Six roles on the delivery side of IT services

Mandate

Restore service quality on government contracts after two years of rising service credits, and make offshore delivery defensible to clients facing new security obligations.

Outcomes

• Cut tickets reopened within ten days from 18 per cent to 6 per cent; service credits fell from A$7.2m in 2021–22 to A$1.3m in 2023–24.
• Moved all privileged changes for government and critical-infrastructure clients to cleared onshore engineers at A$13.5m a year; no client system was reached in the February 2025 phishing incident.
• Introduced roster-first bid approval; the decline rate on qualified opportunities rose from 12 to 31 per cent and the win rate on submitted bids from 29 to 41 per cent.
• Lowered field utilisation from 88 to 78 per cent; attrition fell from 27 to 14 per cent and lost-time injury frequency from 6.1 to 2.4.
• Won a six-year, A$96m managed-infrastructure contract with Kelvanne Water Corporation in 2025.

Decisions in context

I became chief operating officer in July 2021, when my predecessor retired, after four years running government delivery. The mandate from Graham Ostrowski, our managing director, was blunt: service credits had risen for two years, a federal client was questioning offshore support, and the board wanted one person accountable for every promise Torvelle made to a client. I now lead 5,900 people across service desks, end-user computing, infrastructure and hosting, field services and our centres in Manila, Cebu and Pune, with nine direct reports. The four decisions that define the role are set out on my impact page: paying desks for durable fixes, holding privileged access onshore, approving bids on their rosters and lowering field utilisation after a serious crash. Revenue has grown from A$1.02 billion to A$1.38 billion over the period, more slowly than our plans assumed, and EBITDA from A$118 million to A$162 million.

Reason for the move

Current role. Open to one non-executive directorship with the board's consent, and to a confidential conversation about leading a services business as chief executive.

Mandate

Bring fourteen separately run government contracts under one delivery model and prepare them for clients' rising security requirements.

Outcomes

• Consolidated six government service desks into three, with common knowledge articles, rosters and quality measures.
• Completed four contract transitions, including a federal agency with 38,000 users, without missing a go-live date.
• Scaled remote-access support across our agencies within three weeks in March 2020, when users working from home rose fourfold.
• Raised EBITDA margin on government contracts from 9.8 to 12.1 per cent.

Decisions in context

Torvelle hired me in March 2017 to run delivery for its government clients, then fourteen federal and state agencies served by six separate desks and several infrastructure teams that had grown up contract by contract. Each desk had its own knowledge base, rosters and definitions of a resolved ticket. Over two years we consolidated them into three desks with shared measures, which let us move people between agencies at peak periods and gave clients comparable reports for the first time. I led four transitions in this role, including a 38,000-user federal agency, and all went live on the agreed date. March 2020 was the hardest month: within three weeks the number of agency staff working from home rose fourfold, and our remote-access and device teams worked through weekends to keep them connected. That experience showed me how quickly goodwill can be spent, and how carefully it has to be repaid.

Reason for the move

Appointed chief operating officer when the previous COO retired.

Mandate

Professionalise facility operations as the company grew from two sites to three and began serving government and financial-services customers.

Outcomes

• Rebuilt generator and switchgear testing to run under full building load after the January 2014 outage; no customer lost power in the three years that followed.
• Reduced portfolio power usage effectiveness from 1.62 to 1.41.
• Commissioned the western Sydney facility in 2015 with 12 MW of initial capacity, on schedule.
• Brought all three sites under certification to an international information-security management standard.

Decisions in context

I came home from Manila in February 2013 to run operations for Pellarin Data Centres, then an infrastructure fund's investment in two colocation facilities. Within a year I faced the defining event of the role: during a January 2014 heatwave the grid supply to our Melbourne site failed and one of four generators did not take its load, cutting power to eleven customers for 47 minutes. The investigation showed our testing had never run under the combination of full load and extreme heat. We rebuilt the regime so that generators and switchgear were tested monthly under real building load, accepted the higher fuel and maintenance cost, and had no customer power loss in the three years that followed. I also commissioned a third facility in western Sydney and lowered energy overheads across the portfolio. The fund began a sale process in 2016, and I left once a new operator was in place.

Reason for the move

Wanted to return to service delivery at larger scale, for clients whose systems serve the public.

Mandate

Establish the group's first offshore centre and move service-desk and infrastructure work from Sydney and London without degrading client service.

Outcomes

• Grew the centre from 120 to 1,400 staff across two sites.
• Reduced annual attrition from 52 per cent in 2008 to 24 per cent in 2012 through technical career paths and team-leader training.
• Kept both desks open through the severe Manila floods of September 2009 using an alternate site and staff accommodation.
• Transitioned 31 client services from Sydney and London, with two service-level breaches in the first quarter after transfer.

Decisions in context

I moved to Manila in July 2007 to open Arkwell's first offshore centre, starting with 120 people on a borrowed floor in Ortigas. Over five and a half years we grew to 1,400 across two sites, taking over service-desk, infrastructure and application-maintenance work from Sydney and London. Early attrition was 52 per cent, because the Philippine outsourcing market offered our trained agents better pay elsewhere within months. We reduced it to 24 per cent by building technical career paths, training team leaders properly and promoting Filipino managers into every senior role but mine. The floods of September 2009 tested our continuity plans more than any rehearsal had; we kept both desks running from an alternate site while many staff slept at the office. I handed the centre to a Filipino country head I had worked beside for four years, and I still count that succession as the most useful thing I did there.

Reason for the move

Family reasons, and a wish to run critical facilities; a local successor was ready to lead the centre.

Mandate

Stabilise a Sydney service desk that was paying service credits on half of its contracts, then bring three city desks into one national operation.

Outcomes

• Reduced the number of contracts paying service credits from 11 of 22 to 3 within two years.
• Merged the Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane desks into one national operation with shared knowledge and rostering.
• Introduced a ten-day reopen check on resolved tickets, a measure the business later dropped and I revived at Torvelle.

Decisions in context

I joined Arkwell in January 2002 to run a 90-seat service desk in Sydney that was paying service credits on eleven of its twenty-two contracts. The desk was understaffed at the start of each day and overstaffed in the afternoon, and its knowledge base was a shared drive nobody trusted. We rebuilt rosters around call patterns, wrote a proper knowledge base and introduced a ten-day check on whether resolved tickets stayed resolved. Within two years only three contracts were paying credits. In 2005 I became national service delivery manager and merged three city desks into one operation of 380 people. I completed my MBA part-time in this period. The reopen check was quietly dropped after I left for Manila because it made monthly reports look worse; I brought it back at Torvelle fifteen years later. I left Sydney because the group asked me to build its offshore centre.

Reason for the move

Asked to establish the group's first offshore delivery centre, in Manila.

Mandate

Install and maintain networks for mining, council and farm co-operative clients across north Queensland.

Outcomes

• Completed about 1,100 field callouts across north Queensland in three years on the road.
• Introduced a depot roster that capped consecutive long-distance days for the Townsville team.
• Cut repeat visits for the depot's largest client from one in five to one in twelve by standardising the spares each vehicle carried.

Decisions in context

I joined Dellacourt Field Services in February 1997, straight from university, as a graduate field engineer based in Townsville. For three years I drove north Queensland installing and repairing networks for mines, sugar mills, councils and farm co-operatives, often three or four hours from the depot. In 2000 I became team leader for fourteen engineers. Two practical changes from that time still shape how I run field work. We standardised the spares each vehicle carried, which cut repeat visits for our largest client from one in five to one in twelve. And we wrote a depot roster that capped consecutive long-distance days, after two colleagues had near misses on the Bruce Highway in the same month. I left at the end of 2001 because I wanted to understand why the help desk kept closing faults I had not yet fixed.

Reason for the move

Wanted to learn how service was managed from the desk side, which meant moving to a city.