If you’re supposed to deliver an app for Johan Sverdrup and time is of the essence, you need a dedicated and experienced team. Thankfully, the Mobility team is indeed just that.

It’s probably no surprise but work on Johan Sverdrup is in quite a busy phase. Since they started work in March this year 7000 work permits have been completed and 800 people are working on the platform. Before the operators can get cracking at their designated task, they need their work permits to be approved.

Previously, this meant playing the waiting game and creating tons of radio noise in the control room as they had to radio in for approval. But as the saying goes the future is now – thanks to Software Innovation’s (SI) Mobility team.

“Before, they would carry the permit with them to the work site and then radio in for approval. This put a large strain on the control room communications but now they can use the Work Permit app to activate the orders by only using their pad,” Jon Jaatun, UX designer on the Mobility team, explains us.

The team, and Jaatun especially, strongly value being able to get into the field and following its users around. Eager readers may remember the Loop story about Please Inspect, where Jaatun followed an on-shore inspector around to get a first hand look of his work before starting work on the app.

With as little time as they had available for Work Permit however, they didn’t get to follow the users around as extensively – but getting the app into use as quickly as they did this time has its perks.

While Jaatun has been working with user experience on Work Permit, Parnas has had a little different focus. He’s been working on defining how the app communicates with SAP and following up the “nitty-gritty” details of the implementation with SAP developers in the team.

“Personally, I think one of our strengths lies in that we don’t just check the guiding documents – we go into the code of it all to see how it works. Getting a good overview of how these checks are performed is important to maintain the integrity of the app.”

A key component of the Mobility team is the MVP, the Minimum Viable Product. In short it’s a working version that has limited usability and functions but it’s still able to deliver value to its user.

Johan Sverdrup often hosts digitalization meetings and workshops, looking for new ways to help supporting a completely digital fieldworker, where Work Permit is one piece of the digital puzzle.

“For our operators to be entirely digital, they have to be able to take the tools and information they need with them into the field. Whether it’s technical documentation, procedures or work permits they need to have them available and working together,” Wigdel explains.

He believes that while it takes work to make this happen it’ll mean they’ll be more efficient in the end.

“ I believe that all of these smaller apps are helping shape Johan Sverdrup as the digital leader that we want to be. This means we can make a difference for our operation but it also allows others to learn from us,” Wigdel says.

While Work Permit almost didn’t see the light of day, Wigdel is very impressed by the speed that SI delivered the app.

If you’ve been working hard to create an app it’s no lie that it’s a good feeling to see it receiving a warm welcome. Within a matter of days, heaps of users were already on board. 

These days, the team are hard at work looking at the next possible features to be added to the app. Since their launch they’ve seen plenty of users and plenty of feedback, which they’ve now gone through.

“Now, we’re looking at what kind of functionality the users want and we’ve begun prioritizing what we’re adding next. Then, the next natural step is to add some of this new functionality,” Jaatun explains.