E-Navigation Solutions in the maritime industry
Industry Description
OMC International is an Australian maritime engineering company that has developed award-winning e-Navigation technologies to improve transit for large commercial ships in draft restricted entrance channels. Take Off Labs is fortunate to help OMC modernize their technology stack, introduce the first mobile application in their product suite targeted to marine pilots and to architect and develop a customizable web portal for the various stakeholders in the maritime ports: pilots, schedulers, business executives.
“Take Off Labs made the development of our first mobile application easy and of high quality. The scope of work ranged from design to full-stack development and app store submission. Work was undertaken with great efficiency, skill and communication. They got it right the first time with a relatively short time to market.”
Product Description
Hundreds of ports worldwide including locations in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Europe use the OMC products to safely navigate large vessels in and out of ports, to monitor measured and forecasted environmental data information from designated locations and optimize their port capacity and planning operations. OMC approached Take Off Labs to design, architect and build a portal and a mobile app for pilots, schedulers and business executives that integrates into the OMC data sources and algorithms, but showcases them in a modern, easy to use fashion.
The Solution
Platform Functionality
The following functionality is now used on a daily basis by the OMC team in Australia and worldwide:
Web Portal
TOL built a responsive web portal that enables maritime pilots, port schedulers and business executives to monitor weather parameters around the maritime port and to manage transit plans for their ships.
Account Management
OMC Account managers define custom layouts for specific ports and audiences within the port. They configure data elements such as standard units of measurement, timezones and branding elements.
Port Usage
Pilots, schedulers and business executives can login on the portal to monitor weather data and to monitor and create new vessel transit plans. They can switch the language of choice and control regional settings.
Data Sources
These users can also login on the newly built mobile app where they can monitor four categories of weather information: wind, waves, tide and currents.
Auto Refresh
Each category has an independent refresh mechanism and interval to ensure the most up-to-date data is displayed.
Offline Use
While at sea and heading into port, connectivity can become spotty. The application supports offline and low connectivity modes.
Multi-Language Support
Both the web platform and the mobile app has multi-language support, maintaining the term dictionary in Transifex and allowing easy switching between languages.
Multiple Themes
The products can be viewed in two themes, light and dark to account for the various conditions pilots can find themselves in.