Andrew Nichols

Work Experience

·     Plan and develop new life safety services from the ground up (most recently, E911 for campus Unified Communications)

·     Manage four critical, life safety services; two of which have more than 10,000 end users (Illini-Alert has 60,000+ end users and E911 has 12,000+ end users)

·     Design new services to leverage existing CITES resources and services such as campus storage, Active Directory, and Exchange

·     Train and guide network service engineer and life safety engineer as part of the CITES Life Safety Services group

·     Manage life safety services including including capacity planning, financial planning, and continuity planning

·     On call 24/7/365 as primary support for Illini-Alert and backup support for security camera services

·     Work with CITES Help Desk to resolve customer satisfaction issues related to Illini-Alert and E911

·     Develop relationships with experts in multiple fields (e.g. CITES, UI and local police, METCAD, Office of Public Affairs, and 3rd-party vendors) to leverage their collective expertise when creating new services such as E911 for Unified Communications or developing and deploying upgraded services such as Illini-Alert

·     Managed several life safety services including the campus emergency notification system, Illini-Alert (60,000+ users)

·     Grew the campus security camera service from 13 cameras to over 800 cameras in partnership with the Division of Public Safety

·     Integrated Kuali Ready continuity of operations planning software on all three campuses and University Administration

·     Authored original documentation for the Division of Public Safety, end users, and administrators

·     Oversaw the day-to-day management of NCTE’s infrastructure by managing two staff members while I developed long-term strategies

·     Maintained voice over IP applications and servers that I designed to replace our previous PBX at a savings of nearly $100,000

·     Managed two virtualization platforms (Linux-based for development needs and Windows-based for production needs) that I designed to consolidate servers at a savings of over $120,000 in hardware costs

·     Constructed web-based, database driven reporting applications for multiple departments including  marketing, finance, customer service

·     Acted as technical lead in a variety of inter-departmental projects by providing plain language explanations of technical procedures and development of interfaces 

·     Maintained several Windows 2003 and Windows 2000 servers with SQL Server 2000 and IIS

·     Worked with multiple Public Safety agencies to install servers, interconnect mobile and wired networks and GPS for use with ITI’s emergency communications applications

·     Conducted training for 911 dispatchers, police officers, sheriff deputies, and jailers

Education

·     Recipient of Amalia Baylor Scholarship for the study of Russian

Certifications

Microsoft Certified IT Professional – Enterprise Administrator
Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer
Milestone Certified Advanced Partner

Publications/Presentations

·     E911 and Unified Communications: Bridging the gap between POTS E911 and Next Gen 911, ACUTA 42nd Annual Conference. San Diego, CA, April, 2013.