Meet the Major Programmes team

Have experiences in a previous career encouraged you to seek out more purpose in your career?

I have spent the majority of my career working in defence, having joined the Royal Air Force straight out of school then continuing to work in the sector since leaving the service. The opportunity to drive major transformation and significant investment programmes in defence is really exciting for me because, having been on the inside of defence as a service person, I'm very aware of the struggles and challenges that the Ministry of Defence (MOD) often faces when trying to change, whether that’s introducing new capabilities, or transforming to respond to the demands or threats of tomorrow. Delivering transformation across a really large organisation like the MOD (~209,000 people!) is cumbersome. It shouldn’t be underestimated how complicated it is to simultaneously evolve to be ready for tomorrow, and sustain vital operational commitments that are critical to national defence today. The organisation knows it needs to transform and, particularly, embrace modern technology and ways of working to survive as an organisation, but to do that whilst being responsible for 24/7 defence of the UK’s interests at home and overseas is enormous - being able to support the department to do this and deliver impactful change as a major programmes practitioner is really exciting.

Have you seen the challenges the defence sector is facing change throughout your time in service and at Deloitte?

Absolutely. I served eight years in the regular armed forces and four years as a reservist and saw the organisation weather a lot of storms during that time. One of my starkest memories was during the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review – I was in Officer Training at that time and the outcomes of the review had a direct impact on me and my course mates. Being told that aircraft fleets that we might have worked on were being retired with immediate effect, and that the profession we had spent our time in training focussed on joining was no longer available to us was really difficult. In some instances that meant leaving the service entirely. I even remember quite vividly a video of a big machine tearing a half-built Nimrod aircraft apart after it had been deemed to be no longer required. It’s something that has stuck with me throughout my whole career: “there has to be a better way to do this”. I don’t underestimate how hard it is to make decisions that result in outcomes like those mentioned above, but might there have been a way to avoid it? How can we avoid time delays, cost overrun, scope creep, how can we use the data and systems that we have to understand the impact of our choices more effectively, how can we use AI to lessen the cognitive burden in all of these decisions? These are the type of questions we’re trying to answer at Deloitte - approaching large-scale programmes in a way which mitigates some of that risk.

Considering the current rate of technological innovation, how do you ensure our clients are embracing new technologies which suit their requirements?

The current pace of technological innovation and change is overwhelming. Every week there’s a new buzzword – “Machine Learning, GPTs, Language Models, Agentic”. I speak to a lot of different organisations, defence and wider, and everyone has the same question – what does this actually mean to me? It can be hard to know where to start.

I recently led a project to introduce an Enterprise Generative AI tool for a government client. They approached Deloitte asking if we could help them understand how the tool (Microsoft 365 Copilot) could solve productivity challenges. I noticed a real change in mindset from what I had previously seen. In the past, there was a tendency not to be at the cutting edge of tech and to let others test/trial and understand the risks - we can get to it later, or the perennial fear due to cost making the concept undesirable. Whereas this time they were keen to be forward leaning and be at the cutting edge – they wanted to be an early adopter, they wanted to explore impacts and potential benefits sooner. We used that desire and enthusiasm to drive a six-week discovery which evolved into an 18-month implementation project which provided the organisation with transformative personal assistive AI capabilities across the enterprise. The client remarked that it was the fastest embracing of modern technology they had seen to date – it was amazing to see that shift.

We’ve had really positive feedback from staff about their use of Copilot, and people are interested in learning more about the possibilities of using it in their work. To have been involved with such a fundamental organisational shift was a career-defining engagement for me.

What do you think the main driver is behind our defence sector clients’ willingness or resistance to embrace change?

Like every organisation, there are pockets of cultural resistance that we have to navigate – but this isn’t always without sound reason, for example: “Why do this when we should be focusing on operations/preparation for conflict?” We’re at a point where the UK is facing a very real threat and as a result we have to change.  If we don’t change, we might not have the capability to fight even one week of conflict with an adversary. This is playing in to how the department now approaches change – major shake-ups of operating models across the MOD are now being delivered in an agile way, which is new and has its own challenges, but is forcing people to think and deliver differently. There is an imperative to deliver with a completely different mentality, and Deloitte is at the cutting edge of enabling that change to happen.

Is supporting that change a significant driver for you? What motivates you?

There’s something about public sector work for me which transcends Deloitte and individual motivators. Everything we do for the government is motivated by improving the productivity of the UK and improving the effectiveness of our public services. That is the thing that gets me out of bed. I love my job at Deloitte and I love what I do for my clients but knowing that I’m doing it for the wider benefit of the UK is really exciting. Particularly in defence – the work we collectively do drives change and capability development which allows the UK to defend itself more effectively which is really motivating.

What is on the horizon for your career? Are there any skills you are interested in developing?

I’m really motivated by enhancements in tech, particularly AI. I have a couple of internal roles in that area. I lead efforts to support our clients with using Microsoft 365 Copilot across the UK and also support firms across our North & South Europe region. Anything in the domain of making enterprises more productive, effective and more informed when making strategic decisions is where I want to be. I’m also excited by the transition to AI-led organisations and what this means for how Frontier teams deliver in this new age. I will continue to work in defence because it’s very much my home, but I’ll be taking opportunities to do more in this space.