UK University – ASP.NET Ethics Review System

Urgent delivery of an ethics-review web application on a fixed deadline

Role: Contract Developer

Client: UK university (name withheld)

Timeline: Summer 2015

Core Stack: ASP.NET Web Forms, SQL Server, Oracle, custom web services

1. The Challenge

A UK university needed to meet stringent legal process standards for the ethical review of research projects. The existing process depended on spreadsheets and a manual upload into an Oracle database - slow, error-prone and hard to audit. The project was urgent: the university needed a working system fast, not a discovery phase.

2. The Work

Rapid first delivery: an ASP.NET web application for the ethics-approval process, with a working preview inside the first week and final delivery after stakeholder reviews in week three.
Data migration: analysed the Oracle database structure and rebuilt the process on a .NET stack with the database replicated into SQL Server.
Accurate data entry: a second application used custom-built web services to validate and capture data correctly at the point of entry.
Agile delivery: iterative releases with regular stakeholder reviews, so the university could see progress continuously rather than wait for a big reveal.

3. The Result

Both applications were delivered on time and exceeded the university's expectations.
The speed of the first delivery left room in the contract for additional projects for a UK university.
A manual spreadsheet-and-Oracle process became a supported web application with a clear audit trail.

Brad worked for me during 2015 to design an application to manage the ethical approvals process at a UK university. Brad's work was excellent. He was structured, thorough but also responsive to our needs. He was full of suggestions of how the application could be improved and the end result was a new tool for our organisation that will greatly assist a key business process

CIO, UK university