A day in the life of... Nick Parkyn AffilIIMS


“The enthusiasm of others to increase their


knowledge is captivating!” - Nick Parkyn


Mike Schwarz went in search of Nick Parkyn, an interesting character based ‘down under’, who has some fascinating strings to his bow apart from marine surveying. How appropriate that he found Nick eager to speak about the impact of technology on the surveying business in coming years as IIMS reflects on the history of the past thirty years. And as Nick says, “Watch out for the coming of the Fourth Industrial Revolution”.


QUESTION 1


Might I suggest that your route into the marine surveying profession was not the usual one? By that what I mean is you have brought a broad range of skills from other disciplines, including information technology, with you. What made you want to become a certified marine surveyor?


I have always had an interest in boats, sailing and small craft design. I built my first boat at 12 years old and later worked at the weekend for a local builder of sailing dinghies as


130 | The Report • June 2021 • Issue 96


an apprentice. At age 14, I had my own business building and rigging aluminium dinghy masts and doing repairs to small craft, when not busy with schoolwork. Later after completing my schooling, I spent part of my “gap year” in the UK working at the Elephant Boatyard and socialised at the Jolly Sailor pub in Bursledon, Hampshire.


Upon my return I studied yacht and small craft design through the Yacht Design Institute in the USA and studied Computer Science while working for the University of Cape


Town. In the early 1980’s myself and a partner developed one of the first computer aided yacht design systems (CAYD) to run on a personal computer, it was adopted by many leading yacht designers. After moving to Perth, Australia, I studied marine composites at Curtin University, wrote a series of books on composite technology and specialised in consulting on composite design and fabrication. Throughout my career I was increasingly involved in Information Technology (IT) consulting for many large IT and Telecommunications companies


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136