Out with the old, in with the new

Friday, 21 June 2024
Stichting IMN is refreshing its IT infrastructure. To do this, it has entered into a collaborative venture with a software developer from Alkmaar, Webuildapps. This company created a new version of the electronic reporting system for incident management ("EMI"), the system that coordinates job message traffic for vehicle recovery companies. In 2023, the company also developed a new version of the electronic incident report receiving station ("OEM"). This is the facility that allows Rijkswaterstaat and other agencies that report such incidents to communicate them electronically to Stichting IMN's national response centre, the LCM. Both systems are now in operation. Webuildapps is currently working on an entirely new version of the incident management response time ("AIM")system.

Julian de Lange of Webuildapps visiting Nathalie Koppen of Bergnet ...

The EMI reporting system was built in 2014 and, after a year's testing, became operational in 2016. The introduction of the system meant the end for a large proportion of the telephone traffic between the LCM and the IM recovery operators. The recovery operator receives notification of the job from the EMI system, which he then uses to send a response to the LCM to notify it of the situation at the incident site. The OEM receiving station followed in 2019, acting as the communications hub for Rijkswaterstaat and the LCM. Both systems are built by Hilversum IT business Xebia. After handover, administration of the system passed to Xebia's facility in Gurgaon (India).

The EMI was primarily built to be used with mobile telephones. The new version of the system was required due to changes in the basic software that Apple (iOS) and Google (Android) use to communicate with the system. Having drawn up a list of potential candidates in the search for a Dutch supplier, Stichting IMN selected Webuildapps of Alkmaar. The company was able to create new versions of both the EMI and the OEM in a short space of time. Webuildapps gathered information at regular intervals, which helped it to make large-scale improvements and other tweaks to the new version. The main such improvement was a better link between the EMI and the IM recovery operators' back-office system, so that the companies in question can immediately receive and process job notifications in their own systems. The new version was also quicker and less sensitive to bugs and problems.

... and Daan Witjes of Van Eijck Mobility

This year, Stichting IMN has asked Webuildapps to overhaul the AIM incident management response time system, too. The AIM system logs response times for all recoveries. This means that it is the cornerstone of Stichting IMN's quality policy. An important component of the AIM is the feature called "Bergerview". This is a feature which shows the vehicles of all active recovery operators, live, on a map. The Bergerview feature also stores historic data on how incidents were dealt with. The AIM system was developed and built by Geodan in 2006 and, over the next few years, adjusted and developed on numerous occasions by the same company. A complete remodelling is necessary because some of the system's basic components have become obsolete.