DNO Digital

Having provided consultancy support to refine and improve the Defence Nuclear Organisation’s (DNO) requirements and programme management approach, SVGC identified the need for digital innovation to upgrade processes.

The system already in place was robust, but didn’t align with evolving business needs. To solve this, SVGC designed and developed a bespoke integrated capability tool which enabled staff to engage, understand and work with the requirements set and key performance information. The solution enabled insight into project contributions that would stand up to scrutiny for formal approval in this highly regulated environment.

The Challenge

DNO required a change. They needed something that was secure enough for this environment but was also agile and easy to use. Members of staff with no level of requirements engineering knowledge needed to be able to understand and use the system with ease to complete tasks in a timely manner, but more importantly clearly demonstrate traceability and drive focus on the absolute requirements.

Why SVGC?

SVGC were selected by DNO because of our recognised requirements engineering expertise, as well as our experience of delivering many best practice methodologies enabled by supporting digital toolsets to the MOD in the past.

SVGC was originally founded 24 years ago to provide support to the Ministry of Defence and associated industry. Our blended team of business, military and security experts provided high-quality, rapid and cost-effective solutions. Partnered with our technology engineering experience, we were perfectly placed to help DNO progress.
Our services are now increasingly in demand from other government departments, commercial organisations and the nuclear sector.

The Method

Our digital engineers set to work to design and, working with one of our software development partners, Evri Insight, build our original web browser-based toolset: ICE (Integrated Capability Environment). This innovative technology was designed to provide more collaboration within the team and trace important documentation such as: user needs; system requirements; handling statements of requirements and linked assumptions.

All of the above can be easily located, edited and stored using ICE by any technical level user. Indeed, the solution enables other applications to be integrated into the ICE environment. But one key feature, that arguably is the most ‘life changing’ for the DNO team, is the capacity to visually demonstrate activity (statements of work) and link directly to customer requirements. The ICE system allows users to easily collate this information into diagrams and can even drill down to the specific percentage of contributions being made to deliver the customer requirements. Before ICE, this was not possible.

The ability to easily trace how the contributions of system designs meet users’ needs has enabled DNO to confidently demonstrate traceability for public scrutiny. New users were able to be on-boarded in about half a day to become confident in their use of the toolset.

Once ICE was tested and ready to launch to the DNO team, SVGC provided full training and support to ensure this vital part of the project ran smoothly for all and met the clients’ needs.