Logica and me

Logica was the company I joined after University - in 1988. In the early days I went on a training course which aimed to let me know about the company values. There were 10 of them and I can't remember 9, but one of them was "having fun".

In 1993 Dr Martin Read (Wikipedia article pending) took over and shook the place up a bit, as I think we were a bit flabby and complacent. One of the changes he made was to get rid of the plants. I sent him an email asking him why he got rid of the plants, when we had modern art on the walls that I'd rather get rid of. He contacted my line manager who asked me what it was all about. I said that I thought he ought to get rid of the art rather than the plants. I've learnt since that this is a very "Generation Y" thing to have done.

The last project I worked on at Logica was called RMS and the client was Anglian Water. It was a great project. So much so that one of the people on it took it upon themselves to write to everyone on the project after it was over each Christmas and ask for our news. He then collated the news and sent it out to everyone. That was 18 years ago, and it's still happening! One of the things that made the project run smoothly was that it had two project managers. One was the external one who related to the client. The other was the internal one (sadly she's died recently) who kept us all on course. When the project was over I left the company and I wasn't the only one to feel that any other project wouldn't be as good.

When I was there Logica was proud that it hadn't been taken over, but since then it has merged with CMG and been taken over by CGI. According to one of my contacts the branding on the offices is being changed to CMG so Logica will effectively be no more. Goodbye Logica.

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