Envitia Talent Spotlight Interview with Brendan Mason
When and why did you join Envitia, Brendan?
“I am one of Envitia’s longest serving team members. I joined in 1997, believe it or not, for family reasons. I worked for an international company in London. There were 30 different nationalities working in my immediate office. But travelling to London every day meant that I left before the children got up and I often returned after they were in bed. Not really the kind of lifestyle I was after. An opportunity arose for something more local, so I took it.
Tell us about your previous experience…
I started life as research chemist and moved to computing by necessity. Doing rates of reaction calculations by hand can be extremely tedious. Since then, I have been working in information technology in various guises. First in complex solid visualisation (for which our team won a British Design Award), then in machine tool simulations, technical education and internationalization . As I’ve worked for Envitia for so long, most of my previous experience has been in the design of geospatial information systems.
Talk us through your career with Envitia…
Within Envitia I started of as a Senior Software Engineer helping to design and develop the original Envitia flagship product MapLink.
I then became a Technical Consultant in the Applied Research department working on a wide variety of different problems. My favourite time, as it harps back to my days as a scientist.
I then moved to Solution Architecture looking at designing systems for end users, still within the Applied Research group, and was involved in the design of many systems involving wider teams such as the Met Office, UKHO and Dstl.
I am now a Principal Consultant and whilst I still get my hand dirty occasionally, I am more involved with providing guidance to customers, end-users and other teams of consultants and engineers.
What do you do on a day to day basis?
Hmm… that’s actually quite a difficult question to answer because it varies significantly depending on which projects I am involved in, which is one of the enjoyable things about working in Envitia. Today, I was liaising with one of the other consultants on how best to document a cloud infrastructure and I am providing technical support for two very different opportunities, so I have spent a significant amount of my day helping the sales team.
What do you think makes Envitia a special place to work?
Envitia is a very diverse and inclusive company, and enables and encourages different personalities, opinions and approaches. Everyone has something to contribute, but without losing sight of the need maintain a successful company.
What’s your most proud achievement?
Two great kids (well, they’re adults now). I think I was most proud of contributing to the Urban Transport Management and Control open standards protocol that is used by traffic managers to monitor and control traffic. This involved lots of interaction with other companies, organisations and local authorities to ensure that a pragmatic, useable protocol was developed.
How would your colleagues describe you in 3 words?
I think you need to ask my colleagues. Perhaps Grumpy, Helpful and Pragmatic.
What’s coming up for Brendan?
I’ve just finishing off one of my longer projects so I’m looking forward to some time off. I have a couple of holidays booked over the next 3 months. I’m also looking forward to starting one of the new projects coming up. It pays to help out the sales team!”
Keep an eye on our Insights website page to read the next interview in our Envitia Talent Spotlight series – coming soon!
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