thinkWhere’s Geospatial Data Engineer, Tom Wiseman, joined the team from his previous position working with Ordnance Survey.
From the Peak District National Park Authority to supporting Portsmouth, read on to find out all about Tom, his career to date and what he brings to the team.
Tell us a little bit about your background and career so far.
I studied Geographical Information Science at the University of Portsmouth before working at two local authorities. I worked predominantly on business transformation projects to drive efficiencies.
Two years after graduating I moved to Sheffield to work at the Peak District National Park Authority, with responsibility for the entire spatial data infrastructure. During this stage of my career I implemented a new intranet GIS application, and oversaw the migration of storing spatial data into MS SQL.
After seven years in this role I returned to local government where I was GIS lead for a unitary authority. This role exposed me to vast amounts of data and ownership or interactions with many spatially enabled systems. While in this role I again implemented a new intranet and public facing GIS system. I also worked on many transformation projects, putting spatial data and good quality addressing data at the heart of many business processes – this culminated with our use of data during the authority’s Covid response.
Prior to joining thinkWhere I spent two years as a Technical Relationship Consultant at Ordnance Survey, working with public sector organisations to support their use of geospatial data.
What do you like most about your current role?
I like the prospect of improving a number of our business processes, and I’m excited by the opportunities for thinkWhere and Idox to offer new data products. I believe that we can remove some of the pain points for people working in roles similar to my previous positions, and I find this motivating.
What do you bring to the team?
I have experience that differs from the wider team which I feel complements the wealth of experience and knowledge here at thinkWhere.
What does the future here look like for you?
In the short term we plan on improving as many of our data loading processes as possible, so that we can be more reactive to new datasets being made available. Longer term who knows – I will have to see what the creation of the new geospatial division brings!
What interests you outside of work?
I’m a Portsmouth fan, so I go to as many games as I can get to – although this isn’t as many as I’d like living in South Yorkshire!
