SafetyFirst
Safety First is a leading traffic control company serving all of North Carolina, providing regular and emergency traffic management services 24/7. Their mission is simple but critical — keep drivers, crews, and work zones safe. The company operates through two applications: • A web app for managers at headquarters to create jobs, customers, and projects. • A mobile Android app for field team leaders to manage job execution and supervision directly on site. Each job typically lasts one day and requires precise coordination between HQ and field teams — including job creation, status updates, invoicing, and geolocation tracking.
Field Operations & Road Safety
The Project
Safety First is a leading traffic control company serving all of North Carolina, providing regular and emergency traffic management services 24/7. Their mission is simple but critical — keep drivers, crews, and work zones safe.
The company operates through two applications:
- A dispatch app for field operators to coordinate rosters, schedule jobs, customers, and projects.
- A web app for dispatchers and supervisors to manage rosters, assign tasks, and allocate resources directly on site.
The Challenge
When our team joined the project, the platform was in critical condition:
- The frontend app crashed on startup, blocking all field operations.
- The backend schema was bloated, making database sync and CRUD operations impossible.
- No automated testing, no CI/CD, and poor performance under operational loads.
- The codebase was tangled, with few to over 5000 lines long and no test coverage.
- Zero automated testing was impossible. field teams — including job postings, status updates, invoicing, and specification tracking.
The Solution
Our full-stack team took ownership of the product and executed a complete stabilization and modernization plan, transforming a nonfunctional prototype into a dependable daily tool.
Backend Overhaul:- Rolled back the AWS Amplify environment and rebuilt the GraphQL schema for scalability and data integrity.
- Implemented clean CRUD endpoints for Projects, Employees, and Customers.
- Refactored backend logic for timezone consistency and accurate job reporting.
- Fixed startup crashes and restructured key components.
- Rewrote the sync logic, reducing time from 90 seconds to 6 seconds.
- Added fully functional offline mode, allowing team leaders to create and manage jobs without connectivity.
- Integrated offline invoicing, ensuring jobs could still generate bills on the field.
- Introduced unit testing with Playwright and better Event Smooth to secure workflow reliability.
- Implemented code splitting and modularization, dramatically improving maintainability.
Results
- Stabilized the entire system after a complete rollback and refactor.
- Sync time improved from 90s to 6s - a 15x performance boost.
- Offline invoicing and reporting now fully functional in field conditions.
- Client increased platform engagement by 40%, now supporting 40+ active daily users with steady week-over-week growth.
- Full CRUD for Projects, Employees, and Customers now live and stable.
- Major code issues were mitigated through refactoring and QA, achieving zero critical vulnerabilities.
