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Hamish Visser
An isometric terrain model carrying infrastructure and GIS data across it, annotated with the tools and disciplines the practice works in

Hamish Visser

I build the tools that sit between design data and the people who need to use it. Most of that is automation: FME workflows, parametric definitions and GIS systems that take something slow and manual on an infrastructure project and make it repeatable.

Role
Digital Engineer, Taylor Woodrow, London
Previously
Spatial/Digital Consultant, Aurecon, Wellington

Made in New Zealand

Featured projects

  1. Parametric Earthworks Modelling

    01

    Parametric Earthworks Modelling

    Earthworks volumes that recalculate the moment the geometry moves, benchmarked against Civil 3D, InfraWorks, OpenRoads and 12d Model. It is the only one of them that reads borehole logs and puts a number on how much rock sits above formation level before the price goes in.

    RhinoGrasshopperExcel

    2026Complete

  2. Topographic Prints

    02

    Topographic Prints

    QGISBlenderLINZ Data Service

  3. The workflow that took asset delivery on a major London infrastructure scheme from several weeks to the same day. CAD drawings in; schema-compliant GIS files, a live web map and attribute-driven 3D asset models out. Runner Up in the VINCI Group Innovation Awards.

    FMEInfraWorksArcGIS

    03

    CAD to GIS Workflow

    FMEInfraWorksArcGIS

  4. Design to Unreal Engine Pipeline

    04

    Design to Unreal Engine Pipeline

    FMEUnreal Engine

Selected work

Full index
  1. 01

    A511

    BIM CoordinationGIS 2026A bridge slide and culvert operation rehearsed in 4D before anyone breaks ground. LIDAR survey, temporary works layouts, utility runs and the construction programme sit in one model, with swept path analysis for every crane and 40ft truck that has to get on and off a constrained site.
  2. 02

    Drawing Checker Tool

    Data AutomationQuality Assurance 2026Title block QA that most UK contractors still do by hand, done in FME instead. A 462-drawing package is read, validated against project-specific rules and reported pass or fail with error detail, in 2.8 seconds.
  3. 03

    GIS Process Guide

    Standards / GovernanceISO 19650 2026The document that decides how spatial data is produced on every Taylor Woodrow project. ISO 19650 aligned, eight steps from CDE setup through to archive, named roles either side of a peer review gate. Authored solo, peer reviewed and formally approved as the company standard.
  4. 04

    Official Information Request Auditor

    Workflow AutomationLLM Integration 2026An Official Information Act response start to finish without a person reading every email. A self-hosted n8n pipeline searches two inboxes, filters for relevance with an LLM, redacts third-party information, compiles the disclosure documents and logs an audit trail against each one.
  5. 05

    Pavement Quantity Tool

    Earthworks / GeotechnicalComputational Design 2026Pavement quantity take-off straight from design surfaces, survey data and CAD layouts, with no corridor model to build first. Assessments that took days run in minutes and re-run as the design moves, the output has been reconciled against client figures, and a draft quantity report comes out of the same run.
  6. 06

    Public Data Scrape

    GISAutomation 2026Draw a site boundary and get back a written constraints report. The workflow queries every public REST service covering the area, heritage through to gas infrastructure, and hands the features to an LLM, which also states which datasets it could not reach.
  7. 07

    The Public Record

    Web DevelopmentInformation Design 2026A political accountability tracker for New Zealand where neutrality is enforced by the database and the interface rather than promised in an editorial policy. No colour carries meaning, no status uses loaded language, and right of reply is a constraint in the schema. Parliament from 2011 onward.
  8. 08

    Automated Document Compliance

    Data AutomationQuality Assurance 2025Two FME workflows that audit an entire project document register: 17 information standards applied to every document in the CDE, then 13 further checks against the TIDPs. The first run flagged over 600 non-compliant documents, 100 duplicate TIDP entries and 3,000 unmatched codes, in under a minute.
  9. 09

    Meridian Water Strategic Infrastructure

    GISAsset Management 2025The live deployment the CAD to GIS automation was built for. GIS asset delivery and document control on a major North London regeneration programme, part of the digital delivery that won TAYWOOD Engineering Digital Construction Team of the Year at the London Construction Awards 2025.
  10. 10

    Semi-Automated Retaining Walls

    Parametric DesignComputational Design 2022The script that let a social housing team deliver in 3D on a fee quoted for 2D drawings. Wall type is chosen from height and design ground level, and concrete volume, price and embodied carbon travel with each wall object through Speckle into the federated model.
  11. 11

    Point Cloud Floor Plan Extraction

    Point Cloud ProcessingAutomation 2021Floor plans pulled out of a building scan with a slider running from true as-built fidelity through to perfectly orthogonal geometry. Commercial scan-to-BIM tools make that decision for you at the point of extraction. This one leaves it as an input.
  12. 12

    Summer Research Scholarship

    Robotic FabricationComputational Design 2021Three months of solo research putting plasma bonding on a robot arm to strengthen spatial 3D printing. Two test jigs and two torch holders designed for an ABB IRB 1200, bonding parameters characterised across three filaments, and TPU bonds that outperformed the strongest PLA bonds from the previous studies.

By section

Recognition