- Dynamic, high-achieving Project Manager with extensive experience in Web, IT and technical communication projects and a track record of expertly managing multiple, complex multimillion dollar projects with global teams of up to 40 developers.
Professional Bio
Harlan Bridges has worked as an independent consultant and contractor in addition to being a direct employee of major corporations. He started his career in restaurant management while working his way through college. He moved into the technical communication field after his restaurant career. While working in this field, he become involved in online communications as much of the documentation moved to a Web based format. Since 1992, Mr. Bridges has been developing or managing the development of web based applications and software projects. Much of that time included managing projects and teams. Since 2004, Mr Bridges has worked as a contractor at multiple corporations, including USAA, an insurance and financial services company, and Foremost Insurance Corporation.
At USAA, Mr. Bridges worked as an Web Producer and Project Manager. Here he led multiple web development projects for USAA's external web site as well as the Extranet and Intranet. He managed the user interface development teams, including designers, content producers and usability engineers. He also developed the information architecture for these projects.
As a senior consultant at Mercer Human Resources Consulting, Mr. Bridges successfully led many client and internal projects. His expertise in the areas of project management, web development, virtual team leadership and training development contributed to the success of Mercer's communication practice in the Texas market. In addition, he provided strong leadership in other market areas such as Chicago, Minneapolis, and South Dakota.
Client projects included:
- HR portals
- Benefit communication web sites
- Benefits enrollment sites
- Retirement calculators and statements
- Online total compensation sites
- Content management systems
- Web based training applications
These projects included many different technologies such as ASP, PHP, mySQL, Access, Windows 2000, Linux, Internet Information Server and Apache. Mr. Bridges managed teams of developers including coders, programmers, network technicians, writers, and graphic artists. The teams were often made up of client and vendor personnel as well as Mercer employees. His duties included verbal and written communication with clients at all levels of management. He has successfully led virtual and co-located teams during technically complex projects.
In addition to client related projects, Mr. Bridges led many internal projects for Mercer HR Consulting. For example, he was the project manager for the implementation of web development and test infrastructure used by the web development groups worldwide to develop HR Intranet applications ultimately delivered to clients of Mercer. He was a member of a team tasked with creating a gap analysis of Mercer's Internet development capabilities. The results of this study were a series of recommendations that led to the development of a new practice at Mercer focusing on the technology and operations of HR.
Mr. Bridges authored a white paper on virtual team management and provided inputs to the team assigned to roll out the new project management initiatives implemented at Mercer. This was a worldwide initiative at Mercer.
Mr. Bridges holds a B.S. in Interdisciplinary Studies from the New York Institute of Technology. He is a Project Management Professional (Project Management Institute certification).