ABOUT US
OpenWork Ltd was founded in 2018 by Byron and Adrian Cochrane, a hard working father and son team based in Nelson, New Zealand. The pair have enjoyed working together over the years and are excited to launch OpenWork Ltd together.
Byron Cochrane
Founder & Principal
Short Eared Owl
Byron has over 25 years experience as a leader in providing interoperability and data linking solutions in a large number of contexts across the globe. His greatest expertise is in Open Data Standards implementation and development - particularly in the geospatial realm.
Byron has served at various levels of government, the military and private industry, both in New Zealand, Australia and the US. He has often been turned to by organisations wishing to develop, organise and manage their disparate data using standards based interoperability solutions.
In recent years Byron has contributed to multiple international interoperability efforts including the W3C Spatial Data on the Web, numerous test bed and interoperability experiments for the Open Geographic Consortium and standards development for ISO Technical Committee 211.
In his spare time Byron enjoys exploring the Nelson region, getting to know the local craft beers, keeping abreast of current affairs, and picking on his mandolin when its all becomes a bit too much.
Adrian Cochrane
Founder & Lead Developer
Burrowing Owl
Adrian is passionate about helping people be empowered by computers through custom software development work. It’s not enough for Adrian to create something that works - he must know why it works!
Adrian graduated from Victoria University of Wellington in 2017 with a degree in Computer Science. His education in computing began long before that, having learned his first programming language at age 10.
Whilst he was studying at Victoria University, Adrian interned at Catalyst IT for an extended time where he worked on the KELP log file analytics/debugging project and Samba Windows-compatible file sharing project.
After graduating he successfully completed several contracts including ones for visualizing shared vocabularies with SKOS and a privacy-conscious blogging site. Additionally he completed a contract for NIWA to harvest WxS endpoints into GeoNetwork.
For his hobbies Adrian enjoys illustrating how software can be better through his personal projects, and is always keen for a game of Catan.
Favourite XKCD Comic
Favourite XKCD Comic
Ben Searle
Associate
Barking Owl
Ben has over 40 years experience as a senior leader in ocean, meteorological and land data management at local, national and international levels across both military and civilian organisations. He has chaired international marine data management committees and has worked on developing global ocean and meteorological data collection and management programmes. Ben has managed the implementation of a number of significant IT capabilities including agency level document management systems and the ACT Government's ACTMAPi web mapping capability.
In recent years, Ben has driven a range of national spatial data initiatives including standards development, developing various metadata capabilities and establishing a significant national spatial conference series. He has also been part of a team developing a concept to provide a uniform approach to the application of statistics within a spatial framework that is now being adopted and implemented through the United Nations.
In his spare time, Ben enjoys a drop of red wine, music, keeping active on the beautiful Sunshine Coast in Queensland and also training his Golden Retriever, Sam.
Richard Murcott
Associate
Ruru
Richard's passion for geographic information standards was incited from lessons learned that began with pioneering national spatial data projects in the early 1980s. He began with cadastral surveying, then moved into data capture and management for the national Digital Cadastral Database (DCDB); data from which still underpins parts of New Zealand's land registry (Landonline). His contributions continued into developments for national land information systems, topographic information infrastructure, hydrographic information infrastructure, hydrographic information management and electronic navigation, emergency services data, and national/regional geospatial metadata standards.
He participated in technical committees of the International Hydrographic Organisation and undertook assignments for the South West Pacific Hydrographic Commission. He introduced 'geospatial' to the NZ e-Government Interoperability Framework and was a senior advisor on the development of the NZ Geospatial Strategy. He was also an inaugural member of the Spatial Industries Business Association of NZ (SIBA NZ) and served on its Executive Committee.
Richard convenes the geospatial standards community for NZ's participation in the international standards programme for geographic information (ISO/TC211). He is also a NZ Representative on Standards Australia/Standards New Zealand's Joint Committee for geographic information/geomatics.
With the rest of his time this Kiwi owl is contributing to local community initiatives. When he can he flies off on his adventure motorcycle to navigate the more remote nooks and crannies of New Zealand.
Favourite XKCD Comic
