Robert Barbour, group data and insights director, Travis Perkins PLC

Describe your career to date

After completing my BSc Hons in Computer Science and an MSc in Computational Methods & Imaging in Medicine, I came to a crossroads between embarking on an industry-sponsored PhD in Medical Imaging & Poisson statistics or moving into industry.

After careful consideration, I chose a consulting career, joining Accenture as a graduate. I spent 13 fantastic progressive career years there, working globally on large-scale transformation projects in Asia, Europe, the UK, and Africa in government, comms and high tech, and banking sectors. Throughout this, my primary discipline and expertise was data engineering/analytics.

Due to the large-scale programmes I worked on, I obtained experience across all parts of the delivery lifecycle, and worked closely with business change teams. As a result, I was recognised as a subject matter expert in my field, and was asked to conduct quality assurance reviews on data-led programmes across the EMEA region. As I progressed into senior management, I also gained fantastic experience in commercial, sales, and senior stakeholder management.

Overall, this broad experience gave me a unique foundation to move from consulting into industry and this was recognised by Travis Perkins PLC, the UK’s largest distributor of building materials, where I initially was recruited as head of data, before rising to data director in 2019. In 2020, I became group data and insights director, covering all data aspects: data privacy, data governance, data & analytics engineering, and data science.

The £4.6bn group has 20,000 colleagues and 1,400 branches, so the data and digital opportunity here is huge. I advocate using data for good and creating a data conscience in our organisation through education, cultural change and innovation. In 2021, I initiated the launch of our Data Academy, and a number of data apprenticeship levels at scale. These are the first of their kind in merchanting, and are really important in improving colleagues’ data and analytical skills and understanding, and a key enabler for modernising construction and improving data literacy across the group.

I am a BCS Fellow and a passionate sponsor/ally for the Women in Data network at Travis Perkins. I am frequently invited to speak about our achievements, most recently at the 2022 Open Data Institute Data Summit, where I spoke on a panel about using data to combat climate change.