Developing Apps and Flow
About the client
Dalcour Maclaren are a private sector commercial surveying company who act exclusively for the utility and infrastructure sector. They are a mid-sized organization who are geographically distributed across the UK and Dalcour Maclaren’s business is largely based on supporting the delivery of property management, land access and associated professional services to the UK’s national utility companies.
The challenge
They previously provided their services to utility companies using a bespoke scheme management system. This system had limitations which did not align with the aspirations of the company. Issues included misalignment with their long term IT strategy, lack of automation resulting in the need for manual intervention, limited support for their clients’ access to data/reports and lack of flexibility/extensibility to support future requirements.
The solution
Triad led and delivered a replacement system for Dalcour Maclaren using a combined team of Triad and Dalcour Maclaren staff. We worked closely with the client’s infrastructure provider to ensure a smooth and seamless transition into live for the new system.
The Microsoft based solution has a modern browser based UI with a high-tuned UX. The complex business functionality was delivered through a bespoke .Net service-based application. Business and mapping data was held in a SQL Server database with documents held in Office 365 SharePoint. SharePoint was chosen in this case over SQL blob storage because of their document management requirements and the requirement for the client extranet and intranet aspects of the system being supported by Office 365 and SharePoint Online.
The backlog was managed using Visual Studio Online, with Skype for Business used for video calls.
Dalcour Maclaren were also keen to start using Flow so Triad worked with their staff to mentor and upskill them in the use of Flow.
The result
The first flows, which are now used daily included:
- A flow to help manage Geomatics requests, it sends a notification email if Dalcour Maclaren need to purchase OS background mapping in advance of the request being started.
- A flow to help manage land referencing and mobile mapping requests, includes sending status updates and results.
- A flow to help remind surveyors of an upcoming site visit they need to attend, sends an email 24 hours prior to the date of the site visit.
Our approach included the standard Scrum ceremonies, with the daily stand-up and sprint release show and tells being conducted by video conferencing to include a wider audience given the mixed location working arrangement for the joint team.
The service went live successfully and is viewed as being a very successful IT project by Dalcour Maclaren and has achieved very positive user feedback. The system is currently in its post go live continuous improvement phase, again delivered by a joint team of Triad and Dalcour Maclaren staff.
