Not a penny wasted

Interview

www.computing.co.uk/in-depth

David Gooding

IT director | Biffa Group

Not a penny wasted

What kind of technology lies behind your bin collection? Peter Gothard visited waste management giant Biffa to find out and what he discovered may surprise you

To the horror of many green-minded folk, we live in an increasingly throw-away society which is great news for the likes of Biffa Group, one of the countrys biggest waste management companies.

Biffa is constantly looking for innovative new waysto dispose of or recycle our rubbish, and yet on an IT level it remains curiously low-tech, as group IT director David Gooding explains.

Its fair to say were probably at the lower end of spend in terms of what youd expect, he says, pointing out that Biffa, which is 102 years old this year, has always been a pretty lean operation.

Like many senior managers at Biffa, Gooding rose through the ranks, having joined the company in 2003 as a coder. He was made IT directorin 2011 and has a team of50, comprising developers, technicians, project managers and analysts, with half based at Biffas High Wycombe HQ.

Over the years, a number of outsourcing contracts have also been put in place, so Biffas data centre is run by Phoenix while its network has gone out to Azzurri.

But its still surprising to learn that Biffa has been using an IBM UniData-based Unix system (which it simply calls the Central System) since 1991, apparently with few, if any, issues.

Gooding describes the Central System as very much

18 computing.co.uk 4 August 2014

in-house, with so much modification done to it over the years, it now runs entirely autonomously from UniData which is now owned by Rocket.

In 1991 it was a basic finance system essentially a manufacturing system, explains Gooding. Since then weve developed a full waste ERP system,...