Personal Profile
I am a senior ICT professional with over thirty years experience of designing, installing, commissioning, maintaining and project managing a wide range of information technology solutions for the security and communications markets. I am a natural trouble-shooter and problem solver with first class computing skills.
As a DrayTek Certified Network Admin, DrayOS and VigorAP and Advanced Voice Partner, I have a wealth of experience installing and maintaining IP networks for commercial and industrial customers, including IPv6 configurations. I have worked with a number of customers' in-house IT teams to implement IP networking, both wired and wireless, and IP voice solutions.
Over the last thirty years I have installed in maintained a wide range of Operating Systems, including Windows, Linux, BSD and QNX, including hardening the installs against intrusion for highly available Internet services and applications.
I have been involved in the hosting of websites and email services, since 1994 and over the years I have installed web applications on a number of platforms, both Microsoft and Opensource.
I have provided bespoke IT systems that integrate with customers' existing infrastructure, and so I am used to coordinating with customers' IT teams to make the solution work the way the customer envisioned, using as much, or a little of the customers' existing infrastructure, as the IT department want. This is especially important when streaming large amounts of video data around the network, as this can put the existing network under considerable load, that it may not be able to sustain, with existing workloads.
I spend a lot of time talking to customers for pre-sales and post-sales support issues and I am well versed in communicating with customers of all technical levels to resolve technical problems with systems in an informative and friendly manner.
Key Expertise
- Expert knowledge of IP network video / audio broadcasting for web attraction applications, gained over the past thirty years in a number of high-profile broadcasting applications for customers such as Scotland Online, British Waterways and Thompson-Reuters
- Expert knowledge of IP network video / audio surveillance for site security applications, for high profile customers, such as Vodafone, ICAP, Fujitsu and Honeywell, using equipment from leading manufacturers such as Active Imaging, Mitsubishi Electric, Axis Communications and VCS (Bosch)
- Thirty years experience in Business-to-Business sales, for SMEs, Enterprise level customers, NHS Trusts, and Government Departments, from the small local corner shop to large corporates
- Extensive knowledge of Technical Project Management gained over the last thirty years, in the security and communications industries.
- Broad knowledge of a wide range of Electronic Security Systems, for industrial and commercial applications
- Expert knowledge of Analogue and Digital Video surveillance systems for the site security market, with a particular focus on Mitsubishi Electric range of analogue and digital video surveillance systems
- Extensive knowledge of site / multisite Access Control Systems, from leading manufacturers in the industry, such as PAC (Stanley) and Paxton
- Alarm transmission & notification over wired and wireless connections, including over Mobitex and IP networks, for fixed and mobile applications, such as for Hampshire Police and British Transport Police
- Thirty years experience with IT hardware and software installation and support, for SMEs and Enterprise customers, including building and configuring workstations and servers for physical security system applications
- Wide knowledge of installing and maintaining IT Operating Systems, including Windows, Linux, BSD and QNX, gained from many years of configuring site security & video broadcasting services, for commerce and industry
- Extensive knowledge of Internet / Web technologies, including applications such as IIS, Apache, MySQL, Bind, and Squid, from thirty years running internal and external company network infrastructure
- Broad knowledge of IP networks & associated technologies, including being a DrayTek Certified Network Administrator and Advanced Voice Partner
Skills
- Video transmission and broadcasting over IP networks, for unicast, multi-unicast and multicast applications
- Video transmission over PSTN ISDN ADSL VDSL G.Fast DOCSIS X.21 leased lines Ethernet radio microwave optical fibre GSM/LTE
- IP video surveillance systems
- Digital video recording systems
- Analogue video surveillance systems
- Covert and discreet surveillance
- M-JPEG M-JPEG2000 H.263 MPEG-2 MPEG-4 H.264 H.265
- Radio Ethernet systems at 1.395GHz, 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 60GHz
- Windows Linux Unix BSD PocketPC Symbian QNX
- HTTP HTTPS FTP Telnet SSH SSL DNS (Bind)
- HTML XHTML CSS PHP MySQL JavaScript
- SMTP POP3 IMAP4 Exchange
- Apache and Internet Information Server
- PC/Server hardware and software support
- Hyper-V & VMWare
- NAS (Network Attached Storage) DAS (Direct Attached Storage) SAN (Storage Area Networks) RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks)
- Microsoft Office & LibreOffice
- IP networks switches bridges routers firewalls
- PSTN ISDN ADSL VDSL G.Fast DOCSIS GSM/LTE 5G leased lines X.21
- Access control systems using card key proximity and biometric technologies, including PAC (Stanley), Paxton and VeinCheck
- Fire alarm systems, mainly Apollo and Morley
- Intruder alarm systems, mainly Menvier and Texecom
- Mobile radio voice communication systems such as CT2 DECT PMR PBR, including Motorola Solutions
- Radio Paging systems, mainly Multitone
- Lone worker protection and staff safety systems
- Managing field engineers
- Project management
- Business to Business and Retail sales
Career History
2021 - 2022
Technical Sales Engineer, S-Connect Limited, part of SPHINX Computer Vertriebs-GmbH
Company's technical expert for both pre and post sales technical support, for a wide range of manufacturers, including:
- Moxa, Industrial Internet of Things, industrial networking equipment, serial servers, fibre converters, industrial protocol converters, IO, a well respected Taiwanese company, with strong presence in Europe
- AdvanTech, Industrial Internet of Things, industrial networking equipment, serial servers, fibre converters, industrial protocol converters, IO, a well respected Taiwanese company, with strong presence in Europe
- Perle, industrial networking equipment, serial servers, secure servers, very high end kit, used by military etc., a well respected Canadian company
- Barix, audio over IP soutions, for commerce and industry, a well respected Swiss company
2020 - 2021
Director, SLD Security & Communications Limited
2019 - 2020
Director, TeleGuard Limited
2012 - 2019
Director, SLD Security & Communications Limited
2011 - 2013
Technical Manager, SLD Security & Communications, part of Surrey Landmark Developments Limited
1993 - 2011
Technical Sales Manager, SLD Security & Communications, part of Surrey Landmark Developments Limited
Expert in the field of IP based Internet (and Intranet) digital video broadcast systems including broadcast systems for large scale public and private audiences. I have been the lead engineer on a number of high profile IP broadcast projects including:
- Loch Ness Live, in association with Loch Ness Marketing and Scotland Online, this was one of the BBC's top ten webcams of the world
- Edinburgh's CapitalCam, in association with the National Museum of Scotland and Scotland Online
- St Andrews Millennium Open Golf Tournament, in association with The New Golf Club, St Andrews and Scotland Online
- The Falkirk Wheel, including the Royal Opening, in association with British Waterways, Eildon Films and Morrison Construction
I was overall project manager and my involvement included the overall system design from the customer's initial requirement, coordinating the installation process with suppliers, managing the engineering team during the installation process, the installation of the video encoders and video broadcasting servers and managing the ongoing service and maintenance for the duration of the project.
Expert in the field of IP based network video surveillance systems for security, safety and process monitoring applications in commercial, industrial and educational environments using equipment from leading manufacturers including Active Imaging, Axis Communications, Tecton, VCS (Bosch), Mitsubishi Electric, Eneo (Videor), JVC, Sony and Milestone.
I have been the lead engineer on a number of video transmission projects on the rail network working for Amec Rail and RailTrack / Network Rail including equipping the Three Bridges signal control room with remote video monitoring of strategic points on the rail network using Thales leased lines and video monitoring of remote signal control rooms from the Clapham Junction control room using the Thales PSTN network.
I have wide experience with digital video recorders for surveillance applications, with a special emphasis on the Mitsubishi Electric range as I have run a Mitsubishi Electric Digital Service Centre installing and maintaining a wide range of digital video recorders.
I have many years experience with Business to Business sales for security, communications and information technology. Public sector sales including the prison service, local government and government departments. Retail sales experience for electronic security and portable communication devices.
I have experience of installing and administering a wide variety of computer systems, including hardware and software support; I also have knowledge of a wide variety of operating systems and application software.
I have extensive experience with web design, web site management, site hosting and maintenance; I have designed and implemented a number of corporate web sites and been involved in the hosting and management of a number of sites for third parties.
I have worked for many years supplying, installing, commissioning and maintaining a wide range of video surveillance equipment from leading manufacturers, from simple single cameras systems to large linked multi-site systems, using traditional analogue and new digital technologies.
Studies
2023
City & Guilds Level 2 ICT Systems Support
2022
DrayTek Certified Network Admin, DrayOS and VigorAP
1992 - 1994
BSc course in Applied Physics with Microelectronics & Computing at Kingston University London
1990 - 1992
HND course in Applied Physics with Microelectronics & Computing at Kingston University London
Experience with DEC VAX, Unix, Novell Netware, Pascal, Modula2, Basic, Fortran, Assembler, IP infrastructure and online systems. Work experience was at the Automatic Data Processing mainframe data suite in Staines as a system operator where I gained experience with VM and large scale payroll systems and studied the VM training course. Final year project was a text chat communication programme written in Assembler on CP/M.
Professional Associations
- Member of The Institute of Engineering & Technology
- Member of The Institute of Physics
- Associate Member of the European Optical Society
Interests
I am a single 53 year old British national with a full clean UK driving licence. My main out of work interests include paintball, physics, computers, networking and the Internet. I created and administer the Farkouh.NET Internet community which enables Farkouh family members around the world to keep in touch and share family news. I am a member of the English paintball community and a member of the "Jolt" paintball team and so I am to be found down at the local paintball field on a Sunday afternoon. I have also played golf since I was seven years old and enjoy travel.
I am a former elected Governor of the Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and also a Member of the Ashford and St. Peter’s Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. If you are a service user of SABP and have a query about the Trust and their policies, please feel free to contact me.
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