It has been my privilege and pleasure to have been able to work on two projects with Rob over the last 5 years or so when he was initially at Clyde & Co, Dubai and more latterly while he was with PWC, Dubai. As a supplier of Translation Productivity solutions within the ME Region, I am pleased to say that these projects led to successful implementations of new technology and working practices to help the Translation Teams in both organisations provide a more efficient and productive service.
On first meeting Rob I found that he very quickly picked up on the potential business and operational benefits Translation Productivity solutions could deliver to Companies and was able to use this knowledge to evaluate how it would benefit both of the Companies he has worked for in the last 5 year or so, even though they each required totally different approaches and set-ups to meet their future needs and aspirations.
In both projects this has led him to carry out detailed feasibility studies to confirm that the perceived benefits would deliver the results required and that their was a solid business case and cost justification to put forward to the Partners for approval.
As part of this whole process Rob reviewed current working practices and operational workflows associated with the task of translating information from request through to delivery and through this was able to see where potential improvements could be made by implementing new or enhanced day-to-day operational and business processes and through the installation and adoption of Translation Productivity software and tools. Once he was happy that he fully understood what was required to improve this whole process and that their was a business case to take this forward, he then evaluated the various solutions available in this specialised market to see which best met their needs from an operational, feature/benefit and cost perspective before making a final recommendation on the referredoption.
Once Rob had received approval to proceed with the project he was then involved in the roll-out process with particular focus on the implementation of the new operational and business processes and the setting up of more efficient and managed Teams. In the case of PWC this included the successful establishment of an Arabic Centre of Excellence to cater for the translation needs of the various PWC Organisations within the Region.
In my own view Rob has a great skill in being able to smoothly and successfully take a project from conception through to implementation and to manage the expectations of Users and Management alike.