Clients and Projects

RPD Assure - Online Competence Assessment System

With its vast experience in the industry RPD knew that there are a lot of disjointed systems and databases in use to undertake competence assessment recording and reporting, RPD approached me to discuss the possibility of an internet based system to fulfil their needs.

Although I had developed many database driven websites in the past, this project had additional challenges. I wanted to present a database ‘system’ rather than a website, with this in mind I decided to develop a HTA (Hypertext Application) this has many advantages over a full browser.

• The user cannot see or alter the URLs
  
  
• The user does not have a back button so cannot jump back a page whilst in the middle of a database update
  
  
• The system has been written to verify the user has invoked it via a relevant HTA file (wrapped as an exe file) for added security
  
  

• Easy to use
  Simple interface using colour-coding
  
  
• Designed for end-users
  Benefits assessors, managers, verifiers & auditors
  
  
• Use anywhere
  Any PC with internet access
  
  
• Simple to tailor
  Easy to set up, modify & update internally
  
  
• Save time and space:
  Improves effectiveness of assessors & significantly reduces paper storage<
  
  
• Secure with backup
  Controllable access to data with two levels of on and off-site backup
  
  
• Dozens of useful facilities...Monitor staff improvement, the quality of assessors, flexibility of reports, etc.
  
  

• AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)
• ASP (Active Server Pages)
• CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
• Datatables (Plug-in for the jQuery Javascript library)
• Highslide (An image, media and gallery viewer written in JavaScript
• HTA (Hypertext Application)
• HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)
• JavaScript (Scripting language)
• JQuery (JavaScript Library)
• Regex (Regular expression matching)

Delegate tracking database

I was approached by Rail Professional Development, a company involved in rail safety to provide training to their staff, this training took the form of undertaking the development of this system alongside RDP staff. This enabled the training to be focussed and at the end of the training the customer had a useful working system.

The system was written in Access 2002, and runs on a server to provide centralised access to the data throughout the organisation.

• Features multi logon levels to allow different functionality for different users.

• As part of the training the following topics were covered.
  • Table design
  • Form design
  • Basic query writing
  • Menu customisation
  • VBA programming
    • Functions and Procedures
    • Naming conventions
    • Properties, Events and Methods
    • Defensive programming
    • Control structures

Time tracking database

Following on from the Delegate tracking database system, Rail Professional Development asked me to develop a Time tracking system for them.

This system allows each project the company undertakes to be entered into a database, storing many details about the project, but most importantly the available time to completion.

The system provides facilities to store working hours per consultant against the various projects monitored, and provides extremely flexible reporting facilities. For example reports can be produced that show tasks undertaken by each consultant on each project for a particular client or across all clients, within a selected date range. The system also produces productivity reports against each consultant, this again can be produced to cover a specific period.

Key Features

• Recording of time against, tasks, projects and clients.
• Dynamic highlighting of any project overruns.
• Productivity reporting down to consultant level.
• Fast feedback reporting to clients.