Horizon Power

Challenge

Horizon Power is evolving into a digital utility. Their goal is to better connect their regional works through a digital strategy. Western Australia is, however, a very big state with plenty of empty territory. It should come as no surprise that there are areas without a viable phone connection, let alone the internet. Many processes that occur within companies that venture regionally still rely on pen and paper, as WA has more data dark spots than first perceived. This was true for our client, Horizon Power—specifically with their team of inspectors.

Approach and Inputs

To gain the necessary insights, discover pain points and validate our theories on this matter, our team stepped into the shoes of a Horizon Power crew member. We shadowed an electrical compliance inspector around Karratha as they performed their routine inspections. The goal of this contextual field study was to get a rich understanding of their processes and external elements that have an impact on them, such as weather, equipment and working conditions.

From there, we were able to co-design a solution that addressed the determined pain points alongside key personnel and stakeholders within Horizon Power. We worked on a prototype which was tested with a group of inspectors and then presented to the industry regulator for approval. By getting in the head of our end users, we were able to learn how they work and how we could best assist them to smooth out the process.

We developed and delivered a progressive web application which was able to work on in-field tablets, allowing staff to use the system wherever they went—replacing the old pen and paper process. The app supports offline synchronisation, field image attachments, capturing digital signatures and on-ground field notes, while also directly integrating with their back-end platform.

The product was delivered on their existing Azure infrastructure—utilising Docker container technology for the first time at Horizon. Using Docker containers gives Horizon the portability to move to new hosting platforms quickly and with no change to how the solution operates.