Case Studies

The Asset Platform 
GIS & UX Upgrade Story

Major GIS and UI upgrade with globe view, optimised performance, and enhanced UX—resulting in smoother navigation and better asset insights.

Renewable Energy
Data Engineering
Claude
Get Similiar Results
Satellite view of Earth showing the Indian subcontinent, Arabian Peninsula, and surrounding regions with city lights visible at night.White uppercase letters CRU on a blue gradient square background with rounded corners.

Building reliable grid intelligence requires not just data – but data you can trust, interpret, and scale.

Client

CRU Group

Sector

Renewable Energy

Country

UK

Executive Summary

The CRU’s Asset Platform serves as a central information catalogue for over 4,500 mining, metals and fertiliser sites around the globe. This data underpins critical decision-making processes and informs multi-million dollar investments, making its accessibility and usability a strategic priority.

To support stakeholders in quickly identifying and evaluating relevant assets, the platform relies on robust search, sorting, and filtering capabilities, paired with an intuitive and high-performance user interface. However, we identified a significant gap in the platform’s geospatial (GIS) visualisation capabilities. The existing flat map view lacked both performance and usability, thereby limiting users’ ability to efficiently and intuitively explore complex global datasets.

This prompted a comprehensive UX and GIS upgrade aimed at transforming how users interact with asset data on a global scale.

The Challenge

Flat maps slowed insight and usability

We identified growing friction in how users engaged with geospatial data, especially when exploring asset-heavy regions. This led us to propose a shift toward a more modern, intuitive interface, including a transition to a globe-based visualisation.

Our goal was to align the platform’s capabilities with the expectations of industry users who rely on clarity, speed, and responsiveness in navigating global assets.

Central to this was a transition from a flat map to an interactive globe, enhancing both aesthetics and functionality. However, incorporating real-time GIS layers for hundreds of industrial assets introduced severe performance bottlenecks, especially when zooming or toggling visibility.

Early production testing revealed lagging behaviour and an overwhelmed DOM, jeopardising usability. Compounding this, late-stage data deliveries limited testing cycles, and deployment issues further strained delivery timelines.

Most Common Issues When Analysing Rich Data Sets

The Solution

Canvas rendering made globe views seamless

To meet performance expectations while maintaining the desired interactivity, we executed a technical pivot in the map rendering strategy. Initially, each asset was represented as a DOM element for maximum styling flexibility.

This approach, however, was unsustainable with large datasets. The solution involved migrating to a canvas-based rendering model using Mapbox layers, allowing us to draw multiple icons simultaneously within fewer DOM elements. While this constrained some styling options, it drastically improved rendering speed and zoom fluidity.

Interactive global map showing locations of mining and processing assets with a pop-up detail for Pavlodar aluminum smelter in Kazakhstan including costs, emissions, and production data for 2025.

Interactive elements such as tooltips and links to individual assets were selectively preserved using hybrid rendering approaches. The number of GIS layers was consolidated, ensuring manageable complexity without sacrificing data integrity.

Additional optimisations addressed deployment bottlenecks, such as port conflicts and inefficient server responses in the Next.js application, which were resolved via containerization strategies and request routing improvements.

Dashboard showing a stacked bar chart of CO2e emissions by production for various assets in 2025, with a detailed table ranking assets by emission metrics below.
Dashboard showing Steel CarbonFlow analysis for 2025 with metrics on metallurgical coal and iron ore mines, transport emissions, and weighted averages of steel plants in CO2e per tonne.

The Outcomes

Faster, clearer, and more engaging

The latest release delivered a vastly enhanced user experience, with tangible gains in performance and engagement. The platform now renders high volumes of geospatial data with minimal latency, providing smooth zooming and interaction across global asset views.

Stakeholders benefited from:

  • Up to 60% reduction in map lag during navigation
  • Improved clarity and aesthetics via globe-based visualisations
  • Simplified asset exploration through tooltips and dynamic links

Moreover, the integration of lithium-related economic and emissions datasets further expanded the platform's analytical scope. While comprehensive analytics are still in rollout, early feedback confirms that the UI redesign has improved usability across various stakeholder groups.

Smaller UI/UX enhancements across the platform, such as collapsible panels, cleaner data tables, and harmonised design elements, also contributed to an overall more modern and user-friendly application. Together, these improvements reflect Exlabs' commitment to scalable, high-performance solutions tailored to domain-specific user needs.

Let's discuss your specific challenge and outline 
a clear path forward.

Mateusz Wilczyński

CTO at Exlabs

Schedule a Technical Call
Portrait of a young man with short brown hair wearing a black V-neck shirt against a gray background.

Technologies That Power 
the Platform

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).

Map of San Francisco showing top tourist attractions including the Golden Gate Bridge, Muir Woods, and Alcatraz Island with walking and hiking routes.

Mapbox

Vector tiles + WebGL/canvas for high-density rendering at scale

Black vertical equalizer bars icon on white background.

ClickHouse

Sub-second analytical queries for filters/slices without pre-aggregation.

Microsoft Azure logo with a stylized blue letter A.

Azure

Blue-green deployments, container hardening, predictable rollbacks.

React logo consisting of an atom-like shape with three elliptical orbits surrounding a central circle.

React / Next.js

Controlled hydration & interactive UIs with predictable performance budgets.

Red phoenix bird logo with stylized wings curved upward.

Nest.js

Modular API boundaries for maps, assets, and analytics.

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.

From Complex Data to Competitive Dominance

How CRU Group Partnered with Exlabs to De-Risk Multi-Million Pound Battery Investments.

90% Reduction in Analysis Time
Rows of green Gogoro electric scooter battery packs in white charging slots.White uppercase letters CRU on a blue gradient square background with rounded corners.

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.

City skyline with modern skyscrapers reflecting on calm water at sunset with partly cloudy sky.Flowchart illustrating the departmental workflow from 'Admission' to 'Heart Department' with icons representing different stages.

The Asset Platform 
GIS & UX Upgrade Story

Major GIS and UI upgrade with globe view, optimised performance, and enhanced UX—resulting in smoother navigation and better asset insights.

Satellite view of Earth showing the Indian subcontinent, Arabian Peninsula, and surrounding regions with city lights visible at night.White uppercase letters CRU on a blue gradient square background with rounded corners.

Scaling Open-Source Grid Insights Across Europe

Turning raw grid data into actionable, open-source intelligence

Silhouette of a high-voltage electricity transmission tower against a blue sky with pink and gray clouds at sunset.
Explore more of our projects
Previous
Next

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.