A photo of Rob Berry

Hi, I’m Rob – a creative technologist working in the environmental risk sector. Over the last 24 years I’ve done a lot of things: hydrology, hydraulics, software development, and solution and technical architecture. These days I’m Head of Technology, Data and Software Development at JBA Consulting.

What I do

My role at JBA is a mix of technical leadership, business development, and industry advocacy. I set the direction for how we deliver technology, data, and software services – and I work to make sure we’re doing it well.

A big part of my work sits in flood warning and forecasting. I’ve been doing this for a long time, at scales ranging from local catchments to entire countries. I’m recognised as an international expert and have had the privilege of delivering projects all over the world.

I also own JBA’s technology infrastructure strategy. It’s an interesting challenge – we’re talking multi-petabyte storage and high-performance compute that runs millions of models every month to power our national-scale flood activities. I’m an advocate of hybrid-cloud solutions to keep everything robust and available for our global clients.

Away from the project work, I focus a lot on how we operate as a team – finding smarter ways to deliver, building reliability into our processes, and making sure our standards stay high. I really enjoy the mentoring side of things, whether that’s sharing knowledge day-to-day or helping shape our training programmes.

I’m a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of CIWEM, and I hold certifications as an AWS Solution Architect, PRINCE2 Practitioner, and ScrumMaster.

Summary career history

JBA Consulting (2012 – Present):

  • Head of Technology, Data and Software Development: Since 2015, I have directed technical and service delivery across JBA’s technology and software disciplines.
  • Technical Director: Appointed in 2014 to provide strategic technical leadership.
  • Principal Engineer: Joined JBA in 2012, applying specialist engineering and software knowledge to major projects.

Halcrow (now Jacobs) (2001 – 2012):

  • Natural Resources Knowledge Manager: Coordinated knowledge-sharing activities for the global Water Business Group of 1,100 staff members.
  • Flood Modeller Development Manager: Served as the strategic manager for the Flood Modeller software suite, planning and delivering industry-leading enhancements.
  • Early career progression: Advanced through various roles from Graduate Engineer to Senior Engineer, while also serving as the Technical Leader for Web Development.

Articles and papers

Personal life and interests

Outside of work, my family and my faith are what matter most. I’m husband to Rachael and dad to our two daughters, Emma and Thea. We live near Skipton, North Yorkshire, on Newton Grange Farm – home to a couple of thousand sheep; though I know very little about them.

Faith has been part of my life since childhood, but it became something personal during secondary school on a retreat at a place called The Briars. These days, our family worships together at St Andrew’s Church in Gargrave.

When I’m not working or dealing with family life, you’ll usually find me on a bike, in the kitchen, or down a technology rabbit hole. Yorkshire is a wonderful place to ride, and cycling has a special significance for me – Rachael and I actually met while organising a charity cycle ride to Paris. Cooking is another passion; I love experimenting with new recipes. And my interest in technology has never really been contained to the office.

Colophon

This site is built to be simple – easy to maintain, quick to load, and free of unnecessary clutter. It’s generated with Hugo, using a modified version of the PaperMod theme, with a colour palette borrowed from Flexoki. The site is served by Vercel, because they make it ridiculousy easy!

You might have noticed the domain for this site is a bit unusual. cm9i.com isn’t a random string generated by a machine; it’s a technical “Easter egg.” In the world of web development and data transmission, Base64 is a common way to represent binary data in an ASCII string format.

If you take the name “rob” and pass it through a Base64 encoder, you get “cm9i”. It’s short, unique, and a small nod to the underlying technologies I’ve spent my career working with.

Contact

I can be found in a few places on the web, reach out to me on the following: