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Graduate Profile: Tim Sharp
Job Title: Global Oil Movements Site Applications and Interface Lead for Italy, and North Sea Production Industrial Control System Requirements Project Manager
Studied: BSc Business Information Technology at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Started 2002
Before I joined the company I considered a number of different organisations but after some research I found that ExxonMobil was the only company that I was considering that met or surpassed what I was looking for in an employer. The key things I was looking for were the possibility to travel for both long and short term assignments, an organisation that offered a variety of different career paths and the chance to start in a 'real' job from day one.
My first role was at Fawley refinery working as a systems analyst in an application support team responsible for providing support to all the refinery and chemical plants throughout Europe. The applications I supported are used by the plants to monitor and review manufacturing processes and are therefore a critical tool to the engineers at the site. They provide a trail for investigating plant performance that allows the plant to be run at optimal performance. On a daily basis I was interacting with colleagues from different countries to provide support and resolve problems with the plant related computer applications. The role was challenging and interesting and the learning curve from walking through the door as the 'new boy' to supporting critical applications was pretty steep. Within a year I was tasked with writing small applications to support the needs of the European plants and within 18 months I was developing web based data visualisation views of manufacturing process data for refineries.
As my skills developed I began to specialise in the support of laboratory systems. These systems are used by the plants to ensure that the product they produce meets both the manufacturing and customer specifications. My first role was to assist a project in implementing a new laboratory system in Italy. This required me to travel to Sicily and Northern Italy on a number of occasions to assist the project team and provided an opportunity to work closely with several Italian colleagues. I found this to be an interesting and rewarding challenge that exposed me to both a different part of the ExxonMobil business and a different culture. It was especially rewarding to see exactly how the applications I was supporting added value to the business. The role also allowed me to travel to several different countries including Singapore and Argentina.
As this time to widen my experience I was given the role of managing a small mainframe support team of 4 people based in the Fawley office. This gave me an opportunity to develop my people management skills and also allowed me to learn about mainframe applications.
My next move was to the manufacturing projects department, my first role was to manage the incremental upgrade of IT applications at 25+ chemical plants located around the world. This allowed me to refine and develop my people and project management skills while working to a tight deadline with a team split over three continents. Once this project was completed I became a member of a project team tasked with upgrading manufacturing applications for all refineries and chemical plants throughout Europe. This was run as a global project with project teams in all three regions (America, Asia/Pacific and Europe, Africa and the Middle East). The project required the team members to travel to every plant in Europe and provided an ideal opportunity to work away from the office for extended periods. As the project progressed I took over the role of managing the implementation phase for all European sites with a team of 6 technical specialists reporting to me.
Once all of the sites in Europe had been successfully implemented I was ready for my next challenge. I didn't have to wait long for it, within a few days of finishing the final implementation I was working on a global project tasked with implementing an SAP solution to assist refineries with managing inventory of raw and finished products globally. My role, which is ongoing, is to lead efforts to integrate the manufacturing applications at the Italian refinery sites with SAP. In this role I have been responsible for gathering requirements from our Italian users, and designing and managing the development of a number of critical interfaces.
As my SAP development work is almost complete and project go-live isn't until 2009 I am now also working part time on another project in a different part of the ExxonMobil's business. I am responsible for implementing updated corporate standards in relation to process control systems for oil rigs in the North Sea. These systems manage processes on the rigs and are used to provide rig operators with real-time data that is used to manage the operations of the rig. These systems are critical to the rig so it is a real challenge to implement the corporate standards without impacting production. In this role I am managing a team of 7 people who are tasked with travelling offshore to the rigs to gather requirements and to then design and implement the necessary standards.
I can honestly say as I look back that my career so far has more than met my expectations. I've travelled extensively and continue to do so, I've worked in several different areas of the business on a wide variety of different technologies and I've certainly had a 'real' job from day one. I really look forward to see where my career takes me next, either way I know it's going to be both challenging and interesting.
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