Alastair D M Kinloch

Alastair D M Kinloch

519 Webster's Land

Edinburgh EH1 2RX

United Kingdom

Mobile: 07802 430 202 Pager/voicemail: 07626 98 3858 Tel: 0131 228 5235

Email: alastair.kinloch@btinternet.com Website: http://mackaykinloch.ltd.uk

Personal Profile

An experienced analyst/programmer, with knowledge of computer languages and software programs. An effective team member and motivator, who can also work on his own initiative to meet deadlines. Excellent oral and written communication skills and the ability to liaise with people at all levels.

Skills

Extensive business knowledge of blue-chip companies such as IBM, Xerox, banks and insurance companies, especially life and pensions

APL, HTML, Dreamweaver, HomeSite, MVS/TSO, QMF, VM/CMS, with occasional use of ISPF, REXX and other MVS facilities. Used FORTRAN for 6 years.

Full, clean driving licence

Employment History

APL Analyst/Programmer HECM, Aylesbury, Bucks. June to Nov 2001

Working on APL project for rectification of Equitable Life policyholder annuities, including using QMF to edit SQL statements to fetch tables from a DB2 database and Lotus Freelance to produce flow charts of an APL system.

HTML coder KLP Scotland Feb 2000 to Mar 2000

Building HTML versions of pensions forms containing nested tables, using Dreamweaver 3 and HomeSite 4.

Website Developer Homecare Contracts (Scotland) Ltd Dec 1999 to Jan 2000

Direct, part-time, fixed-price project to develop website for Homecare using Dreamweaver 2 and HomeSite 4.01.

APL Analyst/Programmer DMR, a divn. of Amdahl (UK) Ltd Nov 1998 to Jan 1999

Migrating an APL pensions valuation system from MS-DOS to Windows 95 and then NT by constructing Windows forms and writing event handlers using APL+Win version 3.0.

APL Analyst/Programmer Scottish Widows, Edinburgh Feb 1997 to Nov 1998

Modifying APL Claims system to comply with Pensions Act 1995. Day to day support and enhancement of Pensions Claims System. Environment: APL2, MVS/TSO, HiperStation.

APL Analyst/Programmer Rand Information Systems Ltd Jul 1996 to Jan 1997

Analysis and documentation of APL part of a core business application (for Legal and General), while ensuring Year 2000 compliance.

COBOL Programmer Britannia Life Assurance Ltd Mar to Apr 1996

COBOL programmer in project to split PAXUS LIFE SUPRA database by company. Software environment: MVS/TSO, CICS, COBOL II, VIASOFT, MS WORD 6.0, EXCEL 5.0.

APL Consultant Rand Information Systems Ltd Feb 1996

Assessing APL part of a core business application (for Legal and General) to understand its role, complexity and relevance to the Year 2000 date problems.

APL Analyst/Programmer Eagle Star, Cheltenham Jun 1995 to Sep 1995

APL2 programmer in team upgrading New Business Quotation system to comply with new Disclosure Requirements for Personal Illustrations for Pension Schemes. MVS/TSO environment.

APL Analyst/Programmer Rank Xerox, Marlow Aug 1994 to Mar 1995

Data base administration and APL programming for Analysis Reporting and Consolidation System (ARCS), a multi-dimensional database system written in I P Sharp APL for corporate performance and legal reporting.

APL Analyst/Programmer Royal Life, Liverpool Dec 1993 to Aug 1994

Using APL2 with VM/CMS on project to bring Royal Life's APL applications under control as required by auditors. Speeded up actuarial calculation functions and mapped actuarial notation to function names. Also used CA SuperProject, Microsoft Word and Access.

APL Analyst/Programmer Legal & General, Kingswood Aug 1993 to Dec 1993

Translated APL2 code into pseudocode to enable rewriting in another language. Application, called Box Manager, enables day-to-day management of investment funds and was written by Deputy Valuation Actuary.

Training/Education

Attended Borland Delphi Level Two workshop, Services to Software Ltd. 25-26 Apr 1995

B.Sc. (Ordinary) Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Edinburgh University, 1967. Merit Certificate in Computer Science

SCE, Harris Academy, Dundee, 1963. Higher Grade English (A), Mathematics (B), Science (B), French (B), History (C). Ordinary Grade German, Arithmetic

Examples of using Skills and Abilities

Getting on with people

Working at Scottish Widows, I provided expertise in the APL programming language, training in APL coding to a staff member with limited APL experience, detection and correction of errors in calculations used in a pensions system and testing the system. This involved liaising with other members of the team and business customers.

Customer Care

At IBM UK Ltd, Spango Valley, Greenock, a customer was retyping figures in printed reports into another system. I realised a feature of the APL2 language allowed a program to read the files containing the reports, process the reports and convert them into a format specification that could be used to produce the reports required by the customer. He was very pleased with the result.

Flexibility

At Xerox in Marlow, as well as being a Database Administrator, I had to deal with customers’ problems each day, including diagnosing errors and finding solutions. I achieved this by listening to customers, taking careful note of their problems, giving them an estimate of how long it would take to solve them and if necessary consulting other team members with more experience of the systems I was supporting.

Responsibility

At HECM working on the Project for Rectification of Equitable Life Policyholders’ Annuities, I was writing code to perform automatic translation of APL code into "pseudocode" (structured English describing processes). I was the only person in the team capable of reading APL code (which uses its own character set that looks like hieroglyphics to the uninitiated) and my APL coding expertise was far beyond the capabilities of anyone else in the team. Hence it was not possible to supervise me in detail and I had to work on my own.

Planning

At Legal & General I had 3 weeks to translate an APL system into "pseudocode" which could be used by PL/1 programmers to rewrite the system. I soon realised that there was not enough time to translate all the implied nested loops in the system or to write code to do automatic translation and so I devised a notation which specified the system functions at a higher level more like English, using phrases such as "for each …".

Adapting to Change

All of my projects have required adapting to change because business requirements vary as time goes by. In APL we tackle change by adopting a method of prototyping system functions, demonstrating the prototype to customers and incorporating requested changes. These days this approach is known as Rapid Application Development (RAD) but APL programmers have always developed systems that way. APL is suitable for prototyping because it is an interpreter so that changes and error corrections can be made while the system is running, without the need for the compile, link, run, test, edit cycle required by compiled languages.

References available on request