The Challenge 

Rework is a Groundwork London initiative delivered in association with the Western Riverside Waste Authority and Cory Riverside Energy and supported by the Masonic Charitable Foundation.

Each year thousands of electrical items in the workshop, including washing machines, fridges, cookers, microwaves and other household electrical goods are being processed. These appliances that would have been scrapped, recycled or sent to landfill, are returned to full working order and given a second life. They are then passed onto charity retailers and social enterprises who sell them at affordable prices. 

The team at Rework needed a solution to create a live inventory of goods that had to go through a complex checking process in stages by different team members with different duties. Given the nature of the work being done, the system needed to be fully compatible with mobile devices (iPads). 

The Solution

The application created by the GDS Team on Zoho, was based on the idea that barcode stickers applied to white goods were scanned with iPads. The barcode functioned as a unique identifier for that appliance and followed the item through the whole refurbishment process. 

The workflow was built so that employees had to follow a strict procedure aimed at minimising users' error. Custom scripts helped users accessing the right form and insert relevant information only when needed. 

Views and reports were designed to count and track items so that managers could assign and monitor jobs in real-time. 

Dashboards and reports were designed to allow monitoring performance and quantify the positive environmental impact of Rework. 

Groundwork London provides tailored employment advice and support for individuals across many programmes and initatives. Its employment team work from different offices all across London, so cross team information sharing has been critical for signing up new clients and providing individual advice and guidance on finding a new roles for the client.  

To facilitate this, the GDS teams has developed an application so that an employment advisors can upload client details which will be useful to help them with their job search. The teams are now able to track what types of jobs are being sought after by the clients in different locations across London all in a single place. This means officers can more easily identify the types of businesses in each area to develop relationships with, which can in turn be put forward to clients.  

The application also enables any live vacancies to be uploaded onto the system. Employment advisors can then review these vacancies and submit candidates for those jobs - and with the ability to track what jobs are being submitted, work out which types of jobs are more/less suitable for the clients. The teams also use the list of live vacancies to send out to our referral partners - showing them the types of opportunities they can help candidates get work in and therefore encouraging them to refer candidates for the programmes. 

Implemented between January 2020 until December 2022, IMPACT works with refugees and non-EU migrants in London and Bristol to integrate into their communtiies. The GDS team has helped IMPACT develop an applicaition to manage the programme, based on our previous work with CIRCLE. Both of these two run on the Zoho Creator platform, a CRM system system to organize your business or project, which is both lightweight but at the same time highly customizable. Utilizing Data Enriched Language for the Universal Grid Environment, or 'Deluge', an online scripting language, makes it fast and easy to write and copy code between applicaitons. You can even duplicate whole applicaitons which greatly speeds up the time it takes to develop and complete new projects. Thanks to this, the GDS team can customize complex developments in just a few weeks.

The Challenge 

For 14 years Groundwork London Green Doctors have been helping households in London save money, stay warm and improve energy efficiency at home. In partnership with London Boroughs and Housing Associations they visit residents’ homes to install free energy-saving measures, give advice on bills and provide referrals to further services to improve health and well-being. The HEART iOS app project addressed the need for an intuitive UI, offline capabilities and dynamic calculations of energy, water and financial savings for residents. 

The Solutions 

The GDS Team worked with a well-established UX-consultancy (Lion+Mason) to conduct a user research and to define a UX strategy and design for the creation of a bespoke iOS app fully integrated with the Salesforce platform. 

A team of developers worked on the creation of the iOS app, which featured: 

• Offline capabilities 
• Complex and dynamic formulas to calculate energy, water and financial savings from behavioural changes, energy and water saving measures, based on user’s selections 

• Creation of a bespoke pdf report for the resident 
• Framework for the creation of scheduled messages (text) to residents to remind them of pledges made during the visit 

For 14 years Groundwork London Green Doctors have been helping households in London save money, stay warm and improve energy efficiency at home. In partnership with London Boroughs and Housing Associations they visit residents’ homes to install free energy-saving measures, give advice on bills and provide referrals to further services to improve health and well-being. With hundreds of residents visited every month, Green Doctors need a reliable CRM to book and deliver home visits and telephone consultations. Despite the use of other CRM platforms, Green Doctors asked for a more intuitive, secure, and reliable application fully compatible with mobile devices.

A custom application was created on Salesforce to allow managing a quickly changing multi-project programme.

Key features:

• Multi-language enquiry form to gather referrals (once translations are provided this can be easily uploaded)

• Multiple projects with different questionnaires can be managed in the same application
• Intuitive and customisable online questionnaire to capture residents' views and issues

• Live reporting system to keep track of project delivery objectives and deadlines

• Complex calculations for water, energy, and monetary savings due to the instalment of measures and changes in behaviour can be added to questionnaires. Residents can receive by email a pdf report that summarises estimated savings.

Future development:

• Calendar-based booking system
• Stock management, events management and other visual improvements in the workflow

For over 15 years Groundwork London has been helping Londoners stay warm and save money on their household bills through its Green Doctors programme.