Our Consultants and Associates

ProjExc have a highly-competent team of trusted associates with specific knowledge in many aspects of project and program management, a number of whom are further detailed here.

In addition, through their affiliation with TheTeamThatCan, ProjExc also have access to experts and accredited associates in a much broader sphere than pure project, program & portfolio management. Take a look at our business advice page.

Together we have the capability to make sure that all aspects of your project and program management needs can be professionally and efficiently addressed, in a way that we would expect for ourselves.

Here we provide some biographical information on some of our consultants and experts. Of course more details of those listed or some of our other experts can be provided on request.

John Williams
John is the founder of ProjExc. He has been actively involved in Project Management during the whole of his career, as a project engineer, project manager, programme manager and project management function head. He is a member of the IET (Institute of Engineering & Technology) and the APM (Association for Project Management).
The majority of the last 15 years John has spent providing internal and external project management consultancy working in industry sectors as diverse as rail, oil & gas, telecoms, IT, construction, FMCG, government agencies, utilities, and retail. In that time he has established a reputation for excellence.
John has successfully delivered a number of high value, high profile & challenging projects, nationally and internationally, for organisations such as Pilkington, BP, Nokia, the NG Bailey Organisation, London Underground, British Energy, Vodafone, Orange, Powell Industries and BT.

John has extensive experience in all types of project (transformation, delivery, product development, and system integration), and is competent in developing project management people, methodologies, and tools, using proven techniques combined with behaviours and attitudes to deliver tangible results to business performance. He is accredited as a project management practitioner by the Association for Project Management with the APMP qualification.

John is often invited to talk about project management, either to fellow project professionals or to industry experts keen to improve their project performance.

John is also keen to “give something back” to his profession and volunteers accordingly. You can find out more about that here.

Ashley Brown
Ashley is our property development & construction associate. Ashley guides individuals and property developers through the minefield of residential and commercial build, through the typical stages of site acquisition, planning, consent, groundwork, shell build, internal build and completion. His approach is “no-nonsense collaboration” bucking the industry trend for combatitive contract management. Ashley is known for his “myth busting” advice, helping clients to achieve their dream, with the level of finish they need, on time and within the budget agreed.

Clifford Hobbs
Clifford is our manufacturing & supply chain specialist. He has broad and progressive hands-on experience across the supply chain and operations in both large and small organisations. Clifford has held GM and multi-site supply chain responsibilities nationally and across Europe, plant and production management roles; and led production engineering – working on factory layouts, production methods and workflows. He has operated across Europe and the Middle East in both permanent and interim positions, as well as in the capacity of an independent consultant, for many organisations including: Carnaud MetalBox; Continental Can; Crown Cork & Seal; Corus; Arcelor; Alcoa; BASF; Valspar Group; PPG Packaging; ICI Packaging Coatings; Eddie Stobart; Taylors of Martley; Roadferry Group; Coca Cola; Pepsi Cola; Britvic; Nestle; Campbells; Heinz; Mars; Premier Foods; Baxters; United Biscuits; Tesco; Asda; Sainsbury; Marks and Spencer; B&Q; Nationwide; HSBC.
Clifford has vast experience in lean supply chain and world class manufacturing environments, successfully implementing continuous improvement and best practice initiatives. Excellent with people, he communicates well at all levels and across functions, with a proven team building ability. He has a reputation built on improving costs and operational performance through business process review, re-structuring and change and improvement in workflows and controls. Comfortable and experienced in supplier and customer facing roles and negotiations, he succeeds by forming effective partnerships to reduce inventory and supply chain costs.

Derek Bell
Derek is our PM Training specialist. Derek is passionate about developing skills and capabilities within organisations relevant to their needs. He is a highly experienced trainer having worked with many organisations over the last 25 years including AstraZeneca, BP, BT, BBC, BAA, ConocoPhillips, MOD, BNFL, Hitachi, HP, IBM, Barclays, Citibank, Lloyds, JPMorgan, LINK, Boeing, numerous government bodies, numerous police and fire and rescue organisations, BUPA, Exel Plc, Norwich Union, NatWest, Smiths Medical, Computacenter, KPMG, & PwC. He holds the ISEB Certificate in Project Management for Information Systems, the APMP Certificate and attained the Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) Advanced Practitioner & Trainer qualifications. Derek is also a long standing PRINCE2 Practitioner. He is also a Project Management Professional with the Project Management Institute (PMI).
Derek is a firm believer that the training experience should be engaging, practical and fun.

Emma Harrison
Emma Harrison is our PM Recruitment associate. Emma has a wealth of experience in projects and project management training (including PRINCE2) in the public and private sectors, and now specialises in recruitment solutions to a wide range of market sectors that require Project Managers & Program Managers across the UK. Emma’s background, knowledge and personable but professional approach to recruitment makes her approach quite different to generalist recruiters, and is proud to be unique in a good way. Emma’s specialisation in project management and our personable approach to recruitment, that has consistently delivered great project managers as required.

John Atkinson
John is our project procurement specialist. He specialises in procurement and supply chain management and has over a decade of experience in Procurement strategies (advice, creation and implementation); tender processes including tender construction and process management; global sourcing; outsourcing (production and services); supplier relationship management and controls; e-procurement; logistics management; supplier audit. Although UK based, John also maintains a fully staffed office in Beijing enabling us to support clients sourcing projects from the China and the far east. John’s experience with organisations such as Focus DIY, the DTI and a number of venture capital organisations, enables us to create innovative cost reduction and performance improvement solutions for our clients.

Stephanie Chamberlain
Stephanie is our agile project management specialist for IT projects and programmes. Stephanie is a seasoned Prince2 project manager and also has a wealth of experience managing and mentoring Scrum teams for various media and software organisations. She has presented in Finland and London at International Conferences and is also published on the subject. Her successes include the launch of an Advertising Management Booking Portal & CRM system, an international radio website and a flash game to encourage children to do more sport. Stephanie’s Masters Degree in Business Systems Analysis and Design gives her a unique appreciation of both business and technical issues.

Steve Harland
Steve is our project leadership specialist. He has extensive practical management experience in Sales, Marketing and Customer Service; with significant change management experience of the IT, Telecoms and Pharmaceutical sectors. He has successfully combined his post-MBA organisational development and consultancy experience with hands-on senior and board-level management in industrial products, services, fast moving consumer durables and business to business services.
As well as facilitation of project team start ups, conflict management facilitation and training for project teams, Steve has facilitated change leadership and strategic planning programmes and delivered business leadership coaching programmes for the likes of Nokia, Lafarge, SAP UK, First Engineering, GEC/Tarmac Rail, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilley, GlaxoSmithKline, IBM/Lotus, Psion and Bass Inns Glaxo, Brio Technology, Wyeth PharmaCo, Hutchison 3G, Nokia Networks and Lafarge Aggregates and Birmingham Learning Skills Council. Steve has a degree in mechanical engineering, an MBA from Aston University and a Diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing. He has separate qualifications as an Executive Coach and a Performance Coach and is accredited through the Association for Coaching. He is trained in a wide range of people assessment and development tools and instruments.

Steve Kirk
Steve Kirk is our Project Tools specialist. He has extensive experience in implementing project accounting applications such as Deltek Vision and Sharp Owl, as well as front office applications like MS Project and Project Server. His fifteen year career, with major software vendors such as MDIS and Infor, started as a PM and consultant. He has seen the problems and challenges of managing projects and the huge benefit that choosing and using the right tools can have. Furthermore, his experience as Operations Director for Frontstep UK (formally Symix) gives him an insight into how to manage portfolios of diverse projects with a single resource pool. As a consultant, he has helped clients tackle project management issues in sectors such as defence, local government, biotechnology and professional services. Steve is a qualified PRINCE2TM Practitioner and an active member of PMI & the BCS.

Wayne Chopping
Wayne Chopping is our project tools associate. Wayne has a wealth of experience in interpreting business needs and creating technology based solutions to meet those needs. Wayne has available a range of Java web based business application tools, based on proven and robust modular technology packages. His in house solutions provide flexible and web-based real world database tools which span sales and marketing right through to service and product delivery, inventory management, resource planning, service management, and information portals. They can be cost effectively customized to meet our client’s specific needs. Wayne has worked for over 15 years with organizations such as WH Smith, Hitachi, De La Rue, Toni & Guy and North West Water, providing tools to automate sales and marketing processes or provide a single view of multiple legacy databases, accessed from anywhere with browser access to the web. Wayne is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.