Developing web applications using the VB/ASP based frameworks VBExpress and CodeCharge, Jan 2002 April 2002
• Creating a web-based document management system using the SDK packaged with Worldox, July 2001 - Nov 2001
• MS Office xp automation with VBA to create Excel, Outlook and Word applications, July 2001 Feb 2002
• Creating B2B e-business applications using the Versata e-business tool on the CORBA and EJB platforms, July 2000 - Jan 2001
• Using Java applets to create visual effects on web sites, July 2000
• ABAP/4 programming for SAP, Functional in MM, FI, CO modules, July 1998 - Dec 1998
• MS Certified VB Course, Spring 1996