Author: Mark Whitfield

Welcome to my site! After graduating in Computing in 1990, I accepted a position as a programmer at a Runcorn based software house specialising in electronic banking software, namely sp/ARCHITECT-BANK on Tandem Computers (now HPE NonStop). This was before the internet became more prevalent and so the notion of enabling desktop access to company accounts for inter-account transfers and book keeping was still quite a cutting edge idea (and smartphones only ever hinted at in Space 1999). The company was called The Software Partnership (which was taken over by Deluxe Data in 1994). I spent 5 years in Runcorn developing code for SP/ARCHITECT for various banks like TSB, Bank of Scotland, Rabobank and Girofon (Denmark) to name but a few. I then moved onto a software house in Salford Quays for further bank facing projects. After a further 23 years in the IT industry and now a Senior IT Project Manager (both Agile and Waterfall delivery), I thought I would echo out my Career Profile in this corner of the internet for quick and easy access.

1985 to 1988 : Computing at Leigh College (now Wigan and Leigh College) Marshall Street, Leigh, Lancashire, UK. WN7 4HX

Leigh College (now Wigan and Leigh College) pre-2007

1985 to 1988 : Leigh College (now Wigan and Leigh College)
Marshall Street, Leigh, Lancashire, UK. WN7 4HX

2 ‘A’ Levels – Computer Science and Biology

(building below demolished 2007 and now rebuilt at the Leigh Sports Village – 1, 2, 3, 4 article by Julie McKiernan courtesy of PastForward, produced by Wigan Archives & Museums, Issue No. 97, August – November 2024, Marking 50 years of the borough, Wigan and Leigh’s local history magazine – Address: Past Forward, Archives, Wigan & Leigh, Leigh Town Hall, Mark Street, Leigh, WN7 1DY)

My ‘A’ Level Computing Project was developed on a Amstrad PC 1512 and was written in Turbo Pascal. The software provided a means for a local town newspaper to store, track and calculate the money payable to delivery staff based on paper round metrics. These metrics related to size of round, papers delivered and any leaflets attached to a delivery for that week.

My ‘O’ Level Computing Project was developed on a LINK 480Z Research Machine and was written in Extended BASIC. Three submissions were required with appropriate design and testing. The excerpts here show details of a BASIC program for storing and displaying student exam results.