Projects where calm troubleshooting saved real money.

A batch of Melita SIM cards stopped working in deployed routers. The standard reaction was to send installers on-site to reboot devices manually, at around £300 per visit.

Instead of accepting this as a “must”, I worked out a safe way to recover the routers remotely – using a nearby iPhone, connecting it to the local network and then accessing the routers via SSH and management tools.

The product started generating more and more false alerts. The obvious idea was to tune thresholds and tweak the algorithm.

I looked at the root cause instead: many low-quality, badly cropped or irrelevant images had been added to the database. We reduced the volume of poor images and tightened the process of what could be added. The false alerts dropped without any risky changes to the core system.

Support tickets were handled in a reactive way, with inconsistent responses and a lot of “tribal knowledge” trapped in people’s heads. This led to slower resolutions and repeated work.

I helped structure the support flow, introduced clearer categories, created documentation and playbooks, and made sure common issues had straightforward steps. The result: tickets were resolved faster and the team felt less fire-fighting.

At an amber quarry, the production line had issues that caused material loss and operational inefficiency. Mistakes were often noticed too late.

We implemented a camera-based line that gave live visibility and quick feedback to the team. With better monitoring and faster adjustments, the line reduced waste and saved an estimated £30,000 per month.

Some projects are still being documented. Expect more around antenna optimisation, large-scale router rollouts and creative ways of keeping systems online with minimal on-site work.