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Sharing the same name as the late-night DJ on Radio 2, David Jacobs this week is celebrating the start of his 20th year at iCS! He is widely known by everyone as the “go to” Technical guy at iCS, as he knows and remembers everyone and everything.

David joined the rapidly expanding iCS in 1999, his interview he recalls was over a “Hunters Chicken” one evening in the pub with John and his wife Julie. iCS in those days consisted of about five people, iCS had a 100th of the maintenance sites we have now and having grown at a slow pace from its inception under the stairs at Johns parents’ house in Windsor, which was creaking with all the sales they were generating during the dotcom boom.

By 1999 iCS had moved and was based on a mezzanine in a freezing cold warehouse in Ascot, we had a handful of Engineers and most sales and operations were still handled by John Gillborn. David and John had met many years before as one of John’s friends worked with David at BT. David was then a Systems Maintenance Engineer working for BT in Windsor.

David left BT a few years later and started working for a specialised maintainer, supporting specialised call centres for global brands all over the UK. This lead to his next move through his interest in computers to become Product Support Manager for a distributor. He moved internally in that business a few years later to the telecoms support desk; David and John’s team were then in daily contact. His amazingly gentle and calm manner has always impressed everyone he worked with and caught the eye of the iCS team. When he joined iCS in 1999, looking back John Gillborn recalls it was like signing a new super striker but cheaper! David was a saviour and overnight his ability to diagnose P.C. problems, talk Engineers through issues and load software made him an invaluable asset to the business.

Through the years he managed the maintenance base single handed, this was a massive feat given that iCS is around twice the size now and employs an additional five members of staff in that area. In 2008 he became Tier 3 engineer picking up the more complicated problems, he spends around 60% of his time working from home. David has a full equipped tech area for the business in his cabin in the garden and this gives him time to diagnose and test problems.

19 years on David and John are still great friends and the business has grown, now employing over 36 staff. Their roles find them at opposite ends of the business, only bumping into one another on the days their paths cross at our Operations centre in Camberley.

 David Jacobs “slowly sinking” for the past 19 years.

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