Context
TELUS’s field-services workforce — over 2,200 technicians across Western Canada — runs on a constant flow of operational information: dispatch, equipment, training, certifications, internal procedures, and the small daily details that make a regional service operation work. For years, that information lived everywhere. Bookmarks. Shared drives. Half-deprecated intranet pages. Internal Slack threads that became canonical because no one had a better place for them.
The cost wasn’t dramatic on any one day. It was a slow tax on every shift — minutes lost looking for the right form, the right contact, the right version of a procedure.
Problem
The studio’s brief from TELUS was simple to state and demanding to execute:
- One platform that field technicians, supervisors, content editors, and operations staff each see differently — without parallel admin tools.
- Strict role-based access — the right people see the right things, with audit trails for the things that matter.
- A foundation that could grow into adjacent surfaces (training, certification, content tooling) without a rebuild.
Approach
I led the architecture and delivery from blank repo to production. The platform was built on Next.js with a Postgres backend, using a single-codebase / multi-role rendering pattern: same routes, role-aware data, no separate “admin app.” Permissions are enforced server-side and surfaced in the UI as visibility rules, so editors never see what they shouldn’t and technicians never see fields they can’t act on.
Design choices that earned their keep:
- Role-aware data, not role-aware apps. One application; access is enforced at the data layer. New roles are configuration, not new code.
- Audit logging as a first-class citizen. Sensitive actions emit structured events; reviewers have a real trail when one is needed.
- Density without overwhelm. Field staff use the platform on phones, in vehicles, between jobs. The interface is built for thumbs and dim screens, not for screenshots.
- Built to grow. The architecture made room for the LMS / certification system that became a separate engagement — see Project Summit.
Technician home view — daily ops, references, and certifications in one place.
What you actually see
What lands on a technician’s screen is intentionally calm. Today’s relevant procedures, contacts, and equipment notes — not every possible feature behind every possible click. Supervisors see the same routes with more context: team status, audit trails, the operational overlays that field staff don’t need. Content editors see drafts and publishing controls; operations staff see the global view. Same URLs, different depth — and a small reminder that the boring word “RBAC” is doing a lot of unglamorous work in the background.
Operations / supervisor view — same routes, deeper context.
Outcome
The platform launched in April 2026 and replaced the previous patchwork outright. Adoption was immediate:
- 2,500+ active users across the technician workforce, supervisors, content editors, and operations.
- Hundreds of daily actives — the platform is part of the working day, not an occasional reference.
- A single source of truth for procedures, certifications, contacts, and operational data — which was the original brief.
What’s next
TechCentral is the foundation; the work continues. Project Summit — TELUS’s full overhaul of training, mentorship, and certification — runs on top of this platform and is in active development for a 2027 launch. TC Tools, an AI-assisted toolkit for content creators inside TechCentral, is shipping in stages.
For details on the architecture, role model, or what running a production platform of this size actually looks like — book a call.