A Day in the Life of Martin Kerrigan

Martin Kerrigan is the Service Team Leader at ITWORX UK. He joined the company in November 2012

Martin is responsible for managing the Services Team, which includes the day-to-day delivery and management of all projects and support activities in alignment to the ITWORX UK Service Level Agreement standards (SLA). Martin also provides input into various areas of the business including Commercial and Pre-sales.

6:00

The alarm goes off. My mornings are very similar, as I like to start my day off exercising. I’ll switch between going to the gym and lifting weights, going for a cycle or a run.
By the time I am back home and showered, it is time for my daughter to wake up. We always sit down to have breakfast together before she heads off to her Gran’s or school.

As the working day is about to begin, I make myself a cup of tea ready to start the day.

8:30

I begin by checking the Service Desk for any new P1/P2 tickets (Priority 1/Priority 2) that need prioritised first. If a P1 ticket is logged, I am alerted immediately. Our P1 tickets require immediate assistance as this means our client’s business is experiencing downtime which has a critical impact to operations. This can include internet outages, power outages, hardware failures and service outages such as issues with Microsoft 365 where a client can’t send or receive emails.

I also spend time in the mornings ensuring our SLA’s are met and that all daily service checks that we are responsible for managing, within our contracted client base, are completed.

I review each ticket logged to our Service Desk in detail and ensure these are allocated to an appropriate engineer so we can start working on the tickets as soon as possible. Resolving tickets for our clients is a top priority for our Service Desk Team. I check on the status of open projects to make sure everything is on track for our clients. If there is time, I clear down some admin tasks or fit these in during the day where I can.

9:00

A Priority 1 ticket has come into the Service Desk, I have been alerted immediately. The client is experiencing downtime; staff are unable to send or receive emails and business critical systems are also being affected. This is severely impacting the business and the staff’s work. We understand minimising downtime is of utmost importance to any business and we need to sort the problem as quickly as possible. I review the ticket and decide which engineer is best equipped to assist in diagnosing the problem. I take into consideration how complex the problem is, who has the most knowledge of that clients’ systems and site and whether specialist support may be required.

9:15

Once the engineer has been dispatched, I get in touch with the client to let them know that we have picked up the ticket. I tell them which engineer will attend their site to work on resolving the problem and that I will be assisting remotely.

9:30

The engineer calls me when he reaches the site and we spend time analysing, in great depth, the client’s network, server and virtual host set up, looking for anything which may be the cause of the disruption.

Once we have ruled those out, I phone the client to give them an update and to reassure them that we are working through the issue.

10:15

Another Client has logged a P1 ticket who is experiencing similar issues, so I immediately send an engineer to their site. I get in touch with the second client to let them know that we have picked up the ticket and to let them know which engineer will attend their site to resolve the issue for them.

11:00

I check in with both engineers and update each client on our progress.

11:45

After some research, we realise that a software update legacy protocol has been turned off by a provider, which has stopped all legacy applications from connecting. We begin work to resolve this on the first client’s site to see if this fixes the problems they were facing. It is successful, so we replicate this on the second site.

12:30

Both clients are now successfully back online with all problems resolved.
A quick check-in to the rest of our engineers and Service Desk before I break for lunch. I receive updates on projects and make sure everything remains on track.

I stop for lunch at 1.00pm. I usually spend my break reading the news and when it is a nice day if working from home, I like to sit in the garden to chill before the afternoon begins.

1:30

After lunch I check in with the Service Desk again and follow up with the engineers on any tickets that need priority action or additional support.

2:00

I’ll take a few minutes to make a cup of tea before going into a weekly Services Team meeting. This meeting is used as an opportunity to run through the diaries of our engineers. We discuss the projects and tickets completed that week, highlighting any changes that others may need to be aware of such as new starts for clients and any other noteworthy changes. We go through the Service Desk and any tickets that need to be actioned from site visits or calls with clients.

We begin planning the following week where we go through each engineer’s schedule to agree who is on hand to support any urgent tickets that may come in and assist with open projects when needed.

We finish off by reviewing upcoming projects so we can plan these proactively and close out all completed projects.

4:00

After I have made my mid-afternoon cup of tea, I go through all expense reports and review the engineer’s timesheets. I look at all the time entries, checking the progress and status of projects and tickets.

5:00

I finish off the day by checking there are no tickets left in the queue and preparing for the following day.
A couple of days each week I’ll attend Running Club after work. I have been running for 11 years and after recently moving house, I joined the local Running Club.

In the evening I spend time with my daughter. She loves to play Princesses and sometimes I am forced to binge watching the Wiggles before its time for bed.