Embedded Across Three Fronts

From day one, Halcrow operated as a true extension of Acciona’s own team — with direct access to Acciona’s infrastructure, a shared development environment, and the web platform itself hosted on Acciona’s own systems from the very start. This meant the team could move at the same pace as the project itself.

Tunnel conditions evolve quickly, and so did the platform alongside them. When field crews encountered a new excavation method requiring a different data-entry form, the embedded team built and shipped it within a two-week sprint — fast, responsive, and fully aligned with how the project was actually progressing on the ground.

The seven-year partnership was built around a deliberate, progressive handover: Halcrow built and supported the platform in its early years, Acciona’s own team grew increasingly confident making changes themselves, full infrastructure ownership transferred smoothly in 2024, and Halcrow has remained on hand in an advisory capacity ever since.

Build Structure: An Adaptive Platform, Built to Grow With the Project

Phase 1: Foundation
We built on the strong foundation of Acciona’s proven approach, adapting it specifically for Western Harbour: new geological zone classifications, refined data fields for different rock types, and an improved filtering system for the web platform.

Requirements Emerge, They Don’t Get Specified Upfront
Tunnel geology reveals what you need a few metres at a time. We built a configurable platform from the outset — dropdown menus and data fields could expand the moment a new geological zone was discovered, with no need to redeploy the app.

Phase 2: Field Deployment
iPads went out to field crews and mapping began at full scale — eventually capturing more than 15,000 mapping events across the full 7 kilometres. Early field feedback led to a refinement within weeks: two distinct mapping modes, a quick one for routine entries and a detailed one for anomalies, cutting routine mapping time from 8 minutes to 2 and quickly becoming a tool crews valued for their own risk assessment.

Phase 3: Geo-Referencing Integration
As the project matured, Acciona’s client asked for geo-referenced visual maps, letting engineers click any point along the tunnel and instantly see its full geological history.

Shared Success Drives Shared Priorities
Our commercial model tied a portion of our fees directly to system usability and compliance reporting outcomes, which meant our priorities were naturally aligned with Acciona’s. We delivered the geo-referencing integration in six weeks because it mattered directly to the project’s success.

Phase 4: Monthly Reporting Automation
We transformed monthly compliance reporting from a multi-hour manual process into a streamlined one: select the time period, select the tunnel drive, click generate. Report time dropped to under 10 minutes, with every report following a clean, consistent structure.

Phase 5: Infrastructure Migration
By 2024, Acciona’s own IT team had built deep familiarity with the platform through years of close collaboration. The infrastructure migration to full Acciona ownership was completed smoothly in just four weeks with zero downtime — a true reflection of how well-prepared the handover was.

Capability Transfer Is the Real Deliverable
Our goal from day one was for Acciona to run this platform independently. We built toward that outcome progressively over five years, so that by the time of the formal handover, it was simply a matter of making official what Acciona’s team could already do.