“Everything has a spatial component and I enjoy showing clients how to utilise spatial data to help solve their business problems.”
Justin has over 15 years’ experience in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) particularly in software development, solution architecture, consulting and project management.
In his current role as a senior member of Beca’s GIS team, Justin works closely with our key infrastructure and asset management clients to provide GIS consulting and software development services. This ranges from small-scale projects to enterprise-wide solutions encompassing third-party software and enforcing industry standard IT policies. In this role Justin works closely with the Beca Applied Technologies (BAT) team.
Justin’s role challenges the conception that GIS is all about maps. He is involved in the often unseen technical side of the field, merging the fields of GIS and IT in corporate enterprise environments. “GIS can be brought into enterprise circles rather than it simply being a map-making tool on the desktop,” he says.
Justin’s relationship with Beca goes back to 1995, when he joined the planning section as a graduate in a GIS analyst role. After two years with Beca he travelled the world, working for a number of private and public organisations including ESRI Australia in Melbourne and Sydney, WM Data (LOGICA) in Helsinki, Finland and Western Region Municipality in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. As the latter was a brand new regional council, this was a particularly interesting position as Justin effectively helped establish their GIS from the ground up.
One of his most challenging project assignments was with Australia Post in 2009. With their myriad of organisation systems tracking mail, people and vehicles, they wanted to set up an enterprise GIS unit, which Justin and a team helped establish. “This was a huge task to take data from various parts of the public organisation, such as the roading network, and store them in a central data depository for people to access.”