Designing Ignite to Support Field Teams and Simplify Delivery
Ignite is Cadent’s transformation programme to simplify how work is delivered, managed, and supported. While still under development, its guiding principle is clear: systems should serve people, not the other way around.
Across reinstatement, permitting, compliance, and planning; field and office staff face fragmented systems, duplicated effort, and reactive processes. Ignite is being designed to fix that. By focusing on simplified tools, connected workflows, and smart automation, Ignite will allow crews to focus on doing the job well and help support teams make faster, better-informed decisions.
This paper outlines how Ignite is being built to support the people doing the work on the ground, reduce operational overhead, and set the foundation for more confident, coordinated delivery.
Too Much Complexity, Not Enough Clarity
As it stands, most teams across field delivery and back-office are using disconnected tools with unclear ownership at handoff points, this impact is felt daily by teams. Several factors contribute to these daily pressures, some examples include, teams entering the same information in multiple places, start and stop notices are delayed or missed, reinstatement status updates do not flow into compliance systems and permit teams are working reactively, often without real-time visibility, this means everyone is wasting time chasing information that should be at their fingertips.
The system is serviceable, but not scalable. It meets minimum regulatory requirements but struggles to support modern, proactive delivery.
Ignite is being built to change that, not by adding more features, but by designing fewer, smarter ones.
Systems That Serve the Way People Work
Ignite focuses on three core principles to support better outcomes for field and office teams:
- Simplicity First: One Job, One View
Every action a user takes should be, easy to find, simple to complete and instantly reflected across systems. That means giving field teams one clear place to record updates, capture evidence, and close jobs: with the office teams seeing the same information, without chasing or having to reinput. For example, if a reinstatement gang completes a job using works, the photos and material details are uploaded once, compliance workflows are triggered automatically, and Opus receives the update, updating the permit in real time.
- Automation by Design: Reduce the Manual, Improve the Reliable
Wherever tasks can be done automatically, they should be. Tasks such as, start/stop times populated from field activity, risk scores surfaced in real time, notifications issued automatically based on permit conditions and validation checks triggered without needing back-office intervention
This is not just about speed. It’s about consistency, quality, and freeing up people’s time to focus on judgment-based tasks.
- Designed Around Roles, Not Systems
Ignite is being shaped by real user needs. LDPs want fewer systems to log into, compliance teams want clearer audit trails, permit teams want visibility, not firefighting and supervisors want to trust what is on screen reflects what is happening on site. Each role gets a tailored experience meaning each workflow is joined up, not patched over.
Enabling the Right Outcomes
The aim of Ignite is not just to make things more digital. It is to enable better outcomes at every level:
| Outcome | How Ignite Enables It |
| Faster job closeout | Single-entry field updates, instant syncing |
| Fewer fines | Real-time permit status and automated triggers |
| Higher confidence | Unified job views across roles |
| Better planning | Control Room visibility, prioritisation, and live risk scoring |
| Simpler onboarding | Role-based workflows, fewer tools to learn |
| Stronger compliance | Structured workflows and built-in data validation |
What This Means for Field Teams
From day one, field usability has been a priority. The future system will let crews close jobs with fewer steps, by being able to pre-fill data wherever possible, use photos and location data to automate compliance checks, eliminate the need to chase the office for updates or approval and cut down time spent re-entering information or handling paper. If you are able to update everything at once and know it has gone where it needs to be, then that’s a win!
Building for the Long Term
Ignite is not being built as a one-off project. It is a platform strategy, with long-term impact in mind.
Future features under design include:
- Integrated mobile permit management
- Automated risk-based job escalation
- Field insights feeding back into strategic planning
- AI-enabled prompts to spot errors, missing data, or risk conditions
At its core, Ignite will help Cadent operate smarter and help people spend less time managing work, and more time delivering it.
Simpler Tools, Smarter Outcomes
The most powerful transformation is not what a system can do, but how it enables people to do their jobs better.
Ignite is being built with simplicity, automation, and real-world usability at its core. For field teams, that means less frustration and more clarity. For support teams, that means fewer blind spots and better oversight. And for Cadent, it means scalable delivery, stronger compliance, and better outcomes across the board.
By putting people first, Ignite sets the foundation for smarter, more confident utility operations.
By Gemma Clinton
Gemma Clinton is Data Analyst at Skewb. To speak with her about this topic in more detail, you can connect with her on LinkedIn.
