Case study: Municipal asset management for Sweco by Pretius

Challenge: Ensuring the operational continuity

Sweco is a leader in architecture and engineering, operating across 70 countries. In the Netherlands, they also offer specialized software solutions – among them is Obsurv, the application for managing urban infrastructure and buildings. It has been used by dozens of cities in the last few years, however, each time the implementation required a lot of work – due to the need to create custom modules tailored to the specific requirements of each municipality. The maintenance and further development of so many diverse versions of the same app – sometimes requiring a trip of a tech-savvy specialist in a particular city – started getting more time-consuming and more expensive. It became visible that this technological debt needed to be taken care of.

Solution: Streamlining the processes

Sweco decided to collaborate with Pretius due to our active participation in major conferences on software development and a team of programmers specializing in various technologies – ensuring all technical issues could be addressed in one place without needing to find additional vendors. During the live workshops, we analyzed Sweco’s needs and decided to upgrade individual modules of Obsurv to the new version of the low-code Oracle APEX technology. At the same time, we made sure to consider Sweco’s customers’ habits and, for example, avoid radical layout changes. What’s most important, we launched a DevOps team at Sweco, enabling the use of best practices like CI/CD to streamline the deployment and maintenance of the Obsurv application for every client.

01

Oracle APEX

02

Oracle DB
03

Kubernetes

04

Microsoft Azure
05

node.js

01

Oracle APEX
02

Oracle DB
03

Kubernetes
04

Microsoft Azure
05

node.js
01

Oracle APEX
02

Oracle DB
03

Kubernetes
04

Microsoft Azure
05

node.js
01

Oracle APEX
02

Oracle DB
03

Kubernetes
04

Microsoft Azure
05

node.js

Methodology

Agile

Delivery time

3+ years

Team

1 project owner, 1 scrum master, 3 software developers, 3 devops engineers, 1 software tester

Effect: New way of deploying and maintaining the system

Pretius specialists developed Ribic, a new module for sewer manhole inspection within the Obsurv system. Apart from introducing new technologies (like computer vision), we streamlined the CI/CD processes which allowed Sweco to offer Ribic in a SaaS model – with deployments and updates now taking minutes instead of months. This initial success proved that the new strategy was correct and now we’re rewriting other Obsurv modules, ensuring that the whole system will be future-proof. Currently, Obsurv is utilized by over 120 cities and the Sweco-Pretius partnership continues.

120 cities

using the Obsurv app

70 countries

where Sweco operates

A few minutes

instead of months for implementing the system

Marijn van den Berg
Team Manager of Obsurv Software at Sweco

“Thanks to our collaboration with Pretius, we’ve made it easier for our clients to utilize Obsurv. Customizing the application modules to their specific needs is now much quicker and more efficient. For us, this means shorter customer onboarding times and lower costs.”
Marijn van den Berg
Team Manager of Obsurv Software at Sweco

“Thanks to our collaboration with Pretius, we’ve made it easier for our clients to utilize Obsurv. Customizing the application modules to their specific needs is now much quicker and more efficient. For us, this means shorter customer onboarding times and lower costs.”
Marijn van den Berg
Team Manager of Obsurv Software at Sweco

“Thanks to our collaboration with Pretius, we’ve made it easier for our clients to utilize Obsurv. Customizing the application modules to their specific needs is now much quicker and more efficient. For us, this means shorter customer onboarding times and lower costs.”