Instant access to facility manuals, engineering schematics, and safety policies is a basic requirement for offshore oil and gas production in the North Sea, not a convenience. Shell Oil needed to replace a fragmented, folder-based retrieval process across its offshore assets and onshore support hubs with something field teams could actually use under pressure.
Working alongside Xerox Corporation, Net Solutions took an early-stage proof of concept and turned it into a production-ready, mobile-optimized spatial web platform in 30 days. The platform is built around an interactive, coordinate-mapped interface with multi-level zoom and real-time asset filtering, giving Shell employees direct graphical access to facility sketches, technical manuals, and policy documents. The rollout cut document retrieval time and lifted ease-of-access ratings across North Sea operational teams.
Why folder hierarchies were no longer good enough for offshore teams working against the clock.
Navigating offshore platforms and subsea infrastructure in the North Sea demands precision measured in seconds, not minutes. Engineers, safety inspectors, and maintenance technicians constantly need to cross-reference physical asset schematics against operating procedures. Before this project, that process was working against them in several ways.
Technical documentation, facility sketches, and compliance manuals sat scattered across disparate file structures. Workers had to dig through complex folder hierarchies just to find the right version of the right document.
Field technicians using tablets on-site ran into poor navigation, slow load times, and no way to see how a document related to the physical rig or pipeline network in front of them.
Every delay in pulling up a policy or maintenance document added to pre-task prep time, which fed directly into daily field inefficiency and operational risk.
Xerox needed an engineering partner able to take a preliminary UI proof of concept and turn it into a fully functioning, secure, cross-device web application within a single month.
Net Solutions partnered with Xerox’s digital management team on a rapid-development sprint, treating the mandate as a spatial data visualization and mobile performance problem first, and a document management problem second. Our engineering team separated the front-end map rendering engine from the heavy document payloads it needed to display, then built on responsive web standards to keep load times low across mobile and tablet browsers, without giving up visual fidelity or zoom responsiveness.
What we actually built, in three parts.
We converted Xerox’s initial design concepts and UI proof of concept into a modular, production-ready architecture built for high-concurrency enterprise use. Working on an accelerated delivery pipeline, we hit every one of Shell’s deployment milestones inside the 30-day window and delivered a scalable platform without accumulating technical debt.
We replaced nested directory trees with an interactive, coordinate-mapped geographical view of North Sea offshore rigs, subsea pipelines, and onshore support facilities. Multi-level zoom lets field teams move from a macro regional map down to granular, micro-level facility sketches and equipment schematics, so complex site layouts become scannable at a glance instead of a search exercise.
We built a real-time asset-filtering engine so workers can toggle map views between operational domains, natural gas assets versus crude oil pipelines for example, or isolate safety policies, engineering schematics, and equipment manuals on demand. We then optimized the platform for touch interaction on both iOS and Android tablets, giving field teams native-like fluidity without the overhead of maintaining separate native codebases.
What changed for Shell’s North Sea teams once the platform went live.
Field engineers and maintenance crews now locate and open facility manuals, schematics, and policy records on site significantly faster than before.
Operational personnel across Shell’s North Sea sites reported markedly improved ease of access to facility and asset documents.
A fully functional, enterprise-grade web application went from proof of concept to production in a strict one-month turnaround.
Field personnel get reliable, browser-based access across mixed tablet fleets, with no native app store updates or device-specific builds required.
What made this turnaround possible, and why it holds up beyond this project:
Shell Oil partnered with Xerox and Net Solutions to deploy a mobile-optimized, map-based documentation platform. Replacing complex folder hierarchies with an interactive coordinate-mapped interface lets offshore workers select physical assets visually to open schematics and manuals instantly, streamlining field operations.
A spatial map-based interface anchors technical documents directly to visual geographical coordinates and facility sketches. This removes the need for deep directory traversals, supports multi-level zoom from regional maps down to micro-level equipment, and enables real-time asset filtering, such as oil versus natural gas infrastructure, resulting in higher ease of access and lower operational risk.
Rapid PoC conversion means refactoring front-end prototypes into clean, modular codebases, decoupling visual data rendering from heavy backend data payloads, and setting up an accelerated CI/CD deployment pipeline. Prioritizing high-impact user flows makes enterprise deployment possible without creating technical debt.
Multi-level zoom mapping relies on layered vector canvas rendering and spatial coordinate grids. As users zoom from macro regional views, such as a geographic oil field, down to micro levels, such as a specific valve or rig platform, the web engine dynamically loads granular asset data and schematics without overwhelming client memory.
If your teams are digging through nested file folders, wrestling with slow tablet interfaces on-site, or waiting months to digitize technical schematics, there is usually an engineering answer. Tell us what the bottleneck looks like, and we will tell you how we would approach it.
Adobe Commerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, AWS, Akeneo, Contentful and Klaviyo.
Results matter. Discover how our customized solutions have delivered measurable business outcomes for clients across various industries. Each case study highlights the strategic impact of our work, turning challenges into opportunities for growth.
Ask Sol anything about digital products, AI, engineering, or growth, and get answers drawn from years of Net Solutions thinking and experience.