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Evidence Slot 9 -- Real-World Contributions in Employed Roles (Latymer)

Criteria: Mandatory Criterion (MC) -- real-world impact and potential\ Also relevant to: OC3 -- significant technical contributions in employment

1. Context -- Role and Environment

The Latymer School is a high-performing secondary school in North London with approximately 1,400 students. The IT estate supports:

  • Six dedicated computer labs\
  • Around 96 student laptops\
  • Roughly 100 staff laptops, alongside shared desktops

I worked as an IT Technician with system administration responsibilities, reporting to the Network Manager within a small IT team. My role included ticket resolution, Windows 10 → 11 rollout support, Active Directory and Group Policy changes, and maintaining classroom readiness.

This evidence focuses on a specific contribution: a PowerShell-based user profile cleanup solution that transformed a recurring operational issue into a structured, automated control.

[IMG-01 -- Redacted confirmation of role and reporting structure]

2. The Problem -- Profile Corruption and Storage Pressure

The team faced recurring issues with corrupted or excessively large user profiles on shared machines. Symptoms included:

  • "Unable to load user profile" errors\
  • Temporary profile logins\
  • Slow authentication\
  • Local disks reaching critical capacity

The impact was operational and educational: disrupted lessons, increased support overhead, and frequent manual cleanup or device rebuilds.

Over time, stale profiles accumulated across labs and laptops, affecting thousands of logins. Without automation, remediation remained reactive and inconsistent.

[IMG-02 -- Example incident or schematic showing affected device groups]

3. The Solution -- Automated Profile Lifecycle Control

Rather than addressing incidents individually, I analysed the pattern and proposed a repeatable control mechanism.

Design Objectives

  • Identify stale profiles beyond a defined inactivity threshold\
  • Exclude active, system and service accounts\
  • Reduce storage pressure and login failures\
  • Deploy in a safe, centrally managed manner

Implementation

I developed a PowerShell script that:

  • Enumerates local user profiles\
  • Evaluates last-used timestamps\
  • Safely removes stale profiles\
  • Runs via Scheduled Task through Group Policy

To support approval, I produced a short demonstration video and a written proposal outlining:

  • Operational risk\
  • Safety considerations\
  • Deployment approach

[IMG-03 -- Proposal email excerpt with demo link]

4. Approval and Deployment

The Network Manager reviewed the proposal and approved testing, subject to deployment hygiene considerations (central hosting, naming standards, appropriate policy controls).

The script was:

  • Hosted on the internal applications server\
  • Deployed initially via a controlled GPO to a lab OU\
  • Tested and monitored before wider rollout

Following validation, the solution was expanded across labs and relevant staff and student devices.

At this point, the script transitioned from a local fix to an estate-level operational safeguard.

[IMG-04 -- Confirmation of approval or GPO deployment screenshot]

5. Impact

The automated control delivered measurable operational improvements:

Coverage - Six labs, \~96 student laptops and \~100 staff laptops\ - Approximately 1,500 user profiles managed over time

Stability - Fewer profile corruption incidents\ - Reduced emergency rebuilds

Operational Efficiency - Decreased manual cleanup workload\ - Improved login consistency

Governance - Profile lifecycle management became documented and policy-driven\ - Thresholds could be adjusted without redesigning the solution

The qualitative feedback from the IT team indicated improved reliability and reduced disruption during teaching hours.

[IMG-05 -- Optional before/after illustration or incident trend]

6. Forward-Looking Work -- Device Lifecycle Automation

Beyond profile cleanup, I began designing a structured device de-boarding flow to ensure:

  1. Flagging of retired devices\
  2. Standardised wipe/reset\
  3. Removal from active directory groups and assignments\
  4. Clear inventory state separation

Although early-stage, this reflected a shift toward lifecycle governance rather than ad-hoc remediation.

[IMG-06 -- Device lifecycle flow diagram]

7. Relevance to Criteria

This evidence supports the Mandatory Criterion by demonstrating that I:

  • Identified a systemic operational issue in a live environment\
  • Designed and proposed a safe automation control\
  • Secured managerial approval and executed structured rollout\
  • Delivered improved reliability across hundreds of users and devices

It also supports OC3 by evidencing significant technical contribution within employment, including initiative, estate-level automation, and lifecycle thinking.

This case illustrates my consistent approach: identify structural inefficiency, design controlled automation, implement through governance, and embed repeatable operational standards.