BW Offshore – New website with focus on user experience

Background

BW Offshore engineers innovative floating production solutions to progress the future of energy. The company’s goal is to build on four decades of offshore operations and project execution to create tailored energy solutions for evolving global markets. The company recently announced an investment in offshore wind energy. BW Offshore is represented in all the major oil and gas-regions in the world with a fleet of 15 FPSOs (floating production storage and offloading vessels). BW Offshore has delivered 40 FPSO and FSO projects over the past four decades, and they have a strong project resource pool of engineers, construction leaders, security- and quality-personnel, project planners and more. BW Offshore has around 2000 employees and is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange.

BW Offshore’s redefined purpose is to engineer offshore production solutions to progress the future of energy, and we wanted our website design to reflect this message. By adapting the visual design of the site, as well as focusing on the visitor’s journey through the available information, we worked closely with Epinova to set up a site tailored to our needs, while being mindful of budget and delivery deadlines.

Our customer says

As BW Offshore ventures into new business areas, we need a website that can grow with us, and Epinova has been able to deliver this in a highly professional way.

Through an agile project set-up with frequent check-ins, we were able to be hands-on in all decisions, and could influence how content management was set up for editors to ensure a future-proof site full of possibility for growth, following the initial launch.

Marita Sandvoll, Communication and Brand Coordinator,
BW Offshore

The Assignment

BW Offshore needed a modern website to represent their refreshed brand and updated company values. The existing website was both difficult to navigate for end-users as well as inflexible and hard to use for editors.

The project focused on the visual experience for visitors, an improved content structure and a modern and flexible set of components for editors in order to reduce the need to involve developers for day-to-day work. Together with BW Offshore, Epinova has delivered a future proof platform with a high level of flexibility, with a clear reusable component pattern and architecture as well as focus on security and performance.

The project was delivered in an agile fashion using the Kanban methodology where Epinova worked closely together with resources from BW Offshore as well as other third-party vendors. The project was built using Epinovas Boilerplate templates and a first MVP ready for content creation was deployed within a three-week period from the project was initiated. With frequent meetings, including live-code-changes, we were able to roll out new and updated functionality, design updates as well as improvements to how editors work with a very high pace and frequency.

The project started in September 2020 and was done 100% remotely due to the Corona pandemic. With a set of collaboration tools, frequent video calls and Epinova’s well proven project methodology and tools, the project was delivered fully according to plan and budget, including a tight collaboration with BW Offshores rebranding initiative. In parallel with this, Epinova has also updated brand elements on BW Offshore’s intranet, which is also built on Episerver, to match the refreshed brand.

The Plan Forward

After experiencing working with Epinovas Team and Boilerplate, BW Offshore decided to invest in rebuilding their existing intranet using Epinovas Boilerplate templates to better be able to communicate internally, getting a livelier intranet as well as getting synergy effects for future development and maintenance between the two systems.

Epinova’s Role

Epinova has been responsible for the project delivery including customer guidance, project management and development using Episerver CMS. The website is responsive and integrates with third party systems for financial information as well as to Fotoware Digital Asset Management. The solution is built on top on Epinovas Boilerplate project and uses Epinovas Responsive Image module.

Tools used

• Episerver CMS including Episerver Search
• Fotoware DAM
• Epinova Responsive Images
• Azure DevOps

It’s been a pleasure working with such a knowledgeable and ambitious customer that values our expertise in the area as well as our working processes. We have worked together as one team and together taken responsibility for the success of the project.

Annika Jansson, Project Manager Epinova

With a pragmatic approach and a close collaboration within the team we have been able to create a “state of the art” solution that we are incredibly proud of. We are looking forward to a continuous prosperous collaboration when we now turn over to the next project – to help further develop BW Offshore’s new intranet.