I'm Chris.
I build things that work.

I joined the RAF in 2009 as an IT Technician. I was 20 years old, didn't know much about the world, and honestly didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. Turns out the military had a plan for that.

I found my love for IT in Camp Bastion, Afghanistan. There's something about being in a place like that, where the kit has to work because people are relying on it, that strips away all the nonsense. No politics, no committee meetings, no "we'll circle back on that." Just problems that needed solving and systems that needed to stay up. I thrived in it. That's where I knew this was what I wanted to do.

After leaving the forces I went straight into defence contracting and I've been there ever since. Seventeen years now across the sector. I've built secure networks, rebuilt entire server estates, designed Active Directory architectures from scratch, and deployed systems into environments where getting it wrong simply wasn't an option. Not managing from a distance. Actually building. Hands on keyboards, cables in racks, problems solved properly.

More recently I got into AI and automation in a big way. I built my own private AI system from the ground up. Not a wrapper around ChatGPT or someone else's API. A proper self hosted solution running on my own infrastructure, because I needed something I could actually trust with sensitive work. That project taught me a lot and now I build the same thing for clients who have the same problem.

I also can't leave a manual process alone. If I see a team doing the same thing over and over, I'll build an AI agent or automation system to handle it. Not because it's trendy but because it genuinely frees people up to do the work that actually needs a human brain. The stuff I build tends to pay for itself within weeks.

The name Bastion IT comes from where it all started for me. But the skills I learned in defence aren't just for defence. Secure by default, built properly the first time, automated where it makes sense. That approach works everywhere. I'm now bringing it to private sector and public sector organisations who want IT done right without the waffle. If that sounds like what you need, let's have a conversation.