Summer placement secondments to Portsmouth City Council

As part of their asset management strategy, Portsmouth City Council needed to survey all their highway assets to load onto a GIS system. To provide the temporary manpower needed for this survey, Waterman Aspen recruited eight masters students over their summer break from the University of Portsmouth.

The students used GPS-enabled tablets to locate, describe and assess the condition of approximately 10,000 data points across the city in only two months – a great effort. The council can now make efficient use of budgets through data-driven decisions about repair and replacement strategies.

As a thank you to the students, they visited the newly-constructed Cruise Terminal Annex building at Portsmouth International Port and were shown around the facility by its Construction Manager, Waterman Aspen’s Jason Ellam-Brown.

One of the students, Chibuzor, said, “My summer internship as a GIS Surveyor for Waterman Aspen was a formative learning experience in collaborative working with my colleagues. This experience was capped with a tour of the newly-constructed Portsmouth International Port Annex Building where we got to witness real-life implementation of sustainable infrastructure like green walls, wind-catcher technology, and a sea water heating exchange unit.”