Case Studies
Emobility infrastructurefor CleanAirZones around UK Local Authorities
We built a scalable, serverless infrastructure enabling the UK Government to control vehicle access to Clean Air Zones nationwide.
By delivering the digital platform ahead of schedule, we helped the government focus on driving behavioral change and implementing clean transport policies more effectively.
Country
UK
Technologies
AWS Cloud, Serverless, Java (Spring), Ruby, PostgreSQL
The Challenge
Tackling air pollution with a nationwide digital solution
UK Government introduced Air Quality Plan with intention to reduce NO2 concentration across most polluted authorities over the country. Exlabs has been engaged to participate in the delivery of a digital infrastructure enabling control over vehicle access to Clean Air Zones.
The goals for this project were as follows:
- Build a distributed, serverless infrastructure and ensuring high availability for each component of the system and guaranteed SLA operation;
- Assemble and introduce a harmonious, cross-functional team to work on the platform;
- Operate in a complex stakeholder landscape from multiple Public Sector-related bodies, largely new to agile and new to digital.
The project itself was a huge test of our abilities to deliver platform serving millions of drivers across all UK. That’s why we are especially happy of the results and successful implementations.
Peter Kolka
Managing Director
The Process
Building a resilient, serverless infrastructure in record time
To meet tight deadlines and vast system requirements, client was looking for a new team to quickly build up and support product development in areas of Charging Clean Air Zones modules right up to payment reconciliation and settlement.
Exlabs managed to provide the following:
- Onboarding multidisciplinary team of domain experts
- Terative improvements to all teams we led or supported, setting up bold goals for our developers and teams
- Setting up a distributed, serverless infrastructure on AWS Cloud
Client chose Exlabs for the following reasons:
- Exlabs is recognised consultancy with expertise in building highly-scalable and resilient cloud native platforms
- Exlabs provided high level of flexibility of services
Let's discuss your specific challenge and outline a clear path forward.
Mateusz Wilczyński
CTO at Exlabs
The Results
Enabling faster rollout and lasting change in driver behavior
With the technical part of the programme delivering ahead of schedule, it was easier for the Local Authorities and Central Government units to focus their efforts on coordinating the other areas of the project, including customer support and onboarding and education of the business customers.
An early release of the vehicle’s Clean Air Zone compliance checker tool allowed the public to understand the upcoming requirements ahead of the full launch, further strengthening the case for a lasting change of driver behaviour and exceeding the very strict standards of the Government Digital Service (GDS).
Our Work in Production
Explore how custom software and data platforms are developed to solve complex challenges for leaders in the energy and resources industry.
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know before you decide to work with us.
We can typically start within 2-3 weeks from our first conversation. The timeline depends on two factors: how quickly we can schedule the technical assessment workshop with your stakeholders (usually 3-5 days after initial contact), and how long the commercial agreement takes to finalize (typically 1-2 weeks).
For urgent situations, we've started projects in as little as one week. However, we never skip the discovery phase—rushing into development without proper scoping leads to costly mistakes and project delays down the line.
Your project team typically consists of 2-4 people depending on scope: a Technical Lead with expertise in data integration and backend systems, a Frontend Developer specialized in dashboards and data visualization, and a Project Manager who coordinates everything. For complex integrations, we may add specialists in specific areas.
Our strength is in building custom software solutions and integrating disparate systems - we learn your domain and technical requirements during the discovery phase, then build exactly what you need. You'll meet your dedicated team during the kickoff, and they'll be your consistent points of contact throughout the project.
We work in 2-week sprints with clear milestones and deliverables. You'll have a 30-minute check-in call every week to review progress, address blockers, and adjust priorities if needed. Between calls, we communicate via Slack or email for quick questions and updates. At the end of each sprint, you'll see working software—not just status reports.
We share access to our project management tool so you can see exactly what we're working on at any time. Most importantly, we involve your team early and often: user testing happens throughout development, not just at the end. This way, there are no surprises when we deliver the final product.
We offer both options depending on project clarity. For well-defined projects (like building a specific dashboard with known data sources), we provide fixed-price quotes—you know the total cost upfront and pay based on milestone delivery, not hours worked.
For more exploratory projects (like "we need to optimize our operations but aren't sure how"), we work time-and-materials with a monthly budget cap—you pay for actual hours but never exceed the agreed maximum without explicit approval.
We're transparent about costs from day one: our proposals include detailed breakdowns of what you're paying for, and we flag any potential scope changes immediately rather than surprising you with invoices later.