How Do You Carry Out a GIS Audit for Your Ecology Consultancy?
Introduction
A few years back I sat down with a five-person ecology consultancy for what was meant to be a half-hour chat about their mapping set-up. Two hours later we were still going, partly because it proved so hard to establish where the "master" habitat survey project lived. Three people had three different versions on three laptops, and the one everyone trusted most was, inconveniently, the oldest.
That's the thing about a GIS audit. It sounds like paperwork. In practice it's usually the moment a team finds out what's really going on beneath their day-to-day workflow; the shortcuts and "we've always done it this way" habits that quietly cost hours.
Why run a GIS audit this autumn?
Most consultancies I work with aren't in crisis. Reports go out, surveys get delivered, clients are mostly happy. But "working" and "working well" aren't the same thing; a GIS audit surfaces friction that's become invisible because everyone's learned to live with it. None of that shows up on an invoice, but it shows up in stress levels, and can lead to higher staff turnover.
Autumn, once you’ve come up for air after the survey season, is the natural moment to carry out a GIS audit; as the time pressures ease. You can't fix what you haven't properly looked at. And you’ll want to allow time to review the findings and implement solutions before the next field season kicks off.
What does a GIS audit actually involve?
A GIS audit is really a series of semi-structured conversations, usually over Zoom or Teams, with managers, the people who touch the mapping workflow day to day, and the GIS lead. I'm listening for gaps between what people think is happening and what's actually happening, across:
Hardware
Data storage & retrieval
Software
Skills & confidence
Ask five staff where the data lives, or who is responsible for on-boarding, and you'll often get five different answers. That gap is the finding. A few patterns turn up so often they're barely surprising anymore:
servers quietly filling with data
some QGIS projects run slowly, especially when working from home
two or three BNG mapping workflows are in circulation
the GIS induction for new starters is always a bit different
While a team may be highly capable in QGIS often they got there almost by accident, through YouTube and peer support rather than formal training; which works, until inconsistencies start appearing in reports.
None of that is really a software problem. It's often more an ownership problem; nobody's specifically responsible for file housekeeping, template standardisation, or onboarding, so each task drifts a little further. Until a GIS audit joins the dots.
From GIS audit to GIS roadmap: turning findings into fixes
Once I've spoken to the team, the findings from the semi-structured interviews get written up alongside some additional research; the file structure, data licences, how projects are actually configured. That becomes a GIS Roadmap; practical recommendations across hardware, data and people, prioritised so it's achievable rather than a wish list nobody has time for.
Crucially, a good roadmap answers back to what the audit found; it's not a generic best-practice checklist. Every roadmap should trace back to the specific issues the audit surfaced. That's what turns "we should probably sort our GIS out" into a sequenced plan you can start now, rather than doing it for the first time under survey-season pressure.
Should you run a GIS audit yourself, or bring in outside help?
You absolutely can run this internally; the questions above are a decent starting framework. What an outside pair of eyes tends to add to the GIS Audit is candour; someone willing to ask direct questions in a kind way. Staff are often more honest with someone who isn't their line manager. And when it comes to developing a GIS Roadmap, it can be a great advantage to involve someone independent but with wide industry knowledge.
If you'd like a steer on structuring your own GIS audit; or want to explore how I can help, please drop me a line: matt@maplango.com