We’re a values driven consulting organisation helping our clients create value through their digital transformations.

With many decades of experience, our people can help you unlock and inject: innovation, ai, data science, agility, programme governance and software development / integration to create value.

How we help…

Business consulting

Our most senior consultants have decades of experience and have personally been responsible for many large scale transformations in the automotive and tech sectors. Major achievements include:

  • The conception, elaboration, steering through main board approval and then deployment of a multi year, technology, people and process programme that reduced balance sheet debt by over £250m.
  • Leading a digital transformation agency as it grew from a break even business employing c25 people to an international and award winning business employing over 750 people that was eventually acquired by a leading global professional services company specializing in IT services, consulting, and digital transformation
  • Management board level trouble shooter with multiple recovered programmes and failing divisions turned around

In general, our approach is to immerse ourselves in the domain with our sleeves rolled. We collaborate with your teams to surface a list of possible solutions and then help to evaluate and implement as required. We don’t shy away from the seemingly impossible if the potential rewards are high!

Solve operational problems with data science, ai, web applications, digital twinning (simulations) and proofs of concept

Over many decades, our people have experience of creating value through solving operational problems. We’ve used data science and ai before it was on everyones lips. We’ve built web and desktop applications large and small. We’ve modelled and simulated with multiple technologies to understand and prove business cases and created a sophistcated and shared understanding of risks and the benefits.

We start small with the hardest elements to reduce risk (rather than charging ahead with the easiest work to create the illusion of progress!)

Get control with programme and project governance

From global rollout programmes to local programmes involving a few divisions.

From large scale digital transformations to managing business as usual / tactical initiatives.

For larger engagements, we’re proud to partner with our colleagues from The Big Team who our people have worked with for more than 20 years.

We have Software As A Service tools such as Readiness Tracker (ask for a demo!) that help you manage the allocation of projects with tasks to elements of your organisation and then monitor the progress of all the individual task completers. Of course we have dashboards that show progress of projects, tasks and organisational units rolled up appropriately in your organisational hierarchy.

Readiness Tracker

Whilst it can be part “Get control…”, our Readiness Tracker can also be taken as a standalone product.

In short, it helps clients allocate tasks out to elements of their organisation and then monitor the progress of those tasks through a flexible dashboard that can roll tasks up into projects and aggregating up the different levels in the organisational hierarchy.

Ask for a demo!

Business Simulator (SimPACE)

We originally built SimPACE as a development tool for teams of 7 to work through in a controlled environment with highly experienced observers (one observer to two / three delegates) looking on and providing immediate supportive interventions at the group and individual level.

It proved so popular with requests from employees across the organisation for additional sessions that our client aksed us to run a massive event for over 200 people with multiple simultaneous simulators running.

The energy levels were off the scale and it was the highlight event of the day. Our client has the exclusive rights of use for a few months and then we’ll be pleased discuss how we might create value with SimPACE in your own organisation

Ask for a demo!

What does it mean to be values driven?

It means being true to the things we believe. Not just in May or June when the sun is shining and life is a breeze. But also in February when it’s cold and dark and the land is hard with frost.

You can read a lot more about our values in the blog posts here and here, but in short, we summarise them as:

Win Win

For all our stakeholders including: our clients and prospects, our people and the veteran communities we support with our free of charge development programmes

Integrity

Being clear about what we stand for and believe, documenting it so we can be held to account and staying truem even when no one is looking

Innovation

With a five point strategy to help us all innovate on demand

You can read more aout this in our blog: Five tools for innovation mastery

Agility

Increasing our ability to change direction quickly to avoid threats and capitalise on opportunity

It’s a philosophy that we advocate for all our stakeholders

Supporting our values , we also have a seven point credo:

  • We all listen
  • We all learn
  • We all help
  • We all sell
  • We all deliver
  • We all own
  • We all win

Join us

If you’ve already enjoyed a successful career in the military (or another field) and you’re looking for a change of direction; if you’re good with technology, happy with process, and love solving problems, read on!

We have supported learning paths for people like you (free of charge and with no strings) that will help you go as far as you want, building skills in: problem solving, innovation, coding, data science, digital transformation, governance and many more.

We run our business in a highly democratic way as if 80% of the shares are controlled by the employees so there is a high level of autonomy and ability to shape all our futures.

If you’d like to talk to some of our people about the experience of working here or the learning opportunities, you can contact them directly via LinkedIn.

Here’s our team

We’re primarily a people based organisation. Our team are building an amazing culture, growing our business and creating value for our clients.

If you’d like to contact us see details below – click the LinkedIn buttons, send an email or call us!

Peter Brookes-Smith

Director

pbs@dt-squad.com

07921 352128

Luke Davey

Director

luke.davey@dt-squad.com

07792 694314

Stuart Wall

Consultant

stuart.wall@dt-squad.com

07984 568832

Ivan Shaw

Consultant

ivan.shaw@dt-squad.com

079560 207379

John Clarke

Consultant

john.clarke@dt-squad.com

07871 042261

Alan Maloney

Associate Consultant

alan.maloney@dt-squad.com

07768 457991

Grace Davey

Associate Consultant

FAQs

What sort of work have you been engaged in?
  • We have delivered programme governance and management for a large German automotive company as they rolled out multiple programmes with their retailer network. Keeping track of many hundreds of remote businesses as they prepared for the new systems and processes is not a simple job and we helped the client monitor the status of many thousands of tasks across their network.
  • We’ve built a gamified automotive industry simulator that was used with over 200 delegates to great acclaim, helping them to learn about new ways of doing things with a faster heartbeat, greater collaboration and embracing their inner entrepreneurial skills. This is an award winning application recognised as runner up across all categories at the ‘Serious Games Showcase and Challenge Europe 2024’, and winner of the Business Award.
  • We’ve written AI systems as a Proof of Concept for one of the world’s largest demining organisations where we analysed photographic and thermal imagery captured by drone to find buried land mines.
  • We’ve written an AI based system to help navy veterans manage their transition to civilian life.
  • We’ve written AI systems to help summarise medical records for people that are suffering  life changing impacts because of their conditions. 
  • We’ve written AI systems to help consultant’s manage legal compliance of their clients. 
  • We’ve written AI systems to help train Mine Detector operators use their equipment more effectively and showcased it at Defence Simulation, Education and Training 2024.
  • We’ve written ai based systems to analyse and coach users in numerous types of interaction from interview coaching to automotive demonstration drives.
Who is behind dt-squad?

I’m Peter Brookes-Smith and I’m the founder of dt-squad. I wrote my first lines of code 45 years ago and since then, I’ve been working out ways that technology can help create value for organisations and individuals.

I’m an engineer and my super power / achilles heel is that I can’t stop building things! Companies, solutions for hard problems, or paper mache masks for the children, they all hold a massive attraction for me and I love rolling my sleeves up with the creative process!

I’d like to get to meet some of your team, how can I do that?

There is a “Here’s the team” section below with a linkedin link for each of us. We have contact details there and we’ll get back to you quickly if you send us a message.

Can I apply to be a part of the team or work as a contractor?

In general, we like to employ the students that we’ve helped on their technology and coding learning journey. And… we’re always interested in meeting people that feel drawn to our business.

What is your stance on modern slavery?

It’s a terrible and shocking fact that there are over 20 million people around the world in forced labour and they generate huge contributions to profit for the organisations that exploit them. Without conscious and determined efforts, many businesses could find themselves directly or indirectly benefiting from and giving support to that exploitation.

As a values driven business, we will take appropriate steps to ensure that both our own organisation and any suppliers that we engage with do not directly or indirectly benefit from a workforce that has been forced, trafficked, is held in slavery or servitude.

Every member of our team receives training directly from our founder (Peter Brookes-Smith) about the importance of acting with integrity and creating Win Win for all our stakeholders. Slavery in all its forms could hardly be further from this ethos and every member of our team is empowered to tackle the issues directly or escalate (without respect for reporting lines) as they see fit to ensure we play our part in the protection of these fundamental human rights

Nominated for Midlands UK StartUp Award 2024

Great news! We have been named a finalist ahead of the Midlands final of the StartUp awards.

The UK StartUp Awards was launched to recognise the booming start-up scene across the UK which has accelerated over the last few years with over 900,000 new businesses founded in the UK in 2023, a 12% increase from the year before.

We are one of 900 businesses which have been shortlisted for this year’s UK StartUp Awards and our combined contribution – all started in the last three years – is significant, having created nearly 6,000 new jobs since and generating annual sales of £480 million.

The regional prizes will be awarded by a panel of seasoned judges with experience founding or supporting entrepreneurial ventures. The winners from each region will then be invited to the first UK final taking place at Ideas Fest, the Glastonbury for Business festival in Tring, Hertfordshire on 12th September 2024 – we hope to be going to that event!

The rest of the wonderful finalists can be found online at https://startupawards.uk/

Proud of our bronze award for employers

We’re extremely proud to have been recognized with the Armed Forces Bronze Award. It’s a reflection of our deep commitment to supporting those who have served their country. It not only acknowledges our dedication to creating inclusive opportunities for service leavers but also highlights our efforts in leveraging their unique skills and perspectives. By focusing on helping service leavers transition into civilian roles, particularly with learning to solve complex problems with code, we underscore our commitment to their success and wellbeing. As they get to know us during the training, many are drawn to our philosophy and values. Where possible, we ask our students to join us as members of our team and help us build an amazing business

This award is a milestone that celebrates our ongoing efforts to honour and integrate the armed forces community into our team. And we’re not stopping here! With our sights set on the Silver, watch this space!