About Waterfield Consulting

drawing of Waterfield Consulting logo

Waterfield Consulting was set up in 2005 by Neil McEachran, following a 13 year career in IT consultancy which was in danger of becoming a career in IT management. This was abandoned in favour of a career doing work for clients, and Waterfield Consulting Ltd was formed. Then in 2007 I was lured back into full time employment, so the company was wound up. From 2008 onwards I'm a sole trader.

VB Programming

I started programming with VB3 and now use both VB6 and VB .NET. Over the years I've designed and built a Pensions Administration system for a small public sector scheme, a timesheet, billing and work planning system (several versions of this, the latest of which is currently used by about 600 people), an appraisal system, and many other smaller projects.

Website Design

I started getting interested in making websites when learning about CSS and XHTML, mostly from Patrick Griffiths' great site HTML Dog. I'm interested in:

  • simple website designs - websites are usually maintained by people with a great deal less expertise and time than the original developer.
  • usability - helping people to find their own way around a site, and not hiding information from them.
  • standards-based designs - the best way for other developers to understand what you've done.