Nick Woodburn - Technical Director

Holidays scrambling the hills of Snowdonia led the A-level student Nick Woodburn (“Wooders” back then) to inform his teacher that he plans to study Physical Geography at university. The response was blunt… “Don’t be stupid… That’s a useless degree… Do something useful with a science in it.” So, after swapping some words around on his application, off he went to Lancaster University to study Geophysics instead.

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Nick enjoyed this newly discovered subject very much, especially when processing seismic from an unexplored region and being able to claim the short-lived rights of being the world expert, until a geologist eventually comes along and interprets the data!

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TGS welcomed Nick to Bedford in 2000, when they were just a small team of geophysicists (sound familiar?). For the next 20 years, Nick climbed the technical ladder and became the voice in the ear (literally, he built a suite of training videos) of every new starter in the company as they eventually grew into a 60-strong team of seismic processors. By 2016 and testament to Nick’s talent and leadership, he was placed in charge of the whole team as Director of UK Processing.

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Nick has earned a reputation for leading office pranks. Chair racing was a regular favourite, but nobody will ever forget the time someone had an inflatable boat delivered to their desk whilst away on holiday. By the time they returned, they found it fully inflated and saw photos of several geophysicists sailing it around the office floor, with Nick at the helm!

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Such events are evidence of Nick being a people person. He strongly believes that people make the difference, and he certainly lives out this value for RockWave and the world. Through his church he devotes time helping those who are less fortunate and at RockWave he has been instrumental in ensuring we build the company around a vision and set of values that underpin everything we do.