Nigel Thurston-Smith is a highly experienced project manager with over 22 years of experience managing projects across various industries including financial services. He has a strong track record of successful delivery of projects on time and on budget. He has extensive experience in project management methodologies including PRINCE2, Agile, and ITIL. He has managed projects involving regulatory reporting, customer platforms, data migration, and technology upgrades for organizations like Lloyds Banking Group, Nationwide Building Society, and Diligenta.

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Swindon / Bath / Bristol area. eMail: n.thurstonsmith@btopenworld.com
Telephone: 07973 11 90 58 (Mobile)
Personal Profile
A highly motivated self-starter with a wealth of business and IT change project management
experience (Prince2 Practitioner) gained across various market sectors including 14 years in
financial services managing regulatory projects. Commercially aware, I have an impressive
delivery record, and excellent reputation for my professionalism, credibility, stakeholder
management and motivation, never losing sight of the strategic vision or quality standards
required.
Sound technical knowledge with the ability to interpret technical information and translate it in
order for business leaders to fully understand the concepts using examples.
Key Skills
 Project management (22 years)
 Stakeholder Management (24 years)
 Project planning & controlling (22 years)
 Project Reporting & delivery (22 years)
 Project Governance (22 years)
 Portfolio management (14 years)
 Quality Assurance (14 years)
 Managing and mitigating risk (22 years)
 Budget control & estimation (22 years)
 Supplier management (14 years)
 Business Analysis (22 years)
 Problem resolution (22 years)
 Team building (22 years)
Career History & Achievements
Diligenta Limited Dec 12 – Sep 2016
Diligenta, a UK-based FCA regulated subsidiary of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), is a leading
provider of business process services for the Life and Pensions industry.
Interim Change Project Manager Jul 13 – Sep 2016
Accountable directly to project sponsor or programme managers for end to end delivery of new
and upgraded business and IT solutions to Diligenta’s client – Friends Life (now AVIVA).
Managing up to seven projects concurrently projects included:
 Customer facing ecommerce platform (Tridion);
o Improved speed to market;
o Reduced management overhead, maintenance and support costs.
o Managed a multi discipline team of middleware, network and WEB designers /
coders;
 A consolidated AML system reducing 12 separate solutions to 1. Directly resulting in
improved detection and a custodial sentence for a known felon. ROI achieved within 12
months, implemented to time and budget.
o Influenced sponsor to amend a specific requirement to reap additional benefits;
o Successfully negotiated additional resource from the supplier at no additional cost;
o Engineered a process to cleanse source data issues.
o Ensured the business could take maximum advantage of the new solution by
providing training and test environments.
 Managed a regulatory reporting process for pension charge capping, including
application development and process re-engineering.
o Process mapping
o Problem resolution
o Workshop facilitation
o Stakeholder management

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 NPG Capacity - With the advent of Auto-enrolment (AE) - Pensions Reforms the aging
mainframe software systems required re-engineering to allow greater throughput of
overnight batch processes without the need to physically upgrade the mainframe.
o Management of Full Project File Cycle;
o Taking project through key milestone reporting gates;
o Risk, Assumption, Issue and Dependency management.
o Responsibility for Communication of change to the user community;
o Stakeholder management;
o Monthly and Weekly presentations to stakeholder community.
Note: My role as project manager with Diligenta on behalf of Aviva, included the
Implementation Manger duties from my previous contract.
Interim Implementation Manager. Dec 12 – Jun 2013
Providing support to the business and IT project managers by providing specialist knowledge of
process and procedures for IT deliveries into pre-production and production environments.
 Environment management across Dev, SIT, UAT and Performance Test environments;
 Ensuring all quality gates were passed through successfully (release readiness & release
assurance);
 Responsible for the detailed planning and scheduling of releases. Who, what and when
with dependencies and risks identified with mitigation plans in place - including back-out
plans;
 Provision of knowledge transfer for BAU Support – including SLA’s and incident
management plans;
 Adherence to the ITIL standards as set out under the corporate SDLC framework;
 Asset and Configuration management;
 Successfully managed delivery teams to effectively implement significant change into all
preproduction and production environments including:
o A replacement AML Solution covering insurance and pension policies;
o An in house developed Auto Enrolment Pension system (.NET).
Lloyds Banking Group Oct 10 – Nov 2012
Lloyds Banking Group a major UK bank now incorporating HBOS, offers a comprehensive range
of financial products and services for business and individuals.
Interim Business Change Manager
Accountable to the programme manager, delivery of concurrent business change for the
Commercial (Wholesale) and Corporate Banking business units.
 Delivery of a business change process aligning Commercial Lending (Securities) process
between HBOS & Lloyds heritages, streamlining reporting, reducing costs and highlighting
financial exposure;
o Management of ETL process to meet business regulatory reporting needs having
defined and aligned the Commercial Lending process; Delivery included dress
rehearsal planning to prove the playbook.
 Successfully delivered a client money project migrating Client Banking information from
tactical off-line solution to strategic on-line solution to align with FSA regulatory
requirements and reduce maintenance costs.
 Migration of Internal Accounts from one banks core banking system (wCBS) to another’s
(rCBS). The bigger programme known as the account migration programme moved over 30
million Halifax and Bank of Scotland accounts on to the Lloyds Banking Group platform.
Exposure to: Commercial, Wholesale, Corporate, Securities, Wealth, Recoveries & Client Banking
teams.

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Nationwide Building Society Aug 02 – Sep 2010
Nationwide is the world's largest building society with over 14 million members. One of the
largest savings providers in the UK and a top-three provider of mortgages in the UK.
Change Project Manager.
Accountable directly to project sponsor or programme managers for end to end delivery of new
and upgraded business and IT solutions.
 Successful delivery of replacement tape silo and SAN storage technology to the data
centres (mainframe & non mainframe). Tiered storage implementation with full DR.
 Delivery of Hierarchical storage system, moving data between tiers of storage and on
line / off line storage. Leveraging newly installed tape silo and SAN technology.
 Refresh of customer services Call Recording software and integrated implementation of a
new ERP system specifically for the customer services team;
 Replacement of Nortel voice network with CISCO VOIP solution.
 Delivery of automated ID&V application to reduce call handling times for customer
services teams;
 Management of various .NET application development and deployments to simplify and
automate member enquiries such as balance enquires.
 Technology refresh - Home workers. Replacing ISDN2e lines with PSTN and business
broadband to take advantage of cost savings and speed improvements.
 Streamlining of foreclosure and debt recovery process (mortgages).
Project Manager - Ultima Business Solutions, Reading. Oct 94 – Jul 2002
Consultant - Specialist Computer Centres, London (City) Jun 92 – Sep 1994
Consultant - Packaged Solutions Ltd, Herts Jul 89 – May 1992
Technical Manager - Lifetree Software Ltd, Bucks Nov 84 – Jun 1989
Methodologies
 Waterfall
 Agile
 Prince2
 ITIL
 SDLC
 Six Sigma / LEAN
Core Application Competencies
 MS Office
 Visio
 BCM Remedy
 Quality Centre
 Clarity
 Niku Workbench
 Keyed in Projects
 Assyst
Education: PRINCE2 Practitioner, MCSE, CNE, HND Computer Studies, 8 GCSE
Interests: Travel, scuba diving, reading, gardening and DIY
Other: I hold a full (clean) UK driving licence.
References available on request and via LinkedIn
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Tags: Senior Project Manager, Project Manager, Project Management, Prince II, Prince 2,
Operations, Operational, Regulatory, Regulation, Integration, Stakeholders,
Planning, Delivery, Waterfall, Agile, SDLC, Six Sigma, ITIL, Influencing, Team
Building, Retail, Commercial, Banking, Pensions, Mortgages, Insurance.