Dave – ICT Operations Manager
"The combination of management and technical know-how is essential to stay on top of things."
I started my career at Proximus’s ICT helpdesk as a consultant and grew into a helpdesk team leader at organizations such as the European Commission and Fleet Logistics International. The offer from Belgian Red Cross‑Flanders to start as a system administrator came unexpectedly, but the forward-looking mindset and the challenge of a large organization made the difference.
Today I am ICT Operations Manager. That means I’m responsible for the ICT helpdesk at Belgian Red Cross‑Flanders, but I do more than managing. I continuously engage in trainings to keep up-to-date in several domains. For me, this mix of management and technical know-how is essential to stay on top of things. The knowledge and responsibilities are substantial: managing Citrix, Exchange, SCCM, SharePoint, Topdesk, SQL servers, …
"ICT at Belgian Red Cross‑Flanders is typically a mix of activities, always backed by deep expertise."
What I really value is the autonomy we get to develop the IT service within the strategic framework. We do this efficiently by working with clear agreements (Service Level Agreements), a ticketing system and reporting. That also means we can respond flexibly when things suddenly need to move fast. Last year, our service delivered the full ICT setup (infrastructure, network, hardware, software, …) for ten Emergency Reception Centers for asylum seekers in a very short time. That, too, is part of our job.
Of course, I don’t achieve this on my own. I can rely on a team of colleagues. They follow up closely with internal customers and are specialized in the different domains of the Belgian Red Cross‑Flanders. ICT at Belgian Red Cross‑Flanders is typically a mix of activities, always backed by deep expertise. A good example is IT support for processing and testing blood products: a world of its own, requiring its own IT approach.
