SCDF TruCerts
Designed to uphold fire safety standards in Singapore, TruCerts enables users to issue and manage verifiable fire safety certifications while improving collaboration among multiple stakeholders.
Client
Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF)
Project duration
8 months (2023)
Team members
1 UI / UX Designer (me)
1 product owner (SCDF)
2 business analysts (Accenture)
NDA Disclaimer
Due to a strict non-discloser agreement with SCDF, I am limited in the information and amount of work I can disclose.
Context
The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) is a uniformed government organisation that formulate, implement and enforce regulations on fire safety and civil defence shelter matters. This includes governing fire safety products used in buildings and premises to ensure the products conform to safety, reliability and performance standards.
Fire safety products that adhere to the stringent standards are issued certifications such as the Certificate of Conformity, Serial Label, or Declaration of Compliance. Throughout the building process, these documents are circulated among the relevant stakeholders to keep them informed about the certified safety standards.
Towards the end of the building project, the fire safety documents are then submitted during the application of a Fire Safety Certificate, or a Temporary Fire Permit.
The challenge
The value chain of fire safety documents is a complex one as it goes through multiple stakeholders, each having their own processes and constraints. As a regulator overseeing the fire safety of all building projects in Singapore, SCDF required a platform that will support and streamline the process while enhancing the authenticity and reliability of the documents.
Work allocation
Partnering with Accenture, this project is structured into 2 distinct phases.
During Phase 1, Accenture led the research process where they engaged and spoke with various stakeholders to comprehensively understand the existing processes and identify their pain points.
Building upon the insights gathered in Phase 1, the project transitions to Phase 2. Here, Accredify and Accenture collaborated with SCDF to devise and implement a solution aimed at addressing the challenges identified during the research phase.
Gathering requirements
Before the start of the 11-sprint project, I held extensive discussions with the Accenture team to learn how each user groups operated, how the stakeholders worked together, what were their unique constrains and pain points. Since I did not have the opportunity to speak to the actual users, I aimed to gather as much information as possible to understand the existing situation throughly.
Devising the solution
After disecting every process flow, examining all the business constrains from each user group and prioritising what the stakeholders needed, we charted out an optimised end to end process flow that could best address the collective needs of all stakeholders.
Additionally, given the involvement of numerous stakeholders, we established a user access control matrix in the early stages of the project to prevent costly reworks and redesign later in the development process.
Example of a challenge we faced
A challenge we encountered was the extraction and processing of information from the 3 different Certification Bodies:
The fire safety documents are issued in paper-form
There is no accurate method to obtain the information contained within the documents
Each Certification Body issues documents in different formats and different data fields
Over time, revisions to these documents led to further format alterations
Tens of thousands of these documents are already circulating within the industry
Our proposed solution
Using OCR technology, the platform will analyse and extract information from the documents uploaded by users. To improve extraction accuracy, we will have to examine all variations of the documents to identify stable keywords. These keywords will serve as reliable indicators to extract the necessary information.
Crafting prototypes
To better visualise and preempt any potential issues early in the process, I worked closely with our front-end and back-end developers to design the high fidelity prototype for the end to end solution.
Following our proposed solution using the OCR technology, we recognised that OCR accuracy is not 100% and errors could occur. Keeping this in mind, my design approach for this feature is to:
Improve accuracy rates to minimise errors
Clear identification of discrepancies between the extracted information and document content
Help users make amendments easily
Getting the sign-offs
Each week, we presented the work for the upcoming sprints to the Product Owner from SCDF for approval, ensuring that the features will be ready for development. The presentation covers business logics, process flows and prototypes. Based on the discussion, I refined the details and spoke to the impacted stakeholders.
Aligning with stakeholders
With the improvements made to the processes, we held ongoing discussions with the stakeholders to communicate the changes required of their processes. Although it was challenging to obtain consensus from multiple stakeholders, we successfully achieved this by emphasising the benefits of the change and assuring minimal disruption to their operations.
Quality testing
To ensure that the features are developed correctly to the specified requirements, I undertook the responsibility of creating comprehensive test scripts and materials before proceeding with testing the features every sprint. This involved detailing the expected functionality and behaviour for each feature based on the requirements outlined during the sprint planning phase.
Through testing, we were able to validate the functionality of the developed features and maintain the quality and reliability of the software throughout the sprint cycle.
Outcomes and learnings
The project has successfully moved on to its final stages before go-live.
My main takeaway from this project was the ability to effectively manage and align stakeholders. Achieving consensus among multiple stakeholders with different processes was no easy task. I’ve learned by effectively communicating the benefits, addressing their concerns and finding a way to refine the platform such that it works for every one, it is possible to reach a mutually agreeable solution.
Other works
Document Verifier
A verification tool for users to check the authenticity of their verifiable documents.
View work
Design System
Collection of reusable components and standards. Created for scalability and consistency.
View work
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