Case study · Public sector

Disaster-ready, Chicago.

The City of Chicago and the Illinois Health & Hospital Association needed their disaster-preparedness platform dragged out of the paper era — training, events, and resources for the people who respond when everything goes wrong.

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Public sector · ChicagoCity of Chicago + Illinois Health & Hospital Assoc.
WordPress + LMS · Pantheonsecurity-reviewed hosting, HIPAA requirements met

The setup

The City of Chicago and the Illinois Health & Hospital Association (IHA) Coalition run the systems that prepare first responders, medical administrators, and hospital staff for disasters in and around Chicago. Those systems were aging badly — and government software doesn’t exactly upgrade itself.

The coalition needed an online learning platform for responder training, an events system for conferences and registration, and a resource hub their community could actually navigate. They also needed a partner who could explain it all without the jargon — long-time staffers had been burned by vendors before.

We were tapped for the whole job: build, train, document, and stick around.

The challenge

Replace paper and phone calls with a platform first responders would actually use — on a city’s security requirements.

  • Training at scale. State directives required courses for first-responder teams and administrative staff — self-guided, online, trackable.
  • Events without the phone tree. Conferences and trainings with real registration, calendaring, and reminders.
  • Security that satisfies a city. Hosting reviewed against City of Chicago’s security, filesystem, and HIPAA requirements.
  • Bring the skeptics along. Staff who’d been disappointed by vendors needed plain-English training and documentation — on site.

The solution

Three WordPress sites, an LMS, an events platform — and the patience to train everyone on all of it.

  • An LMS for responders. Self-guided course delivery built around the coalition’s curriculum.
  • Events + email. Conference management with attendee signups and calendaring, plus email campaigns for the announcements that can’t be missed.
  • Pantheon hosting. Met the city’s requirements on security, filesystem privileges, and HIPAA.
  • The odd jobs too. Including a custom plugin that turns PowerPoint training files into web slideshows — because that’s what the job needed.
The results

Paper out. Platform in.

3 sites

built, redesigned, and maintained for the coalition’s response efforts.

Paper → digital

registration, training, and resources moved off paper and phones entirely.

Directives met

state training and education requirements for responder teams — satisfied.

On site

training and documentation delivered in person, in plain English.

A coalition off the phones

Event registration, self-guided training, and resources now run through the platform instead of a paper trail. Administrative costs dropped, and the coalition’s teams spend their time responding — not processing forms.

Trust rebuilt

The same staffers who’d been burned by vendors got documentation they could follow and a team that showed up in person. That’s what turned a software project into a working program.

Your turn

Got a mission that can’t fail?

Public sector, healthcare, infrastructure — when the platform has to work, the partner matters. Let’s talk.

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