Nicholas Mace founded the Nous Holdings group of companies in 1988. Nous maintains offices in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Sydney, Melbourne, Sacramento, Boston and Tampa. Offering specialised consulting services to both consumers and suppliers of utilities, the range of expertise offered includes all the technical, financial, and legal complexities involved with the provision, management and charging of Utilities and Assessment Rates.
Recognising the need for GIS as a critical tool for a utility supply expert, Nous purchased the South-African developed GIS software system, currently used in South Africa (Chief Surveyor General, Joburg Water), Namibia (City of Windhoek), USA (San Francisco Water, University of Colorado, Tampa) and Australia (Sydney Water, Fairfield Council, James Cook University), to name just a few.
As the visionary head of the group, Nicholas then expanded the GIS system to incorporate an immovable asset and related costs analysis application. This application was developed using his expertise in data analysis, utility costs, tariff composition, municipal bylaws, assessment rates, reticulation, leak detection, immovable asset management, revenue analysis and various governing regulations and legislation such as the MPRA.
Successful delivery of these systems has taken place throughout South Africa, most notably with the Department of Public Works Western Cape, Tshwane and Free State as well as with the University of the Western Cape and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology.
A natural consequence of geographical identification of immovable assets and analysis of related municipal services was the complimenting skills in revenue database development, analysis and improvement.