The situation
SGMF’s safety zone tool calculates the zones around gas fuel containment from pressure, temperature, LNG quality and local weather. It was a pioneering tool, but it ran on manual data entry and Excel. That meant error risk, days of processing, a heavy admin load and a struggle to keep up as regulation tightened.
What we questioned first
- What’s causing the pain?A discovery workshop with SGMF’s stakeholders to find the real bottlenecks before anything was designed.
- Fix it, or rethink it?Rather than rebuilding the spreadsheet in code, we set six goals: automate the data processing, simplify the interface, validate every input, scale with regulation, return results quickly and align with current international standards.
- How do people trust the answer?Validation layers check every input against business rules, so a calculation can’t run on bad data.
What we built
A calculation tool with automated data workflows, an interface designed so complex information goes in quickly and clearly, built-in validation, and an architecture that can take new features and new rules without a redesign.
What changed
Processing time fell by 95%: calculations that once took days arrive in minutes. Data accuracy improved, adoption across SGMF’s network increased, and the tool is ready for the next round of regulation.
How we’d work on this today. Critical work running on a spreadsheet is one of the most common things we’re asked to fix. A single workflow suits an Automation Sprint; a tool that keeps evolving with regulation suits the fractional team, one release at a time. For engineering and manufacturing
