Tony is master of all he surveys for map makers

Where did your passion for maps come from?

I’m not sure. Some boys would go to bed at night and read a comic. I used to take a map, I loved looking at them and was intrigued how they produced them. A good map is like a good book, it’s a mine of information. Later I enjoyed walking with maps, and always had a map with me.

How did you get the job?

At school a careers person came along and I saw a glossy brochure about careers in Ordnance survey. As soon as I saw the map on the cover, I read it from cover to cover and decided it was something I wanted to do.

Biggest change you’ve seen?

The use of the Global Positioning System, or GPS, which started in the early 1980s using American military satellites. The data was freely available to people all over the world.

We used it and refined it until we are now at the point where the technology we use can measure a point to within a centimetre.

The satellites give us the locations of points, and we join them up to come up with precision mapping.

Why do you need to keep surveying?

We’re responsible for maintaining the mapping and keeping it up to date. As things change on the ground in the real world, our work reflects that. We’ll show every kerb line, every fence in a back garden, every single house.

At the moment I’m overlooking the new Forth crossing, where the roads are almost complete. You’ve been to some remote spots?

Back in the 1970s a team of us were doing a re-survey of the Shetlands to produce completely new maps. You can imagine the problem of getting onto all the little islands off the coast. The only way was to use helicopters to get aerial imagery. In really remote areas helicopters would drop us off to do the survey work and come back later.

We’re responsible for maintaining the triangulation – “trig” – pillars you see at the top of hills, physically demanding work.

I’ve been up so many hills I couldn’t even tell you the name of most of them but at the weekend I like to put my feet up!

Have you ever been lost?

I was going up to a triangulation pillar in the Borders on a cold winter’s day. It was an almost flat moor with freezing fog which meant I couldn’t see in front of my face.

I found my Land Rover after about five hours of wandering about.

My eyebrows and hair were white with frozen fog.

It was the days before mobile phones but we had procedures in place that meant colleagues would have come looking for me in the right area. What do you prefer to use, maps or sat navs?

They both have their place, just like books and electronic versions. There’s the tactile part of using a map and holding it.

You can download any map you get and we provide that data but we still produce a lot of paper maps and we still sell a lot of them.

How do you find our maps compare with those found abroad?

The rest of the world looks to Ordnance Survey to see how we do it so accurately.

We’re the best-mapped nation in the world.

The maintenance of our maps is second to none thanks to a devoted staff.