For Herman Louie, photography has never been limited to the finished image. Its real appeal lies in understanding everything required to capture it: light, timing, focus, aperture and the careful technical adjustments that bring a scene into clarity.
That curiosity began early. Growing up in Burnaby, British Columbia, Herman became interested in photography while still in high school. As one of the main photographers for his school’s yearbook committee, he learned to work with film, develop images and think about how photography and layout come together in print.
For a time, he considered pursuing photography and magazine design as a career. Two weeks of work experience in a darkroom changed that plan, but not the way he approached the world.
The instinct remained: look closely, understand how the pieces work and keep refining the process until everything comes into focus.
“It’s almost not just the photography. It’s developing that depth of knowledge,” Herman explains. “It’s the process of learning, not just the end result.”
That philosophy ultimately led Herman toward a career that brought together his interests in art and technology.
Drafting offered the balance he was looking for. It required technical accuracy but also demanded the ability to visualize how individual components fit together. After completing BCIT’s Civil Drafting Program, Herman began working in CADD and engineering design. His early experience included helping develop a drawing archive and retrieval system, implementing CADD and IT standards, and contributing to the design of Vancouver International Airport’s third runway.
In 1991, Herman joined the City of Burnaby at just 21 years old. He would remain there for nearly 35 years.
Herman began his municipal career in the field, conducting surveys and assembling information for engineers. From there, he moved into drafting base plans, design work, AutoCAD, geographic information systems and, eventually, the development of applications and digital workflows for engineering and GIS teams. From 2023 to 2024, he served as Acting Manager of GIS and Engineering Systems.
Rather than entering the industry with expertise in only one discipline, Herman learned how information moved through the entire organization. He saw where it originated, how it was interpreted and how it could be transformed into something useful.
“I didn’t start as just a GIS person or a technology person,” Herman explains. “I would go out and survey. I started listening to engineers by drafting the base plans, so I would assemble all this information for the engineers. Then they said, ‘You’ve got some knowledge. Why don’t you start designing?’”
That end-to-end understanding became one of his greatest strengths. As Herman puts it, his career took him “from the ditch digger to the designer.”
One of the clearest examples of Herman’s approach was the City of Burnaby’s response process for BC 1 Call excavation requests.
As Burnaby grew, the volume of requests for underground infrastructure information increased dramatically. Large information packages containing as-built drawings, service-line information, utility records and geospatial files could take hours or even days to assemble manually. By 2017, turnaround times had grown to between one and two weeks.
Herman and the GIS team recognized that the process was no longer sustainable. They reconsidered how FME could be used—not simply as an overnight data-conversion tool, but as an automation and integration platform connecting GIS, asset-management systems and operational workflows.
The resulting workflow could interpret an incoming request, collect the required information from multiple systems, assemble the files and automatically generate a response with download links. A process that previously required extensive manual effort could now be completed in minutes, without staff intervention.
“Through FME, we’re able to process a large package in approximately three minutes and one minute for a smaller package,” Herman explained when the project was profiled. “At three minutes per ticket, we can handle 150,000 calls through one FME engine, and we can now process tickets 24/7—anytime, anywhere.”
The automation initiative delivered an estimated $500,000 in operational savings and avoided costs. It also reduced the potential for manual errors, improved response consistency and allowed employees to redirect their time toward higher-value public services.
The work became a leading example of municipal automation and contributed to broader recognition for Burnaby’s innovation. In 2022, the initiative received MISA BC’s Spirit of Innovation Award. In 2023, the City of Burnaby Engineering Department was recognized through FortisBC’s Efficiency in Action Awards for its leadership in community safety and its approach to BC 1 Call.
Technology can make municipal and engineering work faster, more consistent and more accessible. However, Herman believes successful digital transformation begins by understanding how people actually work.
“Understanding how the human content is still in the chain and why you still need it” is essential, he says.
Organizations cannot always replace established systems overnight. A process may begin with a digital form in the field but still require a PDF, a signature or another step performed by a separate department. The goal is not to force change for its own sake. It is to develop a practical path from the current workflow to a more connected and efficient future.
This is where Herman’s FME and integration expertise becomes particularly valuable. His work connects GIS platforms, databases, APIs, asset-management tools and cloud systems through scalable data pipelines and automated workflows. Using FME Form and FME Flow, he can help information move reliably between systems while applying the business rules, validation and governance each organization requires.
But Herman does not begin with the technology. He begins by understanding where information originates, who needs it and what operational decisions depend on it.
“Sometimes, I would have to redesign a new data flow because of taking information for our fire department,” Herman says. “How do I [process & parse] this [data] so I can get it to another agency? Whether it was paperwork or computers, or spatial or business workflows, it would be the same for any client.”
This perspective is particularly important for municipalities, where infrastructure information and operational knowledge may stretch across generations.
As experienced employees retire, organizations risk losing the institutional knowledge they have accumulated over decades. Herman describes it as knowledge that is sometimes acquired “via osmosis”—the information employees absorb through years of working beside experienced colleagues.
“That retirement-age gap is leaving with what I would call internal knowledge, or what they call tribal knowledge,” Herman explains. “Some of that is only obtained via osmosis. You would go to an old engineer and say, ‘Where is this file?’ and he would know exactly where in the vault it was.”
An engineer may know where a critical file is stored, why a certain standard was adopted or how an unusual workflow developed. That understanding may never have been formally documented, yet it can be essential to daily operations.
At the same time, employees are less likely to remain with one organization for 30 or 40 years. Municipalities must therefore find better ways to capture, structure and transfer knowledge.
“You don’t have many staff who stay there for 30 or 40 years,” Herman says. “Staff turnover is quite high in the industry these days, and that retraining and building that tribal knowledge is hard. Having technology to resolve some of those gaps speeds up the staff training process.”
For Herman, digital transformation is therefore about more than moving paper into a database. It is about preserving organizational intelligence, making information easier to find and giving the next generation of employees the context they need to make informed decisions.
Herman’s relationship with SolidCAD began well before he joined the company. During his career with the City of Burnaby, he worked with SolidCAD through software purchases, presentations and conversations with its technical specialists. Over time, he came to recognize the depth of expertise SolidCAD brought to municipal technology, civil infrastructure and digital workflow challenges.
“I’ve known SolidCAD for many, many years,” he says. “When I worked at the City of Burnaby, we purchased a lot of AutoCAD software, and I met a lot of your staff through the presentations you provided. Your internal staff definitely have lots of expertise in the industry domain.”
When Herman took early retirement, he expected to slow down. He completed home projects, painted walls, cut the lawn and organized 34 years of family photographs, videos and negatives—digitizing, geotagging and cataloguing them with his characteristic attention to detail. But retirement did not hold his attention for long.
“I kind of got tired of early retirement, painting the walls and cutting the lawn,” he recalls. “My wife said, ‘You’re young enough, and you really enjoy what you do. So why don’t you go and try something different?’”
Herman received considerable interest from employers after leaving the City of Burnaby. He estimates that he participated in nearly ten interviews, but none felt like the right fit. SolidCAD was different. The relationships he had built with the team—and the impact he had seen SolidCAD make at Burnaby—gave him confidence in the opportunity. SolidCAD already understood his experience and the perspective he could bring to its clients. After some persistent outreach at just the right moment, Herman joined SolidCAD as a Solutions Architect in January 2026.
Today, Herman helps SolidCAD clients examine how information is created, used, transferred and preserved. His experience allows him to speak the language of field teams, designers, engineers, GIS professionals, technology leaders and municipal decision-makers.
He understands that every organization is at a different stage of digital maturity. Some are ready for advanced FME automation and enterprise integration. Others first need to replace a manual field form, connect disconnected information or capture knowledge before an experienced employee retires.
The right solution begins with seeing the complete picture.
Herman’s approach still resembles the photographer he once considered becoming. He studies the conditions, understands the mechanics and makes careful adjustments. He is less interested in technology for its own sake than in its ability to solve a real operational problem.
For SolidCAD clients, that perspective helps turn disconnected data and repetitive processes into reliable, scalable workflows—reducing costs, improving accuracy, accelerating service delivery and preserving the knowledge organizations depend on.
There are still important moments to capture, valuable knowledge to preserve and better processes waiting to be uncovered.
And Herman Louie is not finished bringing them into focus.
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