Human-centred Design.
Improving safety management for local communities.
The bluebox team quickly illustrated a development and process expertise that we felt comfortable with and accepted the challenge of turning around delivery within weeks of being commissioned.
Jason Whitall
Director, ONE Creative Environments
Introducing Engage.
ONE Engage is a new concept in residential building management.
Designed to be used and updated by residents, duty holders and emergency services. The application has been developed to facilitate stakeholders to adhere to The Building Safety Act 2021 and The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022.
The application has enabled ONE Creative to augment their architecture and design business model with added value and continue their heritage of providing digital solutions to industry challenges.
Breaking the frame.
New building regulations meant that the architecture and design industry needed to meet the challenge of improved safety and reporting head on. As thought leaders in the industry, the management team embarked on an internal software project to develop an application to support the regulations.
No off-the-shelf options were available and an initial mix of internal and external resource utilised to progress the project. However, a number of factors meant the project was not meeting the required trajectory targets, meaning the ONE management team reached out to 3rd party developers in a bid to increase velocity of the project.
Initial discussions between our teams were positive and we demonstrated an agile, appropriate development process and made initial recommendations to ensure a viable plan for project success. Conversations were fruitful and we agreed to proceed with the development of the application.
A helping hand.
A limited development window drove the need to act quickly to pull together the various strands of knowledge, design, and existing development into a digestible, priority-based plan.
Stakeholders collaborated to share knowledge, highlight challenges and brainstorm ideas whilst we ensured activity was relevant not to waste time on requirements that were superfluous to an MVP development.
Following this concentrated period of activity all parties were satisfied that technical, user and commercial considerations and challenges were suitably planned for and a development schedule agreed.
Open minds.
Having developed a specification and expectations around the application functionality and delivery we embarked on the development process over a concentrated period.
Our normal development and management processes needed to be adapted to ensure that the deadlines met. Feature planning had to be robust to ensure individual efforts were not duplicated and to avoid misunderstandings in a challenging environment.
A number of mechanisms were introduced including collaborative design checking and daily ‘huddles’ for all stakeholders as a ‘show and tell’ exercise and to quickly highlight any development challenges and discuss collaborative solutions.
As development continued, priorities were continually measured, communicated and re-assigned as appropriate. Balancing a great user experience and a firm delivery date were the priorities and communication across the teams needed to be transparent and easy-to-understand.
Over a 12 week period we successfully delivered a custom application that is modern, easy to use and technically robust and secure that allowed the team to successfully showcase to 3rd parties at trade shows and online.
Realising our initial vision of Engage has been a great experience. The reception within the industry has been positive. We're looking forward to continued collaboration and development to ensure we deliver on our strategic goals. The development teams' expertise and ability to surmount challenges has allowed us to concentrate on operational and commercial aspirations of the project.
Jason Whittall
Director, ONE Creative Environments
Microsoft technologies used by ONE Engage.
The application utilises several Microsoft technologies and we continue to research and develop enhancements utilising the Microsoft stack.
Cloud Based Infrastructure
We utilise the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform to create, deploy, and manage our customers' infrastructure in a more efficient and cost-effective way.
On Demand Data
Azure SQL can easily scale up or down on demand enabling us to efficiently manage customers' workload and application performance.
Automated Failover
Built in disaster recovery features automatically replicate data to secondary geographical regions in the event of an outage to help maintain application availability.
Proactive Security
We implement automated cloud-native security solutions to detect and respond to potential threats to our customers' applications.
AI Technology
By utilising Azure AI technologies we can provide our customers with advanced capabilities for machine learning, cognitive services, and natural language processing to enhance automation and decision-making processes.
Data Protection
Our customers' critical data and workloads are protected through continual cloud based monitoring, backup and restoration.
Hello world.
ONE Engage has been incredibly well received within the industry and is held up as a great example of how to embrace new legislation and provide a 21st Century approach to building and tenant safety.
The application forms part of ‘the golden thread’ approach to information held on building safety. Ensuring accurate, consistent data and providing a key link in a chain of an eco-system of transparent, secure data.
Residents have a clear way of reporting issues live and can access a real-time dashboard that enables the tracking of issues and give them a voice.
We are proud of the part we have played to assist ONE Creative to deliver a true quality of life enhancement for residents and building management and look forward to working together to further enhance ONE Engage and for the application to be the industry leader in building management safety.
More information: https://one-engage.io/
Thinking outside with Jason Whittall.
Director, ONE Creative Environments.
What surprised you?
I have experience of previous software projects managed in more traditional process models.
Working more collaboratively opened my eyes to a more efficient way of developing custom software.
Focusing on users rather than functionality, helped us understand and lead requirements in a more pro-active way.
What was fun?
Well, it was a little stressful at the time but having to achieve a hard deadline certainly kept us all honest and focused!
There was some crunch development but we hit the deadline and it was a great feeling demonstrating Engage to potential customers and receiving great feedback for our hard work.
What's next?
We’ve got some ambitious plans for Engage and have a number of enhancements lined up for the application.
Once the application is out there, we're looking forward to working with our stakeholders to ensure their customers have a great experience with the software. Most of all, we're looking forward to improving the well-being and safety measures in local communities.
Client Success.
We've worked with numerous partners, delivering scalable application development, technical insight and recommendations. We're confident we have previous experience that will add value to any challenge we're presented with.
We're proud to be a Certified Microsoft Partner.
This recognises customer excellence and Microsoft product expertise and puts us amongst the top 5% of Microsoft Partners worldwide.
Drop us a line.
We love hearing from like minds looking to challenge standard.
You can pick our brains on any number of related subjects from Proof-of-Concept and development of applications to infrastructure and security we'll happily discuss how we can help.
Email us:
hello@wearebluebox.com
Call us:
01684 362778
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