Labsharing was born from “Acea Open Asset”, a workshop organized by the Group’s Innovation division in which participants were asked to imagine new ways of bringing value to Acea's assets, using them to serve the community.
One of the ideas that emerged from the initiative led, thanks to the collaboration with ENEA, to the creation of an online platform that will allow third parties to request the use of its state-of-the-art facilities and scientific support in the complex field of environmental monitoring.
The key words are sharing, innovation, and sustainability: applied to a cooperative way of working and to an innovative service.
The most interactive part of the platform is the “window” section, which showcases all active research projects: content is organized by category and users can comment and provide their contribution to existing projects or propose new projects and collaborations.
The other focus is on testing services, grouped in four “matrices”: water, air, soil, and other environmental testing. “It works just like a booking app” says Luisa Marotta, member of the Innovation Team: “we designed a dashboard on which users can check the status of their requests: see if the lab has accepted their request or if the test has been completed”.
Additionally, two sections are dedicated to the testing packages and equipment available at Acea Elabori, the company that provides technical engineering services, test labs, research, and specialist support to the other companies in the Group.
Currently, Labsharing is open to internal users, from Acea and Enea, but in the future it will be open to private companies, universities, and research bodies, who will all be able to access the testing technologies and know-how of entities like Acea Elabori and Enea laboratories located across the country.
The development stage was preceded by the gathering of information on the equipment and testing services carried out by the Acea Elabori lab. “The platform was an occasion to collect in the same place lots of information stored in different systems. Then we had to find a standard way of categorizing it”, says Francesca Dimino, Acea Elabori. The work of the technical team that collaborated with the development team was essential to organize the data correctly and make it comprehensible also to external users.
Labsharing required serious teamwork. Everyone was actively involved, especially in collecting data. People took part enthusiastically.
Francesca Dimino, Acea Elabori
Everything was designed to be simple to understand and to use, especially in relation to booking environmental tests. “We tried to make Labsharing as intuitive as possible also for people who may want to use it just to request a test”, says Luisa.
Labsharing is a recent project, but the team has conceived it to be able to adjust to future changes and expansion.
The platform was presented in Rimini at Ecomondo 2020, the international trade fair for green economy that focuses on environment, sustainability, and circular economy. The objective is to promote Labsharing.
“We have a development plan, and we are continuing to work on new functionalities”, explains Luisa. “We would like to reach a target number of foreign users who do not have access to state-of-the-art technology for environmental testing like we have in our labs”, adds Francesca, “this is the final objective”. “Labsharing will express its maximum potential as soon as it creates an ‘ecosystem’. More people have access to the platform, more important it will become for the community”.
A lot of effort and great teamwork has gone into this initiative, from its idea to the first version released online, but a clear and ambitious road map points to a strong future for this project.
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