Take a Break with 1Spatial's Bob Chell

Tell us about yourself?

I am part of the global strategy team at 1Spatial, looking at operations and products across all our global offices.

I grew up in Ewenny (South Wales). I enjoy looking after myself (mainly cycling), looking after others (family and friends are really important) and making sure people get treats and rewards for effort that they put into what they do. Often that is as simple as a local real ale, or a piece of cheese if it is my dog Dylan who has earnt it 😊

Fun fact about you?

I have been lucky enough to be in the front car, sweeping through all the crowds in the Tour de France.

What do you enjoy most about working at 1Spatial?

This has to be the people. In fact I was one of the two best men at our CTOs wedding. The ‘second’ best man also works at 1Spatial. Maybe this should have been an answer to the fun fact question?

We all definitely work hard, but we always make sure we find time to have a lot of fun and laughs along the way.

What’s your favourite 1Spatial product and why?

Today – the answer is simple. It’s 1Data Gateway, with 1Integrate as the rules engine behind it, all running on Azure in the cloud. The whole stack is available in minutes, complex spatial data management solutions are created within an hour or two, and then delivered to the hands of users through a simple portal, all before you have got to your morning coffee.

What’s the most interesting data challenge you’ve tackled?

I’ve got three...

My first one was discovering the real benefits of topology – on a national scale. When you do things right, and then show the 1000x improvements in performance and data quality, just by applying a topological perspective into solving what others may only see as a geometric problem. The results were mind blowing. Diverse thinking working right there.

Second was what I now think of as just good data governance and basic spatial data quality management. Again, it was a national scale that made the results (and memories) stand out. The goal was to improve data quality to increase the confidence people had in the analysis that was performed using the data. What grabbed the headlines were the speed improvements in all the other systems that used the data (for visualisation and sharing). They just simply all started running over 10x faster, just because we had cleaned up a lot of redundant noise in the data. Improving the quality of data has so many benefits, and it taught me to celebrate all of them.

The previous two were early on in my career, and now I think about it, also link to fond memories of the great people I worked with to solve their problems (Ivan and Don). Fast forward about 15 years, and one of the last challenges was all about creating/predicting the missing pieces in data – so trying to find the things that don’t currently exist. What a great challenge – finding something that is not there. The project team were not sure why we were quizzing so many different people about the problem, but we knew we needed to speak to as many different people as possible to make sure we did not leave end blind spots in our designs. The White Van team described patterns they came across every day out on the road. The GIS Team helped us get access to the right amount of varied input data that we thought could help us solve the problem. The 1Spaital delivery team then put it into working software using rules, and we got it deployed and validate with the IT team to prove it all worked. We had achieved, through rules and automation, a working solution in a small number of weeks, which the customer had originally predicted was going to take years.

What do you love about working in the Executive team?

Everyone is passionate about making EVERYTHING successful – the people who work for us, each other, as well as the business itself. There’s also such a great diverse mix of experience and perspectives at the global level, which just makes it all thought provoking and really challenges you to learn more and appreciate how and why we all work the way we do.

What makes 1Spatial a great place to work?

I’ve said it a few times already – one thing that makes it is the people. But next to that, it is also the environment we create for everyone to work in. The offices are in great locations, and we are always open to change to keep them interesting spaces to work and play.

People are also given the opportunity to grow and mature in the company, developing their careers in whatever way they choose - within departments, between departments, even between country offices.

If you were given an airline ticket to go anywhere in the world where would you go and why?

Right now, I’d see if I could get a multi-stop ticket, and simply get back to visiting our great offices across Europe, over into Tunisia, swing by Australia and call in on the great US team before heading back over to Cambridge. And that’s not a corporate answer, we just have offices in some great places and I already know where to go to find a tasty local ale when I get there. 😊