Day in the Life – Iain Milligan

Vital Stats

Job title: Chief Network Officer

Function: Technology

Tenure: 18 years

Tell us a little about yourself?  

I am married and have 3 blind cats. Whilst I am originally from Paisley, I have been living down in Maidenhead since 2010.

I met my wife in Glasgow back in 2005 when we were both working random call centre jobs, she was doing it to support her Masters in Classics, I was doing it to support 5-aside football and going out.  I started at Three later that year, then after 5 years of working out of Glasgow, we relocated down to Maidenhead.

We both enjoy traveling, theatre, nice food, escape rooms and movies, and it is tough to admit it, but it is easier to do that down south than back home, except for in Maidenhead, it’s not easy to do exciting things there!

Back to the 3 blinds cats, we also do the odd bit of charity work. There is a cat charity in Athens, where my wife is from, who rescue cats from the streets and over the last few years we have adopted them and had them shipped over from Greece.

In a nutshell, describe your role and how you support our business objectives?

I am accountable for our network. The product of our business is our network, if it isn’t good enough we don’t have a product, my job is to make sure it is the best it can be today and in the future.  This involves having the right strategy to support the growth of our customer base at the right cost, working with the right suppliers to achieve it and driving excellent delivery and performance day in day out.

What has been your career highlight?

A very tough question, but I would say it was when I was the Director of Service Operations & Assurance during lockdown. We were in a transition period where we were moving from our old IT systems and migrating to our new core, at a time when people’s need for connectivity was at its greatest. We rallied together at all levels of the team and managed to get to what was one of our best periods of stability we have ever had.

At the end of the year, we submitted our approach to the IT Service Management Forum and won Service Management Team of the year 2021.  This was the first time Three had ever been considered for an award in this area, and wining it was amazing.

How have you supported your personal wellbeing during the past couple of years?

Audiobooks, taking lunch breaks and knowing when to mute WhatsApp made a difference, but what I would say has been the biggest change is embracing hybrid working. Before lockdown I would be first in the office at 7am and leave around 6pm and had done that for nearly 15 years. In the last 2 years I have put in a very strict schedule of what I do on office days versus work from home days to get a balance. It started with blocking out time slots in my calendar, and not having regular meetings in before 9am, or after 5pm. I know it’s easier said than done, but you’ve got to start somewhere until you find what works for you.

When you were a child, what job did you see yourself doing?

Batman, and still working towards that.

Give us a fun fact. 

My first job was as a football mascot for my local football team where I grew up, I did this for a few months on the side when I played for their under 15s squad in 1995. Let’s see if you can use the information in this article to figure it out what mascot I was.