An Award-winning App Optimized For The Field Worker 

All this critical infrastructure was held up by a legacy app meant to help manage field work, data, and work order status. Unfortunately, it was performing subpar and in dire need of a modern transformation to not only resolve multiple issues but to improve its functionality.  

The core issues with the app, impacting their entire field workforce, were mainly around data unreliability, low connectivity, and inconsistency with work order status, as well as:  

• Poor online/offline data handling in an environment where mobile reception was unreliable  

• No clear understanding of what was going on in the field at any point  

• Data upload issues  

• Poor user experience, not optimized for its workers, and dirty operational environments  

• Data entry screens were difficult to find, navigate, and interact with.  

As the app served as a data entry gateway to TasWater’s Enterprise Asset Management System (EAMS), the integrity of their EAMS was becoming increasingly compromised. It was clearly time to modernize the app to enable the TasWater workforce to be more efficient. 

Using OutSystems, Svitla built a new TasWater H2GO mobile app for the iPad, completely redesigned from the ground up – optimized for the worker experience, data capture, and integrity needs of the business.  

TasWater’s staff can now work efficiently and without interruption in the field, and data accuracy has been enabled. TasWater now has full stakeholder support to move forward with their broader ‘Mobility Program’ of work, which capitalizes on their OutSystems investment and the strong relationship built among TasWater, OutSystems, and Svitla.  

We were also able to “change the culture around change”. Instead of improvement requests being seen as always ‘too hard’, we flipped the organization’s perception of change and demonstrated how easy it is to sustain change and improvement with OutSystems.  

Since implementation, Svitla has rapidly digitized a paper-based job safety process and embedded it in the H2GO app. Instead of filling out paper forms, we’ve implemented features that let the crew lead enter the results of a Job Safety Environmental Analysis, so each crew member sees pictures of any hazards with descriptions and precautions, then signs with their finger to accept them. Previously, the crew had to read long, handwritten forms without the aid of images to identify hazards.  

TasWater’s new, modernized mobile app has increased functionality, allowing for reliable data downloads and improved connectivity to match work order status.  

Shortly after launch, H2GO was awarded ‘Best Project’ at the TasICT Excellence Awards 2020. This accolade recognizes significant contributions to the ICT sector in Tasmania.