What I have actually delivered.

Flagship case note

Yearfull Group

The role

A Hong Kong contracting group with offices across Asia. For twenty years I have been the senior technology head a business of that size would not otherwise have — the role a larger firm would call a CIO, except that mid-market construction contractors do not have CIOs, and would not know what to do with one if they did.

What that means in practice: I am not their IT support. They have people for that, and I am not the person you call about a printer. I am called in for the things that carry real money or real risk — and I have been advising, directing and training their people on the rest almost every week since.

Twenty years is the point. Anyone can look good on a three-month project.

Systems I built for them

• A secure subcontractor payment control system, developed from scratch. In a contracting business, payment control is where commercial risk actually lives — who has been certified, what has been paid, and against which valuation
• A cloud file platform across Hong Kong, Singapore and major project sites, so drawings, submittals and approvals moved between offices, major clients and external consultants without anybody emailing a file or couriering a drive. Document exchange with clients and consultants is one of my specialities, and this is the version of it I am proudest of
• An AI tender-checking system that reads a bid pack the way an experienced estimator would — scope gaps, pricing conflicts, onerous terms. On a single tender it identified HK$1.5m of potential costs to be avoided
• Their website, and the digital presence around it

Major upgrades, delivered around live projects

Server upgrades and migrations planned and managed for zero downtime: directory services moved off end-of-life hardware, virtualisation introduced, file servers rebuilt, storage and backup replaced, and the network re-segmented so server, backup and user traffic stopped competing. A firewall replacement across the business with no interruption to a working day.

The point of that work was never the hardware. It was technical alignment — getting a coherent stack where the parts are supported, compatible with each other, and compatible with what the industry requires: AutoCAD and the drawing formats, the file versions, the project software, the way a contractor actually has to work. A contractor cannot stop for an upgrade, so none of it happened during working hours.

The strategic side

• IT strategy and planning at board level, and an annual view of what should be spent and on what
• Linking the offices so Hong Kong, Singapore and the sites behaved as one business rather than three
• Vendor selection and management — specified, tendered, compared, and held to what they quoted
• Cost optimisation reviewed annually rather than renewed on autopilot, which is where the 40% came from
• Training and mentoring their own IT people, so capability stayed in the business rather than in my invoices
• Cybersecurity incident management when it was needed — same-day emergency recovery, and all systems fully restored within seven days

Why it is one case note rather than six

Because it is one client. Splitting it into six would look better and be misleading.

• 40%

  IT running costs taken out, without the business losing a working hour.

• Zero

  Downtime across server, network and firewall upgrades.

• HK$1.5m

  Potential costs identified for avoidance on one tender.

• Same day

  Emergency recovery; all systems restored inside seven days.

This year

What the work looks like now

The track record above is twenty years deep. This is the last twelve months, which is the better guide to what you would actually be buying.

Reading drawings and bid packs properly

• Clash detection across a commercial fit-out floor. Six genuine cross-discipline clashes found, along with 153 duplicated diffusers, five duplicated fan coil units and nine stray elements that would each have become an RFI or a variation. Delivered as a formal report, a numbered clash register and a marked-up plan — not a screenshot
• A fire services pre-check from the drawings. Four heat detectors serving a whole floor, no smoke detection, thin hose reel coverage and no emergency lighting shown. Raised as questions to the installer rather than as findings, because that is what gets them answered
• Tender intelligence on a live bid. Twelve commercial risks surfaced, 46 quantities and four sub-bills reconciled, in forty-five minutes, with an indicative benchmark against what the job should cost
• A model-to-cost pipeline. A three-scenario elemental budget of about HK$66m produced from a design model against published regional rates, with a stated accuracy band and a 28-line claims risk register mapped across the build sequence

Rebuilding systems that had outgrown themselves

• A twenty-year-old business database rationalised. A sprawl of hundreds of tables, thousands of scripts and hundreds of screens cut down by an order of magnitude — same business logic, a fraction of the surface area, and a system somebody other than the original author can finally maintain
• A 487-page operations manual turned into something usable for an architecture practice — an interactive dashboard covering the full RIBA work stages, with the quality audit trail built in rather than bolted on
• A governance framework for the Hong Kong construction industry, mapping the obligations that actually bind a project across quality, environmental, safety, information security and information management standards, plus local codes. The review also caught a standard that had been withdrawn years earlier and was still being cited

Commercial and advisory

• A management buyout and raise reviewed for a wine distribution business — two projection tables that contradicted each other, a revenue ramp with nothing behind it, and a raise smaller than the losses it was meant to cover. Then repositioned for a different investor market, leading with the asset that actually had value
• An intellectual property portfolio valued across four divisions, with the basis and the caveats stated plainly rather than a single flattering number
• A bilingual English and Traditional Chinese site built and deployed as a single maintainable file, with a live language toggle

Sixteen sectors, and what each one needed

Roughly sixty businesses since 2002, hand-audited. A sector list on its own tells you nothing, so here is what the work actually was in each.

Sector	What was delivered
Construction, engineering and fit-out	Interim technology leadership, document control, payment systems, tender intelligence, quality procedures
Gaming and integrated resorts	Document and compliance systems on a Macau resort development
Property and real estate	Marketing systems, and getting legacy platforms to do something they were not built for
Logistics and supply chain	Interim management, a warehouse management system, move tracking, digital presence
Finance, capital and investment	Secure data rooms, members areas and corporate websites
Accountancy and professional services	Brand-exact websites, interim management and IT strategy
Legal, risk and compliance	An interactive risk management application
Healthcare, wellness and fitness	Digital presence, booking and content for small practices
Education and training	eLearning advice, platforms and course material
Hospitality, food and beverage	Multi-screen broadcast, digital signage, loyalty and content operations
Retail and consumer brands	Storefronts, campaign content and social systems
eCommerce	Strategy, storefront build and progressive web apps
Manufacturing and materials	Interactive product catalogues for technical sales
Media, creative and marketing	Production systems, 3D modelling and visualisation
Technology and software	IT strategy, and startup mentoring through to launch
Energy and cleantech	AI-driven optimisation and go-to-market advice

Plus 28 startups advised and accelerated — AI and technology strategy, research, and getting from an idea to something that runs — and 9 corporates and boards.