Why NB?

OSPAR works to identify threats to the marine environment and has organised programmes and measures to ensure effective national action to combat them. OSPAR has pioneered ways of monitoring and assessing the environmental status of North Atlantic seas by setting internationally agreed goals.

The previous OSPAR website appeared extremely dated and lacked the functionality to make it truly useful to the organisation. NB delivered a brand new, fully-responsive site featuring a fresh design and clear navigation systems to help users access a large volume of information in accessible ways.

The site features a significant archive of meetings, publications, news and downloadable documents. These files total over 25,000. Our team’s skills in database development contributed towards the success of this site which was extremely well received by the client and users, and we’ve continued to enjoy working alongside OSPAR on a number of projects since, including the development of the Intermediate Assessment website in 2017.

The Bonn Agreement is the mechanism by which the regional nations and the European Union, work together to help each other in combating pollution in the North Sea Area. Their remit covers issues such as maritime disasters and chronic pollution from ships.

NB delivered a modern and attractive website for Bonn Agreement, replacing a basic and uninspiring previous site with a new solution which meets a range of key requirements. The site offers Bonn Agreement options to now publish more engaging content, including video, as well as offering functionality to manage their extensive library of manuals and documentation.

The site also features intuitive navigation systems and a fully responsive design. The Bonn Agreement site is now easily searchable when it comes to its large documents library, using relevant headings and filters. This gives the website a much better user experience for key visitors.

NB has been working closely with the International Maritime Organization, headquartered in London, since 2017. One such project we’ve collaborated on is the new website for MEPSEAS. As part of the MEPSEAS project, seven ASEAN countries - Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam – are working towards meeting targets to ensure better protection of the seas in the region.

We helped meet their requirements of designing an attractive and engaging website which highlights the progress being made by each country, and background information so that the visitor can learn more about the issues being tackled.

Working remotely with key MEPEAS staff based in London, we designed and built the new site with a focus on its SEO-readiness. MEPSEAS had never had a website until now, so it was essential that all this new content would become quick and easy to find online.

An important aspect of the job was replicating data previously held in a spreadsheet to record how the seven countries involved in the project were progressing. We developed an interactive progress chart which now allows MEPSEAS staff to simply change colours of boxes on a matrix-style table to highlight progress. They can mark conventions which are completed, in-progress, and yet to be started, by each country.

Following a number of successful projects with the International Maritime Organization, NB was invited to tender for the redevelopment of the GI WACAF website, a project that the IMO runs in conjunction with IPIECA, a global not-for-profit oil and gas industry association for environmental and social issues.

The GI WACAF project is a global initiative for West, Central and Southern Africa. Its purpose is to help governments and industries work together to enhance oil spill preparedness, response and co-operation.

The previous GI WACAF website was dated, not particularly user-friendly, and certainly did not reflect the importance of the work the project covers. With that in mind, the new site was to effectively be based on the same content as the previous one, but with a vastly improved design and user experience.

The site is predominantly used by government staff from the countries involved in the project, and therefore features a member’s area where these people can find information that is relevant to them. The public facing part of the site acts as a detailed overview of how the project is progressing, doing so through engaging map-based visuals and tables.

To aid the GI WACAF team with tracking their progress with the project on the site, we set up bespoke fields in the content management system that require minimal work on the client’s end but can make site-wide changes to all maps and data featured throughout.