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Linda Smith, CIO, Earthquake Commission
Linda has been working for the Earthquake Commission since the 8th of August 2011. She was involved earlier in the year as acting IT manager on a consulting assignment via Datacom when a major earthquake hit Christchurch on 22 February 2011.
Prior to joining the Earthquake Commission as CIO, Linda worked with Datacom for over 6 years. Her most recent role was Manager Professional Services – Project Management, leading a team of consultant Project Managers specialising in infrastructure and transition projects. Linda has also worked as a project and programme manager across a wide range of IT projects. Linda has a Masters degree from Massey, is PMP, Prince 2, certified scrum master (CSM), MSP and ITIL Foundation certified.
Linda will be presenting "Earthquake Commission - Crisis Project Management"
"I'll be alright as long as there is not another Earthquake". Did I really say this? This presentation will tell you how I ended up leading EQC's IT department just before, during and after the catastrophic earthquake on February 22nd 2011 in Christchurch.
Prior to the start of the Christchurch earthquaker series in September 2010, EQC had 22 staff and managed up to 9000 claims per annum for mostly land slips. Staff numbers have been up to 1600 and over 400,000 claims have been lodged. The organistion has had to go through a huge transformation scaling up - people, processes and technology.
The crisis and need to handle unimagined volumes drove awesome process and technology innovation. I'll reflect on our instinctive project management style that was tailored to the barest minimum, working in a very agile and team focussed way. The quote above! Well I did say it. There was another earthquake and many more since. Even though the challenges were not quite what I expected, it has been more than alright.
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