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Energy company: field operations mobile on intermittent connectivity

Problem

Field crews relied on paper and radios for critical procedures. A “modern mobile app” pilot failed when crews lost signal in valleys and near metal structures—people reverted to paper within a week.

Constraints

Safety-critical checklists, lockout/tagout traceability, and winter gloves. Devices were consumer-grade because procurement cycles were slow. Regulators cared about evidence, not animations.

Approach

We designed workflows to be locally authoritative while offline, with explicit conflict resolution when connectivity returned—never silent merges. Photos and signatures were content-addressed to reduce upload failures and support partial sync.

Rollout

Crew-by-crew adoption with ride-alongs. Supervisors received a simple web console for exceptions. Training emphasized “red states” the app could enter and how to escalate safely when the device disagreed with paper backup.

Risks mitigated

• False confidence: clear UI for “not synced” vs “synced and verified”
• Device loss: remote wipe policies and minimal sensitive caching
• Procedure drift: versioned checklists with forced read acknowledgment

Outcomes (illustrative)

Procedure completion time improved in pilots without increasing safety incidents reported through the existing channel. Support calls clustered around predictable sync edge cases—then dropped as playbooks matured.

Lessons

Field software is industrial design, not web design. Thumb reach and glare matter more than component libraries.