The team at Teesside have used their own system for wildlife logging for several years, developed by an ex member of staff over time to do pretty much all the things they needed it to. Once the staff member moved on and as time passed, it started to malfunction and with no longer any ability to update or maintain it, the team were forced to look around for an alternative.

Our system was recommended by their wildlife management auditors and they contacted us to arrange an onsite meeting so we could review the existing system and assess how our new system could be used in its place. After a very productive and entertaining meeting with the wildlife team, we agreed that Abbeytek would do an initial set of changes to do to the logging app which would make the transition easier for the logging team and would also mirror some of the functions provided by the old system that ours did not.

  • Their system assigned each logging session an ID which was shared with other teams on the airfield. This was added to the App and shown on the screen during each session.
  • The airfield was presented in a non N/S orientation. Various enhancements were done to the mapping on the system to allow much more flexibility in map orientations.
  • The old app allowed a user to indicate they were entering and leaving the runway and an indicator shown when on the runway. Our events system was used to reproduce this behaviour and custom indicators added to the App that could be turned on and off using events.
  • It was noted that recording an observation of nil birds seen for several areas at once was cumbersome as you have to enter them one at once. A new form was added to allow nil birds seen to be entered for several areas on the map at once just by quickly tapping on each of the areas.

Teesside signed up shortly afterwards and we added the new features to our logging app over the next couple of weeks. Our app, of course, is in use by many of our customers so all the enhancements we added became available to them as they were added.

After a period of training, the team moved to the new system and it is now in full use.