Infrastructure & engineering
The engineering behind the business.
Websites are the half of the work you can see. The other half is the network, the servers and the support that keep a business running, built to a standard most small companies never get offered.
Remote first
Most infrastructure work is done remotely: design, configuration, support and advice. On-site work such as surveys and installs is taken on when capacity allows. Ask what I can do.
IT support & management
Day-to-day technology, handled by the person who set it up. I run Google Workspace (my favourite) and Microsoft 365, support both Apple and Windows, and answer the small fires as a human who knows your setup.
Networks & WiFi
Network design, configuration and remote management. Coverage that reaches every corner, segmented and secured, on the Juniper and Ubiquiti kit I prefer to work with.
Office technology & AV
VoIP, meeting-room displays, access control and device rollout. Planned and configured remotely, with on-site installation when capacity allows.
Custom systems & engineering
When off-the-shelf tools fight your business, I build the thing that fits: internal tools, integrations and automation, engineered properly.
Enterprise experience, right-sized
Enterprise-grade IT, without the enterprise bill.
I bring the experience of enterprise and data-centre work to small businesses, then size it to you. I build for what you need now and the growth you realistically expect, and never sell you more than the job calls for. If the simple option is the right one, I will say so.
Getting the small things right early is what keeps costs down later. Internal IP addressing is a good example: I plan your RFC1918 space around likely growth from the first subnet, so adding a site in a couple of years is a quick change rather than an expensive renumbering of the whole network.
So the first thing I ask is
A growing business with plans
I lay the foundations early, so adding people, a second site or new systems later is a configuration change, not a rebuild.
A local business with a branch or two
Lean, simple and kept well within budget, but still structured so adding a branch down the line stays painless.
Networks & WiFi
WiFi coverage, planned properly.
I model the signal from your floor plan and place access points where they earn their keep, so the corner office has signal and nobody is relying on one router to reach the warehouse.
- Predictive coverage modelling, with on-site surveys when capacity allows
- Enterprise access points, centrally managed
- Separate networks for staff, guests & devices
- Enough capacity for your busiest day
Predictive coverage model · 3 access points
Architecture
Built like a data centre, scaled to your office.
Firewalled, segmented and documented. The same discipline I bring to colocation and server commissioning, applied to a network small enough to fit in a cupboard.
Segmented network · firewall to edge
Big-network experience
Designed by someone who works on far bigger networks.
My background is in network engineering at a much larger scale: the infrastructure behind large websites, with BGP, ECMP and MPLS in daily use.
You will almost certainly never need any of that, and that is rather the point. Small-business networking is comfortably within scope, and the same care goes into the smallest job. If you ever do need that kind of scale, I am not afraid to point you in the right direction.
Resilience
Designed to stay up.
How much resilience you need is your call, not mine to inflate. If uptime is critical, I have the experience to engineer serious redundancy. If lean and simple is the better fit, I build that instead. I design to your needs and your risk appetite.
Two independent internet connections with automatic failover, so one line going down never takes the business with it.
UPS commissioning and clean power, so a brief power cut does not cost you an afternoon.
Backups that are tested, with a recovery plan you could follow under pressure.
Automated monitoring and alerts, so faults are flagged early, often before you notice them.
Recent engineering
Proof in the rack.
A rack built and commissioned in a colocation data centre. It is the standard I build to, whatever the size of the room.
Enterprise Juniper switching, configured and verified
Core networking
A fully commissioned rack in a colocation facility
Colocation · DC commissioning
Dell servers staged on the DC floor, ready for racking
Hardware buildEquipment & platforms I work with
Juniper and Ubiquiti are my preferred networking kit.
How a network gets built
Four steps, in order.
- Survey
- I map where signal and cabling need to go, from your floor plans and photos, or on site when capacity allows.
- Design
- A documented design: coverage, capacity, segmentation and the kit to deliver it.
- Deploy
- Clean installation and configuration, labelled and tidy, tested against the design.
- Support
- Monitoring once you are live, and the same person looking after it.
My limits
I’ll tell you what I’m not.
Good consulting includes knowing where your skills end, and I am never afraid to say I don’t know something.
Large-scale office AV is a good example: the big conference and auditorium systems are a specialism of their own, and not mine. When a job runs past what I do well, I help you find the right people for it.
No lock-in
Built to run without me.
Where I can, I design infrastructure that does not need a full-time IT team to look after it. I do not build systems that only I can run, and I have no interest in locking you in.
Some of what I build is genuinely complex, and I will not pretend it isn’t. What keeps it yours is the documentation: thorough enough that any competent engineer can pick up exactly where I left off. And if you would rather I stayed close, I am always happy to come back and help.
- Designed to run without constant babysitting
- Documentation a competent engineer can follow
- Use any IT professional you trust, not only me
- I am always happy to come back and help
Why it’s done well
I take on a deliberately small amount of work. It is the only way I know to keep the quality high and the attention personal.
I would happily spend my free time on engineering and IT anyway, and that care shows up in every network I design and every rack I build.
Start a conversation
Tell me what you’re trying to do.
I’ll reply with how I’d approach it and a clear idea of the cost, without a sales pitch.