Mark Leyland is a seasoned senior project manager and SAP consultant with 13 years of experience across various sectors, including finance, manufacturing, and public services. His recent roles include leading PMO initiatives and program management for major transformation projects in the financial sector and working on governance and delivery processes for the UK Department for Work and Pensions. Leyland's expertise encompasses project management, SAP implementation, and business change management, supported by formal qualifications in Prince2 and SAP applications.

1. Mark Leyland
Overview
A proven and highly motivated Senior Project Manager and Functional SAP Consultant, with thirteen years experience in IT
consulting, spanning multiple industry sectors; Manufacturing, Financial Services, Aerospace, Travel / Tourism and Public
Services. Work to date has included implementing SAP across different geographies’, designing bespoke solutions to business
problems, managing complex business change and transformation programmes, along with desktop / infrastructure rollouts all to
time, quality and cost. Along with the successful design and setup of programme offices, to support complex programmes of work.
Personal Information
Age: 37
Place of Birth: Wigan, Greater Manchester
Work experience
April 2011 to current
Contracted to Co-Op Financial Services, Manchester
PMO Development Manager as part of the Business Transformation Programme (bTp programme), which is a £ multi-
million programme created to develop and implement a re-platforming of the Bank's core IT systems, based on
customisation and localisation of a standard Banking package.
- Management of the PMO development/improvement initiatives across the programme.
- Ensure Programme Strategies, Processes, Procedures, Standards and supporting toolsets are developed and consistently rolled
out across the transformation programme
- Move the transformation programme office to Business As Usual, ensuring that it is fully operational to support and ensure
consistency across the programme within a tight timeline
- Support and work closely with the PMO Operational Manager to take on the new processes, procedures, strategies, standards
and toolsets with the appropriate level of communications and training
- Support the programme with regards to mentoring others in terms of both Prince 2 and Project Management Best Practice,
through my extensive project and programme management expertise
- Work closely with the Quality Assurance team to ensure that improvement initiatives are delivered appropriately and meet the
requirements of the internal audit team
- Produce the PMO Weekly and Monthly Reports for submission through to the Steering Management Group
- Own the production of the Product Descriptions to support the Work Breakdown Structure, working with the Release Co-
ordinators and Functional Areas
- Produce and own the Project Definition Document and Project Plan as well as the other typical PM deliverables.
- Work with and lead on the production of the Programme Planning Standards, Plan Template, supporting Management
Information and supporting processes, specifically in the area of resourcing within the individual Release & functional area plans
February 2010 to April 2011
Contracted to Department for Work and Pensions, Blackpool
May 2010 onwards - Governance project manager as part of Programme Delivery Office supporting one of DWP’s high
priority programmes of work, delivering a Central Payment System for all UK benefits.
- Support the Programme Delivery Strand Lead and the Deputy PMO Manager in their day to day activities and direct work in
relation to Risk, Configuration Management, Planning, Change and Stakeholder Management.
- Lead the successful application of the DWP Business Change Lifecycle / Governance Model, working with suppliers, strands and
stakeholders, ensuring all key components are understood and addressed, to ensure a successful passage through the DWP Gated
Review Process.
- Lead the Gated Review’s, ensuring all criteria are graded correctly and in line with the Business Change Lifecycle / Governance
Model. Providing the presentation material to support these gated reviews, along with the production of other material for onward
communication to senior forums and stakeholders within DWP.
- Work with DWP Business Change Lifecycle team to ensure correct adoption, along with providing any recommendation’s or best
practice advice, for inclusion in to the next release of the Change Lifecycle rolled out across DWP.
- Work with the Business Acceptance team to ensure consistency in terms of reporting and recommend appropriate changes, as
well as managing when manager is on leave / holiday.
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2. - Provide best practice expertise in the areas of Planning, Configuration Management, Risk Management and Stakeholder
Management. Instumental in providing automated tools for MI in the area of planning, which supports the automated production
of configuration management tracking reports and stakeholder product matrices. The overall plan, also automatically providing
the required information to support the gated reviews, as part of the DWP Governance Landscape and Business Change Lifecycle.
Contracted to Department for Work and Pensions, Blackpool
Interim Risk and Configuration Manager as part of Programme Delivery Office supporting one of DWP’s high priority
programmes of work, delivering a Central Payment System for all UK benefits.
- Negotiate and influence across all Strands of the Programme, engaging and building relationships with CPS Programme Business
Leads and suppliers, to manage the day to day running of the CPS Risk Management Process and CPS Configuration Management.
- Ensuring that CPS Programme level risks are identified, appropriate risk and action managers engaged, and mitigation actions
regularly reported upon;
- Ensuring that CPS Programme Risk Review Board meets regularly to assess current risk log;
- Providing information on programme risks to support programme reporting and governance requirements.
- Management of an accurate, visible and protected Configuration Library;
- Ensuring that all documents affected by agreed changes are identified and appropriately updated and reviewed having regard to
practicality and Programme Timescales.
- Ensuring adherence to documentation quality review processes.
- Ensuring that Risk Management Plan, Configuration Management Plan and Quality Plan are written or updated to reflect current
phase of programme, along with the Business Change Lifecycle
June 2009 to September 2009
Contracted to CSC Limited – End Customer - Urenco, Chester
SAP Quality Management Functional Lead and with sole responsibility for gathering business requirements and ensuring
successfully mapped in to the SAP Quality Management system, for this high profile business change programme.
- Ran workshops to confirm appropriate mapping of requirements in to overall design and to provide early demonstrations of
system to end customer
- Confirm appropriate master data settings through workshops and make appropriate configuration settings to provide required end
solution to customer.
- Unit testing carried out on master data and configuration settings, to ensure adherence to design.
- SAP Quality Management solution required to incorporate elements of Purchasing, Inventory Management, Manufacturing (PP-
PI) and Sales and Distribution.
- Functional specifications written to cover complex interfaces, enhancements, reports and output documentation. Worked closely
with ABAP to reduce level of development time and to ensure correct interpretation of functional requirements.
- Identified and confirmed data migration requirements from customers current system requiring mapping to upgraded system,
working with SAP data migration team and assisting in the building of LSMW’s.
January 2009 to April 2009
Gold Medal Travel, Preston
Programme Manager with sole responsibility for managing both Information Technology and Business Change
programmes. Line management responsibility for 3 project managers, 1 business analyst and 1 test analyst.
Project value - £1million with budget responsibility for full amount
Project duration – 6 months
Team size – 3 project managers, 1 business analyst and 1 test lead
- Key programme of work to improve the customer experience offered by Gold Medal, as well as open up new distribution
channels and increasing their competitive advantage.
- Managed supplier of Application delivery to ensure that solution developed in line with the business requirements. Managed the
in house team who were redeveloping the internet solution to support the application change and also the fare engine, plus printing
/ mailing solutions – which were all bespoke in house developments.
- Manage programme plan, incorporating all business activities to enable the business change, training plan, testing plan, release
schedule, pilot, and in house developments along with all the suppliers’ key activities for delivery of the application end solution.
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3. - On my recommendation, based on previous experience from business change and transformation programmes, a team of key
users from the business was pulled together. They would champion the change in to the business.
- Dedicated room set up with computer terminals to provide early visibility of system to end business allowing for scenarios to be
demonstrated and proven, supported by the team of key users.
- Reported direct to IT Director, with links in to HR Director
August 2005 to December 2008
Electronic Data Systems, Lytham
Programme Management of Non DOI programme and security initiatives programme, on the request of the Client
Delivery Executive (CDE).
- Scoping of a new project, as part of Security Initiatives programme, to deliver secure email across DWP. Scope jointly set with
customer and project schedule built in consultation with third party suppliers, packaging team, testing team, network team, release
management team, security team and help desk team.
- Joint consultation on project schedule ensured agreed date in terms of achievability and based on customer requirements. On the
back of agreement, change requests raised and circulated to the CAB for consideration and the other documentation as required by
the SIAM tower was commenced, along with the work required by the security teams.
Programme managed final phase of Non DOI programme, from May 2008, which required delivering programme within
tight commercial timescales
Project Value - £5million (over project life) with budget responsibility for £2million
Project Duration – 3 years from initial launch in 2005.
Team size – 5 project managers – matrixed team of additional 10 people
- Non DOI transformation programme responsible for ensuring that all non compliant desktop machines transformed to new
standard hardware, including migration to new infrastructure and email systems. Resulting in reduced support costs, due to
standard hardware and infrastructure for both EDS and DWP. The reduction in support costs and standardization was one of the
key business criteria for initiating the overall TREDSS programme of work
- Business showed resistance to change, impacting on overall EDS cost model. Recommended to both DWP and EDS senior
management team that separate commercial agreement be instigated to capture surplus work, giving benefit to both EDS and DWP
– since would now drive the change.
- Reduction in headcount required me to project manage around 3 different projects within the overall Non DOI programme to
push the programme forward. Requirements confirmed from an applications, infrastructure and desktop rollout perspective.
Applications sourced from approved suppliers through both EDS and DWP procurement processes. Applications scheduled for
packaging, testing, user acceptance testing, pilot and release in to live. Release of application in to live co-ordinated with desktop
rollout and accompanying infrastructure.
- Scope of desktop rollout’s across all DWP business areas, requiring significant co-ordination of resources across a matrixed team
made up of engineers, implementation teams, data migration, network team (BT), release management and legacy email teams.
Approach for rollouts brokered and agreed with the customer and accompanying implementation plan agreed. Rollouts required
downtime, since users legacy email including all emails and users data to be migrated on to the newly installed infrastructure
(LAD’s and CLAD’s).
- Applications development co-ordinated with the packaging team to ensure that fully unit tested, solutions assurance testing and
where possible either User Acceptance Tested or run as a pilot for a period of time. The release of these applications was co-
ordinated and built in to an appropriate release schedule with the assistance of the DWP and EDS release management teams.
- Customer satisfaction in terms of desktop rollouts extremely high, with business areas expressing this through to CDE.
- Testament to my hard work in driving this transformation programme forward that one of my references / recommendations is a
member of the DWP senior management team.
Deputy Programme Lead for Non DOI programme from June 2007 on request of Client Delivery Executive, assisting
another programme manager to resolve this programme which was out of control.
Project Value - £5million (over project life) with budget responsibility for £2million
Project Duration – 3 years from initial launch in 2005.
Team size – 5 project managers – matrixed team of additional 10 people- Instrumental in ensuring consistency within
programme so that scope, finances, schedules, risks and reporting showed a true picture, as well as introducing a common project
methodology and agreed levels of governance.
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4. - Ensured scope understood and agreed between all parties, with commercial agreements put in place to support. Tracking
objectives from a commercial perspective with both EDS and DWP.
- Whilst jointly managing Non DOI, requested to project manage high level / high visibility short term piece of work, to implement
encryption solution across DWP. Project scoped and implemented all within a couple of months. Extremely successful outcome,
leading to additional security initiatives with customer and increased revenue for EDS.
Electronic Data Systems, Lytham & Cheadle
From August 2005, Programme Office Manager for Service Integration & Management (SIAM) team, as part of the
overall Transforming EDS Services (TREDSS) programme.
Project Value – around £15 million, not directly responsible for budget although my team did financially manage.
Project duration – 3 years from initial launch in 2005
Team size – 6 project analysts and 2 planners
- Instrumental in implementing key consistent processes for risk, issue and assumption management, change management, quality
management, configuration management, financial management, resource management and project reporting.
- Lead a team of planners and instrumental in ensuring that the plans reported in a consistent manner through the adoption of
planning standards and templates deployed across the programme. Governance model to support planning process pulled together
and rolled out across the programme, ensuring common understanding in terms of project manager expectations and milestone roll
ups.
Assumption based risk management methodology implemented and a process for capturing and reporting the project risks / issues,
programme risks / issues and joint risks / issues was put in place.
- Change management process, incorporating a Change Advisory Board, change control documentation and reporting
implemented.
- Quality Review Process and document standardization implemented, along with standard folder structure, naming convention and
version controlling, as well as appropriate configuration library implemented
- Cost model created, managed and tracked on a weekly basis, incorporating appropriate resource profile
- Team regularly received praise from the programme director and Client Delivery Executive.
June 2004 to August 2005
Electronic Data Systems, Cheadle
From June 2004, Product Development Manager for Post Office Card Account. A move in to the financial sector and
away from manufacturing /aerospace background. The Post Office offered those on benefits the opportunity for a bank
account in to which their benefits would be paid, since other financial institutions would normally refuse to take them on
and open bank accounts.
Project Value – Time and materials so no fised budget
Project Duration – ongoing
Team size – 2 project managers and 4 business analysts
- Led a team of Project Managers and Business Analysts, responsible for translating customer requirements in to business
requirements and then implementing in to the overall solution currently in place.
- Worked closely with release management team to ensure all changes appropriately planned before incorporating in to overall
solution.
- Provided Business partnership relation management between the various distributed service providers, including JP Morgan, who
provided the Post Office Card Account. Requiring me to ensure relationship maintainenance, through regular face to face
meetings and addressing of issues.
- Involved in incident management, ensuring logged and escalated appropriately depending on severity along with underpinning
SLA timescales apportioned to these severities. Trend analysis performed and common problems identified, with appropriate
changes built in to future releases.
- Provide recommendations to customer in terms of opportunities to enhance existing product, so being proactive, resulting in
increased work and revenue from an EDS perspective.
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5. April 1998 to June 2004
Electronic Data Systems, Derby
From April 1998, lead QM SAP Consultant on one of the largest SAP / ERP implementations undertaken in the UK, for
the aerospace giant, Rolls-Royce.
Project Value - £500,000 for serialisation project with overall responsibility
Project duration – in terms of serialisation solution 4 months
Team size – 2 additional SAP Consultants
- Technical authority for SAP QM, covering the implementations in UK, Germany, US and Canada. Responsible for ensuring
changes made elsewhere within the SAP system had no detrimental impact to SAP QM rollout, across the various geographical
locations.
- Member of SAP QM working group requiring regular presentations in SAP Walldorf. One such presentation covering a redesign
around some QM functionality that we had introduced, which SAP subsequently introduced in a later release.
- Lead business process re-engineering workshops around the Quality Management function within Rolls-Royce and regularly met
with the Quality and IT directors within Rolls-Royce, to influence how the business change, as a result of the SAP rollout, should
be communicated to affected business users.
- Taking the business requirements and transposing them in to the appropriate SAP functionality, taking through the full
development lifecycle, before being granted sign off within the UAT environment.
- Lead QM authorizations development to support the Quality Management rollout
- Developed several key director level ABAP reports to support the business and which were implemented in to SAP Production
Environment.
- Involved in 2 full SAP lifecycle implementations and 1 SAP upgrade implementation
- Successfully project managed on time and to budget an SAP bespoke solution to Serialisation in to Rolls-Royce Germany, since
standard SAP did not offer required functionality. Lead a team of SAP & ABAP consultants ensuring design encompassed MM,
PP, SD, PM, QM and IM.
- Liaised with Rolls-Royce customers in Indianapolis and Canada to ensure serialization solution could be rolled out to these sites
at a later date. Ran a series of business process workshops to present solution and ensure mapping to their current business
processes, along with understanding any underpinning risks / issues.
- Project a huge success and plan was to rollout to UK and US. Solution put forward for an industry award in Germany.
Role expanded to take in the support of the British Airways account, based at Heathrow Airport, due to successful bid for this
account by EDS.
- Acted as Workflow Administrator, to support currently implemented workflows.
- Offered QM support as dictated by business need.
- Further enhanced industry sector knowledge within aerospace and travel / tourism.
Since I was part of the Quality and Procurement team, I also regularly offered support within the Material Management module
and was involved in a lot of their design / implementation work, due to being a fully Certified SAP Materials Management
Consultant.
September 1997 to April 1998
Electronic Data Systems, Hucknall
A member of the core support team for the Rolls-Royce Hucknall site.
- Enhanced Windows NT administrative skills along with enhancing my development skills in respect of the Microsoft Suite of
products, particularly Access and Excel.
- Key player in rolling out new PC’s and networks to the site as well as being instrumental in solving some of the initial teething
problems with the newly built and installed PC’s.
Education
Professional Qualifications
Prince 2® Registered Practioner and Prince 2® Foundation
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6. SAP Qualifications
Certified SAP R3 Materials Management Applications Consultant
Problem Management / Quality Notifications (Version 4), Problem Management / Quality Notifications (Version 4.6), Quality
Inspections (Version 4), Quality Inspections (Version 4.6), Quality Management (Version 4), Quality Management (Version 4.6),
Problem Management / Quality Notifications (Version 4.6), Workflow (Version 4) and Workflow (Version 4.6)
Salford University - 1994 to 1997
Awarded BSc(Hons) Information Technology degree.
Sponsored by Electronic Data Systems (EDS), Rolls-Royce Group, Derby.
Wigan & Leigh College – 1990 to 1993
BTEC National Diploma in Business & Finance - 4 Distinctions & 2 Merits.
BTEC First Diploma in Business & Finance - Awarded overall Distinction
Bridgewater School – 1982 to 1990
10 GCSE’s Grades A - G
Interests, activities and hobbies
Mountain biking, photography, squash, swimming, golf and generally keeping fit – being a member of a local health club.
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