Warehousing with Lloyds

I am now working at Lloyds Banking Group, helping to build a Risk Warehouse for the combined group. This project is intended to replace a number of different (fragmented) solutions within the enlarged LBG group. The contract started at the beginning of August and will run through until the end of March 2011.

My involvement will be to design and build a couple of modules that will help the group to manage the risk in their loan book.

The project is using SAS 9.2 and utilises DI Studio, Enterprise Guide and other tools. It will run on a GRID environment, a number of servers will be available to route the processing request and split the processing intelligently among the servers available.

Mortgaging the future

Started at Bradford & Bingley today. They have hired me to help deliver Treasury reporting into the data warehouse. This involves specifying and developing reports from the existing warehouse structure together with the addition of a treasury application into the warehouse.

And because this is clearly not going to keep me busy all of the time, I am also to help to identify reporting requirements for archived databases. More about both these projects later.

Possible New Contract - At Last

Went to see Royal Bank of Scotland today - they want a SAS analyst who can also do Excel. Seems a good alternative to going back to HBOS who do not seem to be able to get the project they have started.

The meter's running out

It is nearing the end of my time at British Gas. I have been productive, but the piece of work I was brought in to do is almost complete. I hear that HBOS (now called Lloyds Banking Group) want me back to do some migration work. I am waiting to hear.....

New Project - It's a gas!

At last, a new contract. This time in Manchester, of all places. At least I can put the suitcase away in the loft. I am now able to perform a daily commute. Centrica needed someone to help them reconcile their pre-pay meter records with their SAP financial ledger.

This one goes through until the beginning of August 2009. So far they like what they have got.

End of an Era

An era has ended. I have finished at HBOS after 21 months. First of all to help kick start the Competition Commission investigation into the sale of PPI which was supposed to last 3 weeks! Within a week, it got extended to six months.

At the end of 2007, HBOS asked me to stay on to help resuscitate a warehouse development project that got suspended by the PPI investigation. This warehouse was intended to enable reporting to be performed on the 3rd party insurance. This kept me busy when there did not appear to be much work around in the North West, and also meant I was available to help with further work on the PPI project.

During most of 2008, I was involved in a new warehouse project to create a warehouse for the 1st party insurance system. Whereas 3rd party had not been properly designed, the 1st party application was implemented by more structured methods.

This phase was delivered eventually during December 2008, allowing the warehouse team to think how they were to migrate to the new server platform running on a Netezza server, and then how they were to build the reporting systems on this warehouse.

The early part of 2009 was spent refining the existing 3rd party warehouse, cleaning up the base layer to allow the reporting functionality to be built on a robust base layer.

HBOS General Insurance - another extension

It is now November 2008, and we have almost completed the Irish warehouse, apart from some glitches where the backfilled tables suddenly disappear - apparently, the person who did this was not aware that these were about to become production tables.

Then, eventually, the team running the first warehouse were now in a position to start updating it to ensure its accuracy. I have another four months work to do if I want. Because the credit crunch is now reducing the amount of work elsewhere, I accept the extension.

This project will allow the cleaning up of the warehouse to reflect the design benefits of the Irish warehouse. That will make this one work better (and more accurately).