MGISS + Steve Allen: A reflective interview celebrating his fifty years in the industry

Many things have changed in the world of geospatial over the past five decades, as well as in the industries it supports. From acetate overlays and paper maps to drones, from early mobile GIS to today’s emerging world of GeoAI, from hand-drawn records to real-time data.

Few people have witnessed that transformation as closely as Severn Trent’s Steve Allen. Retiring in his 50^th year at Severn Trent, Steve joined as a civil engineer from Birmingham University.
We recently asked Steve to join us in a reflective interview of his time in the industry, and his advocacy of MGISS over the years.

Steve, can you tell us a bit about your background and how you came into this world?

“I joined Severn Trent as a civil engineer. I was designing water mains, sewers, sewage treatment works—and then I moved into more operational roles: control rooms, customers services bureaus (what we now call ‘call centres’), and then into systems and telemetry. So I’ve always been involved in systems, even from my civil engineering days. But with that grounding in data accuracy, you know—working to decimal point accuracy.

Then in 2000, we digitised our water mains records. Before that, everything was paper-based; Ordnance Survey base map data, hand-drawn records. We were literally drawing on acetates—tracing paper layered over printed maps. But around 2000, we moved to digital records, like everyone did at that time, because GIS was emerging. And GIS isn’t actually that old. It really came through in the 1990s.”

That’s interesting, because most people understand civil engineering, that’s straightforward — but when you mention GIS, people don’t always know what that is.

“Exactly,” Steve agrees. “We used to call it “GISST” internally.
GIS is Geographic Information System, a technology to capture, organise, analyse and publish spatial data, and GISST is ‘GIS in Severn Trent’.
But really, it does come back to that engineering mindset. If you put a pipe in the ground, you need to know where it is. Because you’ll need to find it again, and other utilities need to avoid damaging it. So accurate records are critical.

In the past, paper records weren’t precise. They might show a pipe in the pavement, but not exactly where, so you’d still need trial holes and detection equipment. It’s like the first digital watches that weren’t connected to the internet. They showed you milliseconds, but it didn’t mean they were right. Very accurate-looking, very precise but not very accurate.

I think a lot of the industry used to put a lot of effort into accuracy, but they’ve lost their way. That’s how accuracy can easily slip; cost-cutting, reduced headcount and sometimes poor-quality data from contractors. And that’s a problem, because the record drawing becomes the foundation for the next job.”

How important is accuracy then for the future of the industry, especially as technology evolves?

“Knowing the importance of accuracy and the fact that more automation is coming… take traffic management, for example. We send a notice to the council to say we’re going to dig a hole here — we’re not visiting the site first, we’re guided by the records. So if the records say the pipe’s in the road but it’s actually in the pavement and we dig up the wrong place, obviously the council doesn’t like that. Hence the need to get it right first time.

One of my sayings is: there’s only one opportunity to get it right first time, so you might as well get it right first time — otherwise you’re chasing your tail afterwards. All the utility damage, all those consequences… But now with GNSS hardware, you can survey while the trench is open. In fact, we have worked with MGISS to create a Digital AsLaid app to do that on mobile phones with the potential for data to flow directly from asset survey to database record Some devices you just point a laser at the asset. In fact, I think that is the future, laser scanning — wave it around, and then what’s called feature extraction: the software spotting the pipe, the valve, the hydrant. That’s where it converts down to a two-dimensional plan. That’s the future, I think.”

I wonder if at some point it just becomes drones? Everything done by drones alone?

We know you’re thinking it—Can SMEs handle scale? It’s important to know that scale in this context is usually a design question “Well, yes, we’re already big on drones. If you want to talk to a company that’s heavily engaged with drones, it’s Severn Trent. We’ve got our own drone pilots and a full fleet! It’s fascinating what you can get from that technology. For example, there was a tragedy a couple of years ago, a gas explosion cause by methane leakage. With drones, you can now attach detectors and identify those kinds of risks remotely.

And I think in the future we’ll see more of systems feeding directly into structured databases, with proper governance around them. Because with GIS systems like Esri, you have to get the structure right from the start, otherwise you pay the price later.”

Coming back a step — you mentioned GIS being a young technology, and like a lot of young technologies, it’s evolved very quickly. What impact has that had on the industry?

“So back in 2000 when we digitsed everything, it cost about £30 million. Roughly £10 million for software, £10 million for hardware, and £10 million to digitise the records. It wouldn’t cost anywhere near that now.
But the real change since then, especially from around 2010 onwards, has been accessibility. The key advancement is making that data available to people who make decisions at the time they need to make a decision.

There’s only one opportunity to capture something correctly the first time. But after that, it’s about making that information available instantly. Not printing it out and taking it into the field on a clipboard, but having it there live, so the mobile user is enabled and empowered to “take every opportunity to improve the records when they see they are wrong (my second favourite saying!).”

Have you seen tangible benefits from that?

“Cost, time, quality — that’s how you measure things. Everything happens much quicker now. The guy out looking for valves has the record on his phone. Previously, we tried giving them rugged laptops, but nobody wanted to carry those around. Now it’s immediate. Though we still struggle with things like getting records updated within 30 days, and really, it should be instant. If you capture it once, correctly, you remove all the double handling. And of course, expectations have changed anyway. People expect everything instantly now.

GIS has a reputation for being expensive and difficult,” Steve continues. “Especially among IT teams. But really, it’s just a spatial spreadsheet: rows and columns of data, just with a location attached. The interface can be a map, but it doesn’t have to be. And anything that has a location can be managed in GIS. Environmental data, planning, utilities… you could spend all day listing where it’s used.”

Severn Trent is a huge organisation, and you’ve worked with all sorts of companies over the years. MGISS is a relatively small business — an SME. What’s the difference, in your experience, of working with a smaller company?

“I think it comes down to expertise and relationships. It was always easy for me to point to Esri as the platform—that was the technology. But when it came to implementation and making it work for us, you need people who really understand the domain. With something like GNSS and digital as-laid, you’re not just buying a product, you’re working with people who understand the problem.”

Colleagues at MGISS describe you as a real “champion” for MGISS within Severn Trent. Why do you think that is?

“I think I was a champion for the technology as much as I was for the company. It just made it easy to say — well, there’s a company that knows what they’re talking about, that knows what they’re doing. And probably because they’re an SME, but also subject matter experts. Once we started, why would we go to anybody else?”

“It comes down to trust. If you know a company understands what they’re doing, and they’re easy to work with, that goes a long way.”

And if you had to sum up your experience of working with MGISS in just a few words?

“Trusted. Trustworthy. Easy to talk to. Domain experts.”

Steve is now enjoying a well-earned retirement after nearly five decades in his role at Severn Trent, and this interview was an opportunity not only to hear his thoughts on his time in the industry, but to celebrate and thank him for his years of support, advocacy and genuine partnership. We wish him all the best for this latest phase in his life, and hope that it at least involved less double-handling of data!

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