AAP

The Problem

NLNG's residential and industrial estates had no single channel connecting residents, staff, and estate administration. Incident reports, adverts, emergency contacts, facility and office-space bookings, and estate-wide announcements needed one place to live, across both web and mobile.

Constraints

• ▹Had to work as a native-feeling mobile app (iOS + Android) and a browser-based web app off one backend.
• ▹Approval-gated workflows: incident reports, broadcasts, and bookings all need staged, multi-level admin approval, not a simple CRUD flow.
• ▹File uploads (incident photos, adverts) needed secure storage kept in sync across both clients.
• ▹Chat between residents and estate admin couldn't rely on polling, it needed to feel instant.

How It Was Solved

• ▹A dedicated file service, built on Spring Boot and MongoDB, handling upload storage and sync so media stayed consistent between web and mobile.
• ▹WebSocket connections power the in-app chat between residents and estate admin, instead of polling for new messages.
• ▹Facility and space booking, including office space for members who need it, runs through a multi-level approval workflow rather than a single admin sign-off.