Steven Smith , Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Experienced Service Manager, Consultant and Trainer. A unique and varied portfolio of skills and experience spanning education, IT, local government, performing arts, and venue, project & event management.

We recently relocated our family to Edinburgh and I am currently looking for part time freelance work or substantive posts. Ideally am seeking something pretty elusive; a fulfilling, challenging, well paid work that will allow flexibility / part time working in order to spend some of the week caring for my young daughter.

My skills and interests are by no means limited to ICT and education. I can turn my hand to most things and throughout my career have been frequently called upon to become involved in projects outside of my usual remit or to 'hold the reins' on things to help through periods of transition; something that has rarely been properly reflected in my job title. Although for example I appear to have worked for Islington Council (and previously their subcontracted Cambridge Education) for over 11 year with only 3 substantive job titles, I do not recall a period of more than about 6 months where my role has been unchanged. I enjoy problem solving and challenging the status quo; helping clients and colleagues to look at what they are doing and re-evaluate to see if they can do it better or more efficiently.

I built the Islington Schools ICT support partnership from scratch. Starting my time in Islington as an ICT teaching and learning consultant I was frustrated by the poor state of repair of many schools kit and how that impacted on my ability to do my job effectively and the schools' ability to give their students the best education. I persuaded managers to lend me a couple of technicians from the internal ICT support team for an afternoon a week each, and we started supporting one school. From there I build the service to where it is today; providing best-of-breed support in an expanding, school-led, not-for-profit partnership employing 15 staff.

My skills extend to the practical and creative as well as the analytical; I'm a dab hand at DIY and before my daughter came along dedicated a day of my week to ceramic and glass art. This is on the back burner at the moment but ready to be resurrected as soon as work and family life allows!