Schema design, data capture and transport, instrument and field integration, controlled access. For research programmes, laboratories and technical organisations whose data has to outlive the grant that funded it.
What this actually covers
- Data models. Normalised relational schemas designed around how the science is actually recorded, not around a form layout. Documented, with table and field comments, so the next person can read them.
- Capture. Field and laboratory data entry that works under real constraints: intermittent connectivity, low bandwidth, gloved hands, instruments that emit their own formats.
- Transport. Moving large data sets from where they are produced to where they are analysed, securely, with the bulk path separated from the interactive one.
- Access control. Role-based permissions across a team that mixes staff, visiting researchers, collaborators at other institutions and the public.
- Reporting and publication. The web layer: dashboards, queries, public-facing output, exports.
- Handover. Documentation and transfer to the institution’s own IT department, because the system belongs to the institution.
How these engagements begin
Not through advertising. Work of this kind is awarded on the strength of prior delivery, usually by a principal investigator or lab manager who has watched someone else’s system fail. Our 2006 AMASE contract states the reason for a direct award in its own text: prior successful projects for the institution, cost-effective and high-quality delivery under significant time constraints.
If you are evaluating us for this kind of work, the fastest route is a conversation about the constraint that worries you most — the bandwidth, the retention requirement, the instrument that only speaks one format.
Engagement shape
Phased, with a written statement of work, dated milestones and a defined handover. Feasibility first where there is genuine technical risk, so that the expensive phase is only commissioned once the unknowns are closed. We will tell you when a requirement is not achievable within the constraint you have given us, in writing, before you spend money on it.