Richard first came into contact with a DEC PDP-8 when working at at the air traffic control tower at Heathrow for the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). At the London Air Traffic Control Centre, he joined a brand new project involving PDP-11 as a programmer. After studying for a HNC in Computer Studies at Reading Technical College, he applied for a job at DEC at their brand new HQ on Imperial Way. He worked at DEC, including two takeovers by Compaq and Hewlett-Packard until 2011.
His first job at DEC was as maintainability engineer in the software engineering team, and then he moved to pre-sales as a consultant supporting the sales team to the Ministry of Defence . As his career progressed, he specialised in networks and moved over to telecoms which helped him survive DEC’s subsequent takeovers. This included significant projects such as automating the provisioning of the Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL), which lay the groundwork for future broadband infrastructure.