A Few Minutes with...Senior Application Analyst - GIS Brian Oevermann

Meet Brian Oevermann, GISP , Issaquah's resident Geographic Information System (GIS) expert. Brian works with teams across the City to help them map, show and explain their work. From snow plow maps to tracking heritage trees, Brian's work, while often behind-the-scenes, is integral to Issaquah's success.

Brian shares a real-life hero of his (who happens to be related to his work for Issaquah!), his goal to visit every national park, and why he has one of the most inter-disciplinary roles in the City.

What is your role at the city? How long have you worked here?

Senior Application Analyst – GIS. I've worked here almost 16.5 years now.

What was your first job?

I had a summer job with a greenhouse known for its poinsettias. My job was to put together the foam trays in which the poinsettia cuttings would be started. Once those were put together, they were set up in the greenhouses and flushed with water until they achieved a proper pH level before a cutting was added (6 per tray). I can say I’ve helped grow 12K-15K poinsettias in a season!

Who is a real-life hero of yours?

Among others, Jack Dangermond , founder and CEO of Esri , global leader in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology. Aside from him being a true visionary, he has leveraged the success of Esri to help conservation and other non-profits/GMOs across the globe better manage and protect the environment and ecosystem that is vital to our existence on Earth.

What might someone not realize about your job?

It truly is an interdisciplinary position. While I’ll never be an expert in most of the functions that City employees perform, I have a functional understanding of a majority of functions and systems that the City deals with and leverage that knowledge to gather more complete information when staff approach me to build applications or data layers for their business processes. This helps reduce the iterations needed to arrive at a functional product. As a result, my days/weeks/months are never completely repetitive and there are always new challenges to deal with.

What's it like both living and working in Issaquah?

I like that I can often see the results of projects I’ve perhaps had a small part in bringing to fruition. The short commute to the office isn’t a bad thing, either!

What’s the most adventurous thing you’ve done on a trip?

Vacations with my wife have mostly been somewhat rigidly scheduled by necessity. But one trip to visit family living a few states away allowed us to be more flexible. We have a long-term goal to visit every national park (monuments, too) and we had generally worked out which parks we would visit before arriving at family. A wildfire that closed the access to the cave we wanted to visit had us parked on the side of the road re-working our itinerary and visiting some parks/monuments we hadn’t planned on seeing that trip.

Looking back, I think we had a better overall trip because of it! We ultimately visited 24 parks/monuments during that two-week vacation. We still haven’t gotten back to see the cave we originally planned to visit. Someday.

How did you learn about GIS?

I first learned about GIS while completing my degree in Forestry. I have always loved technology and maps, and GIS married the two. I also saw it as the future of effective forest/natural resource management. I was fortunate that my Forestry department had a cutting edge GIS lab and we used it in a number of my upper level coursework.

Was this the career path you thought you would have?

After graduating, I started my career with the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) in Northwest Montana. After a stint of tree planting contract inspection, an opportunity to join a team that was converting hand-drawn data into GIS layers presented itself, and I jumped on it. I always thought that I would move up within the USFS to become a Forest GIS Coordinator but permanent employment opportunities were limited at the time, and I was as permanent as a temporary employee could get.

So I found an opportunity to work for a Montana county, which ultimately expanded my GIS technology toolset and positioned me to become Issaquah’s first GIS Coordinator. I sometimes miss dealing only with natural resources but I no longer miss spending long hours doing wildland fire suppression as my “other duties as assigned.”

What’s one work-related skill you’re currently trying to improve?

3D GIS. I’ve been exploring 3D GIS processes and working on building an Issaquah 3D digital twin model. Visualizing our City data in 3D is complementary to the traditional 2D map view and is more intuitive to many people. My aim is to have a reasonable representation of the City rather than an exact digital replica due to the level of effort required versus the return on that effort.

Do you have any secret talents?

I don’t really have any secret talents but if I told you about them, they would no longer be secret!

When you’re feeling unmotivated, what do you do to recharge?

I do a variety of things but I try and go out and make photographs or dive into my photo library backlog and work on photos I’ve already taken. But sometimes I just like to sit back and watch favorite movies.