Ordnance Survey's Directors

Vanessa Lawrence CB

Director General and Chief Executive, Ordnance Survey

Vanessa Lawrence is the Director General and Chief Executive of Ordnance Survey, Great Britain’s national mapping agency.   She is the first woman to head Great Britain's national mapping agency and one of the youngest Director Generals in Ordnance Survey’s 218-year history.  She is a world-renowned expert in how geographic information systems (GIS) can improve decision making at all levels of government and business.  Vanessa is the adviser to the British Government on mapping, surveying and geographic information.

Vanessa received her business training from the publishing company Pearson plc.  Prior to joining Ordnance Survey, Vanessa held senior positions at Autodesk Inc, the fourth largest PC software company in the world.  This role gave Vanessa the responsibility to position GIS strategically with major organisations; for example, Governments, the European Union, the World Bank, national mapping agencies, cadastral agencies and most importantly new customers world-wide who were not currently using geographic information for decision-making.  During this time, Vanessa had particular focus on work in South Africa for the Chief Surveyor-General of South Africa to help create the ward structure for the South African General Election, held in May 1999.  Vanessa has extensive experience in running organisations in several continents. 

In addition to her work at Ordnance Survey, Vanessa has recently retired as the Chair of the United Kingdom ACE Association, the organisation representing Chief Executives of Government Agencies, Trading Funds and Non-Departmental Public Bodies on behalf of the Cabinet Secretary.   She also concluded late in 2008 chairing a high-level group with membership drawn from the public and private sectors advising Ministers on using location information to improve decision-making in government.   Place Matters: The Location Strategy for the United Kingdom was published and endorsed by Ministers in November 2008. 

Vanessa is a patron of two charities, The Cure Parkinson’s Trust and MapAction, a UK-based international charity which specialises in the mapping of disaster areas and supplying geographic information for humanitarian relief operations. 

Vanessa is the Honorary Vice-President of The Geographical Association and a member of the Council of the Royal Geographical Society, the University of Southampton and the University of Cambridge.  Vanessa is a Visiting Professor at the University of Southampton and Kingston University. 

Vanessa is a Companion of the Chartered Management Institute, a Chartered Geographer and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and the Institution of Civil Engineering Surveyors.  She was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2008.

Vanessa is one of the few recipients of the Scottish Geographical Medal, a prestigious award conferred only occasionally since 1890 by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society.  In addition, she has six Honorary Doctorate degrees and is an Honorary Fellow of University College London.  In December 2008, she was named South-East Director of the Year by the Institute of Directors. 

In January 2008, Vanessa was appointed as a Companion of The Most Honourable Order of the Bath (CB) in the Queen’s New Year Honours List.

In July 2009 Vanessa was appointed Honorary Colonel of 135 Independent Geographic Squadron, Royal Engineers.

Vanessa enjoys scuba diving, sailing her Solo dinghy, walking most weekends with friends, collecting antique maps and playing tennis at her local tennis club. 

Neil Ackroyd

Director of Data Collection and Management

Neil leads the organisation’s gathering of information from across Great Britain to maintain and update our digital mapping database. Prior to joining Ordnance Survey in 2001, Neil was the European Technical Manager for location-based services (LBS) company Trimble^®. He had a primary role in the adoption of GPS technology across both the public and private sectors.

James Brayshaw

Director of Sales and Market Development

James is responsible for the sales and marketing of digital data and paper mapping. He joined Ordnance Survey from the private sector in November 2001, bringing over 15 years’ extensive IT technical and consultative sales and marketing management experience. In his former employment, he established the UK organisation for a US B2B collaboration and e-commerce web portal solutions provider in 12 months, and launched the brand in an emerging marketplace.

Jan Hutchinson

Director of Human Resources and Corporate Services

Jan is responsible for a range of services, including human resources, health and safety, estate services and internal communications. Before joining Ordnance Survey in 2002, Jan held a number of senior posts at Centrica^® plc, the most recent of which was Customer Services Director with Goldfish^® – Centrica’s banking business.

Peter ter Haar

Director of Products

Peter is responsible for all aspects of product management including  product marketing, engineering, cartography and supply. He joined Ordnance Survey in November 2006, with more than 18 years’ experience in product management and business development in both the public and private sectors in GIS, location-based services and mobile technology. His previous roles include the head of GIS at the City of Amsterdam, and senior product and technical management roles in Geodan, Autodesk^®Europe and Intergraph^® Europe.

Bob Goodrich

Director of Information Systems

Bob is responsible for Ordnance Survey’s entire technology infrastructure. This includes the implementation of our new seamless database management system which will improve the speed and efficiency of how we handle and generate our geographic information. Bob was previously our IS programme director. He originally trained as  an Ordnance Survey cartographer before moving to research and development, and finally information services. It was there that he was instrumental in the 2001 delivery of OS MasterMap, the largest seamless geospatial database in the world.  

Paul Hemsley

Director of Finance

Paul leads our Finance and Procurement departments and the Programme Delivery Unit on an interim basis. Paul is a graduate chartered accountant with extensive business experience in both the public sector and private companies. He was chief accountant of Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) and was chief accountant at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). He acted as group finance director of Reliance Security Group plc and joined us from The Innovation Group plc where he served on the board as group finance director.

Non-Executive Chairman

Sir Rob Margetts CBE, FREng, FIChemE 

Beginning his career with the ICI Group in 1969, Sir Rob progressed through a number of appointments within the group prior to joining the Board in 1992, becoming Vice-Chairman for two years from 1998 to 2000. Since 2002 he has been Chairman of Legal & General Group plc and in 2006 also became Chairman of Ensus Ltd. 

He is also Non-Executive Director of Anglo-American plc and Chairman of the Energy Technologies Institute. Sir Rob was Chairman of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) from 2001 to 2006. 

Non-Executive Directors

Michael Sommers

Michael runs his own strategic marketing consultancy and is also a Non-Executive Director of the Department for Works and Pensions. His career includes marketing directorship roles for Woolworths^® plc and TSB^®, and managing directorships at Entertainment UK and MGM^® Cinemas.

Piers White MBE

Piers is a banker by background and until the recent sale was Chief Executive Officer of Insinger de Beaufort. His previous positions include Service Director of Barclays^® Bank, Managing Director of Fleming Premier Banking^®, Chairman of Fleming Offshore Private Banking and a Director of the Save & Prosper^® Group Ltd. He is a Non Executive Director of CIPFA Business Ltd, Croydon Economic Development Company, and a school governor.