When the public works agency in Grenoble, France, embarked on digital transformation, they knew it would take time. La Metro, formally known as Grenoble-Alpes Métropole, serves roughly 500,000 people across 49 towns in eastern France. The agency employs 3,000 public agents, overseeing multiple departments, including water, sewage, public transportation, public roads, and garbage collection.
Overhauling systems for that many teams is a big endeavor. The problem was, the water department couldn’t wait: As Hugo Bonomi, team leader at the Public Water Department, said, “The need for tracking our daily operations was quite urgent.” So while larger agency-wide transformation plans were being made, Hugo’s department got permission to develop a custom public water network maintenance app right away.
With the help of Tinkso, a design and Bubble development agency that operates in France and the Netherlands, the water department had an enterprise-scale tracking solution up and running in just six weeks. Now it helps provide clean water to more than half a million people every day.
A custom enterprise app for all conditions
La Metro’s 300-person water team spends a lot of time in the field, conducting site interventions all over their jurisdiction. Tinkso designed a progressive web app to let agents log site reports from anywhere, but the first attempt wasn’t perfect: While some work sites have Wi-Fi or cellular internet service, many do not. So Tinkso faced the development challenge of building an app that would function offline whenever needed.
“We implemented offline capabilities that allow agents to create their operations even [when they’re not connected to the Internet]. Once the app is back online, it synchronizes all the operations,” Matt Mazzega, Co-CEO at Tinsko, said. Intereau, as the app is called internally, is built entirely on Bubble, and leverages Dexie to store data on an agent’s mobile device until it’s online and can sync with La Metro’s main operations database. In other words, it works online and it works offline, exactly as it needs to.
“The work Tinkso has done on understanding our process and ‘world’, and translating it into a full custom application using Bubble, has been a key success factor.”
The app also features a web interface designed to let team leaders manage and follow daily operations. Another web view is used by managers and directors to work with data collected by field agents. Bubble’s flexibility in everything from creating multiple interfaces, to control over the language used in the app has been paramount to the project’s success. “We have a specific process and our own jargon, Hugo said. “The work Tinkso has done on understanding our process and ‘world’, and translating it into a full custom application using Bubble, has been a key success factor.”
Paving the way to a regional transformation
In early 2021, La Metro embarked on a plan to adopt a global maintenance and tracking platform to centralize all data coming from public services. The project aims to bring the agency’s systems into the digital age, improving efficiency and gathering valuable data on how services are delivered. With the water department leading the way, La Metro is now stepping fully into a digital future.
“Before, our operation tracking and management processes revolved mainly around paper and pen,” Hugo said. Agents called to the field for a site intervention had to first stop by the office to pick up paper forms, fill out the forms by hand on site, and then head back to the office to submit the form. From there, an administrator entered all interventions into a spreadsheet on a weekly basis. It was an inefficient process ripe for digitization.
Two years later, La Metro’s water department is running more efficiently than ever. And they have two years worth of operational data, covering tens of thousands of logged interventions, to mine for insights. Hugo’s team is working with Tinkso on analysis features to help with forecasting and improve management reporting. “Plotting this data on maps gives us insights into geographical patterns that were invisible before, and can play a crucial role in our water management infrastructure,” he added.
Going digital with a custom Bubble solution has triggered a virtuous cycle of data-driven improvements. All in the name of delivering clean water to the residents of Grenoble-Alpes Métropole, now and for years to come.
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