Mr. Mark Gordon
(Chair of the Advisory Board)

Mark Thomas Gordon graduated from the University of New South Wales with First Class Honours in Surveying in 1977 and was registered as a land surveyor on 25 September 1978.  Mark is currently the Manager, Surveying of the NSW Roads & Traffic Authority (RTA).  In 2000 Mark was awarded the Halloran Prize of the NSW Institution of Surveyors for professionalism, leadership and meritorious service to Surveying.  He was elected a Fellow of the Institution of Surveyors Australia in March 2003.

Mark was elected Chairman of the NSW Surveying & Mapping Industry Council in July 1999 and consequently became a member of the UNSW School of Surveying & SIS Advisory Board.  He was nominated as Chairman of the Advisory Board in 2007.  He is also a member of the University of Newcastle Surveying Course Advisory Committee.  In 2002 Mark was elected a member of NSW Board of Surveyors and is now a member of the succeeding Board of Surveying & Spatial Information.  Mark conducts the annual Board examinations in urban cadastral surveying.

Paul Harcombe is the Chief Surveyor, Land & Property Information NSW within the Department of Lands. Paul is also Chairman of the NSW Survey & Mapping Managers Forum and a Member of the NSW Survey & Mapping Industry Council. His primary responsibilities include management of the State Survey System, implementation of the NSW Spatial Information Strategy and statutory functions involving approximately 70 staff across NSW. He holds a Bachelor in Surveying from UNSW, and a Master of Geomatics from the University of Melbourne. 

Paul is also the Deputy President of the NSW Board of Surveying and Spatial Information which regulates land and mining surveying activities and advises Government on Spatial Information matters. He is also Deputy Chair of the Geographical Names Board of NSW. Other positions held include Chairman of the Intergovernmental Committee for Surveying & Mapping (ICSM), and recently appointed a member of the University of NSW Dean of Engineering Advisory Committee. Paul has been a member of the UNSW School of Surveying & SIS Advisory Board for four years.

Ed Garvin is Managing Director of OMNILINK Pty Limited, an information systems consulting company specialising in spatial information, and Partner of Garvin Morgan & Co., Consulting Surveyors & Planners. He holds tertiary qualifications in Surveying and Urban Studies, an MBA, and he is a Registered Surveyor in NSW and ACT. His experience is over 37 years in the Surveying, Spatial and Engineering professions including service with National Mapping, Lands, Land Titles, Landcom, building sites in London and a number of private practices covering surveying, mapping, engineering design, construction supervision, project management, application design and consulting, and he has established and run two businesses in these disciplines for over 20 years. 

He is currently Chairman of Consulting Surveyors NSW, a Director of the Australian Spatial Information Business Association (currently Treasurer) and part-time lecturer to final year Surveying and SIS students at the University of NSW in Project Management.  Ed is a former Chairman of the Cumberland Group, a former Chairman of the Institution of Surveyors CPD Sub-Committee, a Past President of his Rotary Club and is passionate about his family, his profession, business, the Wallabies, skiing and the environment.  He has a special interest in Information Management.

Tony Wheeler is a Principal of Sinclair Knight Merz and was instrumental in the formation of its spatial division in 1997 which he headed until 2002, when he moved into SKM’s international and Defence businesses. He was a Director of the Australian Spatial Information Business Association (ASIBA) and its inaugural chairman; a Director of OGC-A until its merger with OGC; a member of the BOSSI Spatial Data Infrastructure Committee and is on the advisory boards of the Department of Geomatics, Melbourne University and the School of Surveying and Spatial Information Systems, UNSW. Tony was one of seven industry executives selected to be a member of the Steering Committee for the Spatial Information Industry Action Agenda that commenced in 2001 and ran for 18 months.

Tony has tertiary qualifications in surveying and business administration. His experience includes roles with large engineering consultancies, surveying and mapping practices, State and Commonwealth Government spatial information agencies, and information technology companies.  His experience has encompassed surveying, photogrammetric and remote sensing projects, GIS, consulting, environmental, defence procurement and IT (and space systems) strategies and high level designs.

Dan is the Chief Executive of PSMA Australia Limited, an unlisted public company limited by shares and owned by the State, Territory and Australian governments. PSMA was formed in 1993 as a joint venture between the nine mapping agencies of the state and territory and Australian Governments, in response to an Australian Bureau of Statistics tender for mapping services for the 1996 Census.  In June 2001, PSMA Australia completed the transition from unincorporated joint venture to unlisted public company limited by shares and registered under the Corporations Act.  Dan was instrumental in managing the transition from government consortium to public company and has grown the Company from a staff of 1 to a small team of 16 professionals, based in Canberra, Australia.

Dan graduated with a Bachelor of Surveying (Hons) from UNSW, and commenced his career as a cadastral surveyor in a rural practice. He then moved into a large national engineering firm where his experience included the management of large scale topographic surveys for longitudinal infrastructure projects, large construction and engineering surveys, GPS photo-control and geodetic positioning, GIS infrastructure management, specialist defence surveys, GPS control networks and network analysis and adjustment. Dan has more recently been focused on the management of spatial data, the challenges of coordinating the assembly of national datasets from multiple disparate sources and managing the associated complex network of relationships with suppliers and clients.  He is the author of many scientific papers, reports and reviews, and is currently completing his MBA (Executive) at the Australian Graduate School for Management. 

Brian Nicholls graduated with a Bachelor of Surveying (Hons) from UNSW, as well as an MBA. Brian is the General manager of the company AAMHatch, and has outstanding design and implementation skills in leading edge, high technology survey, mapping and GIS applications. Specialist areas include aerial photography and Airborne Laser Scanning, digital photogrammetry and image processing.

Complementing his technology skills, Brian has highly developed strategic and general management skills. Brian’s role within AAMHatch involves combining technology and business skills in order to develop innovative new business approaches for spatial data capture and processing. Brian’s career success to date has been founded on an absolute commitment to client satisfaction.

Martin Nix is Senior Vice President of the Mining and Agriculture business unit of Leica Geosystems which provides machine monitoring and site management solutions for mining and farm applications whereby GNSS technologies are combined with communication systems and application software.  The business unit is centred in Brisbane, Australia, with operations in North America and Europe.

Prior to returning to Australia in 2006, he held senior executive roles located in Leica Geosystems headquarters in Switzerland. As Senior Vice President he led a group of businesses and start-ups including the GNSS Reference Networks business, Construction Machine Automation business and Lasers and Levels business. Previously, as Chief Business Development Officer, he was responsible for the overall marketing, technology management and strategic planning and a member of the corporate team while Leica Geosystems was a public company on the Swiss Stock Exchange. Between 1998 and 2001, he was the President of the Americas Region for Leica Geosystems, relocating to Atlanta, USA.  He held technical sales and general management positions with the company in Australia before moving to Switzerland in 1993 where he held product and marketing management positions and then as Vice President of Strategic Marketing for Leica Geosystems from1996 to 1998. 

Martin holds a Bachelor of Surveying and a Master of Surveying Science (GIS) from the University of New South Wales.  He obtained Survey Registration in 1982. He was a Steering Board member of the School of Geomatic Engineering, University College of London, from 2002 to 2005.  He contributes to the profession via papers and presentations at various conferences and holds several board positions.