These Are The 3 Key Questions Any GIS Consultant Will Ask

Get your project off to the best start by talking through your GIS data, the audience and the ideal result with your GIS consultant.

Our GIS consultants have long-standing experience in helping organisations get the most out of the geographic data at their disposal, so we’ve put together a quick set of questions to help you think about the most important aspects of any GIS consultancy services.

1. What GIS data do you have or need?

• Data format – What is your data and in what format does it exist? Hard copy, soft copy, CAD plans, Excel listings, Word document, etc, or is there GIS-ready data available such as shapefiles?
• Data capture – Does the project require any source data extraction or data capture before we can start?
• Is it fit for purpose? – Does the data quality meet the needs of the GIS consultancy project, i.e. is the proposed data fit for purpose in terms of accuracy, granularity and being up to date?
• What other datasets might be needed? For example, contextual base mapping and/or further additional data such as socio-economic or geo-demographic data?
• Are you allowed to use the data? Are there licensing / copyright issues around the proposed datasets?

2. Who is the intended audience?

• Who’s using it? Who is the audience for the GIS project?
• What’s their level of expertise? Is it a technical audience with good mapping skills, a scientific audience, the general public or indeed a mixture of different types?
• Do you need training? If the project is being delivered for use in a GIS software environment, what is the skill level of these people and is training required?
• Will you be able to maintain the data? Are the users of the analysis, tool or software capable of editing and maintaining the data in the future?
• Do you need a managed GIS consultancy service instead? If they are only occasional GIS users, should another delivery format be considered such as a managed remote service?

3. What will the result look like?

• How should the GIS project be delivered? How will the data be used; as a simple static image such as JPEG / PDF, as a light-weight online interactive map, within an existing GIS software package as a geodataset or even a tool to run semi-automatically?
• Do you need reports? Are accompanying tabular reports required as well?
• Do you need printed materials? Are any printed hard copy map outputs required?

Our GIS consultants have many years of experience helping organisations with their GIS projects. From data collection to bespoke interactive mapping, from software licences to GIS training – and everything in between! 

We hope this quick guide has been helpful to get you thinking about starting your GIS consultancy project. Get in touch with us and we’ll be delighted to discuss your project.