Meet the team

Richard is responsible for defining and delivering the vision for insight led decision making within GeoPlace. Leading the Customer Insights team, we work with users, colleagues, and partners to ensure our strategy, roadmap and solutions meet your needs.

Richard has been integral in driving forward the quality and use of address and street data in Great Britain for the last 15 years. Bringing together broad sector knowledge, strong relationships and expertise gained by delivering national location data infrastructure projects. Richard was responsible for delivering the National Address Gazetteer, the first UK-wide spatial address dataset.

Read's Richard's blog articles:

• 5 Surprising ways addresses are making a difference in Great Britain
• How to identify gaps in the payment of non-domestic rates
• Persistent and well-behaved identifiers
• Predicting and preventing London’s next fire using predictive analytics and the Unique Property Reference Number
• Using the UPRN to improve collection of Land Transaction Tax in Wales
• What can food hygiene tell us about fire safety?
• UPRNs – Supporting the response to COVID-19

Baz is one of the country's leading experts in local authority Street data. He uses his extensive knowledge of the industry to help develop and implement solutions for national projects in line with current UK legislation. With expertise in gathering requirements, product and project management to solve problems and create optimal solutions, Baz has been instrumental in driving forward initiatives to promote the visibility and use of valuable local authority street data across Great Britain.

He has built excellent relationships across multiple organisations and disciplines, and is an expert in identifying requirements based on industry problems and needs. Baz specialises in solution delivery, whether advisory or technical, on a local, regional or national scale such as the development of the National Street Gazetteer, the inception and creation of new national street products with Ordnance Survey (OS MM Highways) and most recently a collaborative research piece on Traffic Regulation Orders.

Read Baz's blog article:

• Traffic Regulation Order Data Discovery Project

Richard is a Chartered Geographer and is responsible for developing and delivering a shared operational framework for the management of roads and street data across England and Wales. He has expertise in developing and testing market propositions around the collection, improvement and use of street related data and providing advisory services to internal and external stakeholders in the development of data specifications, systems and data quality improvements.

Richard has built strong relationships within a large and diverse community with over 1500 individuals, including Local Authorities and Central Government, statutory undertakers, Ordnance Survey, LGA, Emergency Services, and members of the public.

Previously as National Street Data Manager he was an ambassador for the National Street Gazetteer (NSG) to local and central government including the provision of technical advice to a wider user base on the content and use of the NSG. Richard has also had previous experience of working in local government from his time as a Street Custodian at Kent County Council and as Address Custodian at Medway Council.

Read Richard's blog articles:

• Improving confidence in streetworks everywhere – reviewing the SWA code list
• Using location data to evaluate unadopted roads in Wales
  

Simon has worked with geographic data from around the world since 2001.

Originally a geoscientist, he has worked in a number of academic and government arenas. He managed the collection and curation of the NSG dataset for over 7 years and since 2017 has worked on data interoperability and integration of various datasets, maximising the opportunities of street and network data.

Simon has extensive experience of working with local authorities, government bodies and agencies, alongside the wider commercial sector.

He has a keen understanding of societal trends and the problems and opportunities they present. Simon is considered one of the country's leading experts in Street and Network data and its wider integration into real world solutions.

Simon has a broad knowledge of both practical implementation and legislative requirements in both creating and managing highway networks, and has been instrumental in improving street data usage and streamlining processes across the UK industry.

Read's Simon's blog article:

• Our changing transport landscape

Over the last 20 years Simon has worked with British government to help develop and integrate a common address and street platform for use in a wide range of day to day public sector applications. This experience has led to him assisting other governments and organisations around the world in developing strategies to introduce or improve their current address management systems. Simon has also been involved in a wide range of geospatial data focused projects both in the UK and across Europe including INSPIRE and the European Address Framework assisting with data modelling, technical design and implementation.

• Read's Simon's blog articles
  Mind the address gap
• Culture and Location. A Capital Idea