Barhead Solutions helps Bureau of Meteorology employees return to work with Power Platform-based app

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) has tapped Barhead Solutions to deploy its Clearspace solution to help its staff return to the office more seamlessly.

Based on Microsoft Power Platform, Clearspace helps organisations ensure the safety of their employees as they return to the office. Employees can access the solution through Microsoft Teams or a mobile app.

The BoM sought to make its cloud-based platforms available to its more than 1600 staff while they work remotely, especially those that deal with older technology installed in the offices.

“The obvious challenge was how were we going to track people coming in and out of the office for COVID-19 contact tracing purposes, and how the significantly reduced number of available desks could be managed with ease, accuracy and transparency,” Bureau of Meteorology manager of enterprise and business architecture Peter Fattoush said.

“We didn't have the luxury of training and rolling out over a period of time. It had to be quick,
easy, and affordable.”

Barhead’s Clearspace was also chosen as the BoM had been developing a modern digital workplace with Microsoft technologies front and centre. The Bureau considered developing a solution on their own, but ultimately decided to spend development time on products unique to BOM.

Clearspace was deployed after four to six weeks of planning, procurement and designing the system before going through approvals.

Fattoush said Clearspace being deployed on Power Platform allows it to be used across a range of platforms, such as Teams, web browser or smartphones, also making it very accessible.

BOM manager of Office 365 digital workplace Alison Hackett said Clearspace’s user experience is “very clean” and easy to use as it was “very self-explanatory”.

“When you open the app, you have that day's booking on the landing page as well as a tab for your upcoming bookings,” Hackett said.

“It gives a lot of the users confidence to come into the office because they know that as soon as they get there, they can check in. All the information's right there on the home screen.

“And they know that if there's any incidents, we can contact trace immediately. So I think it's really given some people who are nervous about returning to the city and into the office the
confidence that it is safe to do so. And that we're doing everything we can to make it easy
and to put in any fail-safes just in case another outbreak happens.”