ICT is critical to all organisations. We provide expert advice to a range of clients, including advising on corporate networks, driving developments in public-safety infrastructure, and supporting government with next-generation networks.  

Government ICT projects often get a bad press due to cost overruns and delayed implementations. But this needn’t be the case.

Mason has delivered a range of successful ICT programmes for governments around the world – in the UK and Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Middle East.

Government departments and agencies drive ICT projects at all levels – from internal corporate networks to national infrastructure for taxpayers. Mason has supported the full range of projects, including:

• services for citizens – including helpline initiatives and e-government projects, through to national broadband intervention schemes in Scotland, Ireland, and the Asia-Pacific region 
• networks for public-service users – from major mobile deployments for the emergency services in the UK, Norway, Jamaica and elsewhere, to IT systems for government workers in Africa
• systems for departments and agencies – helping them to work more efficiently, from procuring a civil service network handling 50 million calls a year to benchmarking the value for money from the MoD’s ICT contract.

Our experience and technology expertise ensure successful, secure outcomes.

Local authorities are being asked to improve staff productivity and efficiency in times of austerity. ICT can play a significant role in assisting local authorities to optimise their ICT strategy, which in turn helps achieve value for money, enables flexible working, and reduces the carbon footprint.

We provide strategic and tactical ICT advice on all commercial, technical and operational aspects of local authority ICT networks.

• commercial – we have undertaken value for money reviews, cost-benefits analyses, spend-to-save business cases (using government standards)
• technical – we work with key stakeholders to understand their concerns and future needs, and use this to develop a cost-effective ICT strategy, often comprising a converged multi-services platform capable of delivering voice over IP, high-speed corporate data services, Internet access and CCTV
• operational –we advise on the pros and cons of ICT delivery models (e.g. 'self build' versus managed services); we also establish the right procurement strategy, develop ITTs and evaluate supplier responses during the procurement phase.

We are also advising on wider policy issues that require local authorities to consider the benefits of sharing ICT infrastructure with other public-sector organisations to achieve value for money. These aggregated procurements – such as the Public Services Network (PSN) initiative in the UK – generate greater economies of scale. We also lead the UK in advising local authorities to develop their local broadband plans to stimulate investment in next-generation broadband in commercially unattractive areas.

Communication is critical for the emergency services. Investing in ICT infrastructure, hardware and services compels organisations to have to make tough decisions. For nearly 20 years, we have helped police, ambulance, fire and coastguard organisations – in the UK and overseas – to get those decisions right, and to do so in such a way to ensure that the decisions stand the test of time.

Budgetary pressures mean that it’s more important than ever to get value for money from ICT investment. We provide independent advice that covers:

• strategy and business planning – understanding just what the operational drivers and requirements are; and developing compelling business cases to ensure funding, benefits and implementation requirements are fully articulated
• procurement – ensuring requirements are translated into ICT solutions that are available from the market and managing the procurement process to select the supplier who best fits both operational and commercial objectives
• implementation – managing the delivery of integrated ICT systems – on time and to budget –  that will enhance both front-line activity and back-office processes
• security – protecting personal information and mission-critical systems, and ensuring business continuity.

Underpinning our pragmatic experience is our technology expertise. It covers mobile communications (including a world-leading TETRA capability), control room technologies (such as command-and-control and dispatch solutions), corporate networks (WANs and LANs) and wireless applications.

The effective application of ICT can offer huge benefits to healthcare organisations and, in turn, their patients. Equally, ineffective projects drain budgets and consume management attention to the detriment of patients, with failing or apparently failing projects frequently attracting media attention.

We understand the needs of healthcare organisations in the UK as well as overseas, and how to ensure technology is applied effectively. We have a track record of successful healthcare ICT projects at all levels, from supplying a ten-person team to run the technology office for the Department of Health’s GBP400 million national Ambulance Radio Programme, to helping individual health trusts overcome their IT and telecoms challenges.

With continuing organisational change and a renewed impetus on decentralised ICT, the need for healthcare organisations to adapt systems and networks to the changing landscape is stronger than ever. We help clients meet changing demands, and to exploit opportunities presented by new technologies in areas such as telehealth, where increasing patient expectations are driving a shift towards a ‘demand led’ approach, rather than the ‘push’ model typically adopted in the past.

The need to control costs in the face of rising demand presents a major obstacle to investment in healthcare ICT. Yet the drive for improved efficiency and effectiveness through initiatives such as the QIPP (‘Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention’) programme inevitably relies on the use of technology to be able to unlock opportunities for improvement.

As an independent adviser with no predisposition towards any particular solutions or vendors, our health sector clients can be assured of expert advice that is completely impartial and wholly driven by finding the best solutions to meet the challenge of applying ICT to improve processes and effectiveness, and ultimately to help them deliver the best patient care.

Mason has the skills and experience to focus on the specific needs of private enterprises, generating major benefits to our clients across the globe. Our portfolio of telecoms and networked-IT consulting services is specifically designed to reflect the demanding requirements of leading utility, finance, retail, and property sector organisations in maximising stakeholder value from their ICT investment.

The range of services we offer spans the entire project lifecycle, from requirements specification, technical strategy and procurement, through to systems implementation, and on to operational review. We deliver benefits to clients regardless of whether their ICT operational support is based on an in-house or outsourced model. The impact that Mason can make is demonstrated through example assignments.

• Mason designed and sourced a re-engineered IP infrastructure for one of the UK’s retail banks. Using our input, the bank was able to successfully transfer a network of more than 50 major sites and data centres, 2500 branches and 2000 ATM machines to an outsourcing service provider. This was recognised as one of the largest network transition projects of its kind in Europe.
• We conducted an independent review of telecoms costs and the associated operating model for a major UK retail bank, and identified savings of GBP10 million per annum.
• For a large pharmaceutical and household products company Mason performed a global network design review, and supported its outsourcing and transition.
• Mason supported a major UK utility during its procurement to define an optimal service delivery model for its voice and data network that ensured best value for money whilst comprehensively meeting operational requirements.
• Through the provision of a comprehensive data centre market assessment, including analysis of potential business models, and an assessment of risk involving green IT issues, location, and facilities, we enabled our client to take business critical decisions that has fuelled business growth.

Mason is fully committed to providing clients with independent, expert and impartial advice that supports business objectives, ensuring technology investments are clearly linked to enabling process improvements and strategic growth.

The energy and water sectors rely on communications in the field, at their plants, and across the transmission network. Mason has worked to support these businesses, from designing pipeline and refinery systems, to delivering corporate networks for UK utilities.

Our consultants understand the critical nature of the infrastructure that underpins the energy and water sectors. This is complemented by our in-depth knowledge of international telecoms markets and trends, for example, the impact of BT’s IP-based 21CN on operational networks.

Our work has included:

• supporting the design and procurement of secure, resilient systems, including data, telemetry, and voice networks, and SCADA
• designing communications systems to support oil-field activities
• managing the deployment of operational and corporate telecoms
• assessing the interference to radio systems caused by wind turbines
• providing strategic advice on smart metering
• advising on how to commercialise energy companies’ telecoms assets.

We can also advise on information security to protect against cyber threats, and provide independent audits of existing networks.

While transport infrastructure projects are increasingly constrained by capacity and cost, developments in ICT present increased opportunity to improve the quality of information and the efficiency and safety of transport operations using existing transport infrastructure.

The age of the smartphone – with technology supporting mapping, location tracking, route planning and mobile information – has fuelled increased customer expectations of information technology applied to transport systems and for the availability of real-time information.

With a particular emphasis on wireless technologies, our track record dates back nearly 20 years from early small-scale implementations of customer information displays to large-scale integrated solutions combining multiple fixed and wireless technologies, as in Transport for London’s ‘iBUS’ system, which provides real-time passenger information for London’s 8000-strong bus fleet.

Our skills and expertise in transport and intelligent transport systems (ITS) include:

• public information systems – real-time passenger information (RTPI), customer information systems (CIS), public address (PA)
• radio systems – including GSM-R and TETRA, wireless distribution of passenger information, tunnel/sub-surface coverage solutions
• CCTV and security – public area surveillance, display and storage, access control, information security
• network infrastructure – LANs and WANs, fibre transmission, data centres
• control and contact centres – operational control systems, PABX and automatic call distribution (ACD), voice over IP (VoIP) and unified communications (UC) solutions
• transport and mobile workforce applications – automatic vehicle location systems (AVLS), radio frequency identification (RFID), mobile workforce, remote control and telemetry.

As in independent adviser with no bias towards particular technology or solution, clients can be assured of expert advice that is solely focused on delivering the best intelligent transport solutions to improve the effectiveness of transport operations and the overall passenger experience.

Education is frequently cited as one of the primary pillars on which a state’s future economic prosperity rests. However, educational institutions, and their ICT departments specifically, face a number of challenges in their quest to support the educational vision: 

• demands placed on ICT networks are growing while human and financial resources are not
• storage capacity and transfer speeds are growing fast
• the requirement to collaborate with colleagues (both nationally and internationally) is becoming central to high-end research.

Despite the challenges, when used well ICT can enrich the learning experience and enhance teaching. We help educational institutions turn the strategy into a reality: 

• we have a compelling track record of successful telecom and ICT consulting for education clients
• our clients can rely on us to provide a completely independent view – we are a company that does not sell equipment, systems or vendor services, yet still maintains good relations with all major global ICT suppliers.

Whether you are a central government department tasked with procuring a nationwide broadband schools service, a third-level institution managing a capacity-constrained campus-wide Wi-Fi network or a manager of a high-specification research network, we have the technical know-how, the commercial experience and the drive for excellence to help you put in place an ICT foundation which enables first-class learning.