Naval Group and their story to improve collaboration

Naval Group is a world leader in naval defense and an innovator in the Energy field. As a high technology company with a global reach, Naval Group meets the needs of its customers through its exceptional know-how and unique industrial resources.

The Group designs, builds, and maintains submarines and surface vessels, as well as associated systems and infrastructure. It also provides services for naval shipyards and naval bases. Finally, Naval Group offers a wide range of solutions in civil nuclear energy and sustainable marine energy.

Naval Group started its transformation towards Enterprise 2.0 in 2009, when the first roadmap for its collaborative platform was initiated. In 2010, the first collaborative spaces were introduced (image library and workspaces), and since their introduction, they have achieved a broad usage across the whole organization. As collaboration needs were becoming more and more numerous, the integration of a wiki was first considered in 2011.

Naval Group wanted to use a wiki to capitalize and share knowledge. This project was initiated by the Quality Department of Ruelle. A wikis farm (named WIKEO) was established by the IT Department and integrated into the collaborative platform during 2011. The first wikis were called "editorial" and were implemented for Collaborative Platform Online Help, IT procedures.

At the end of 2011, XWiki SAS introduced the ability to create applications in WIKEO and then implemented wikis called "forms": IT applications referral, WORKEO Spaces requests, Risk management forms for the shipyards, etc.

In this business case, we will focus on one of the "form" wikis: the risk situation declaration form. In the case of this particular wiki the objectives were among others:

• improving the security level on the yards by removing potential dangers as soon as possible
• the identification, monitoring, and treatment of a maximum of risky situations based on the principle of the Bird Pyramid

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Initially, **observations were made using Excel files, which lead to:

• continual exchanges of the file by email
• versioning problems with the file and issues updating it
• a lack of visibility on the status of the registrants
• a lack of responsiveness in preventing the people responsible for actions

The risk situations assessment form had to:

• transfer applications in WIKEO
• have a centralized version, open to anyone in Naval Group
• have visibility on the progress of actions
• keep stakeholders informed using instant email alerts

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However, it also had to take into account a number of constraints. **The solution provided needed to be as simple as possible and to:

• encourage participation
• address different types of audience (construction sites employees, IT department members, and other support functions)

XWiki SAS carried out a form allowing:

• the registrants to report dangerous situations using a set of standard fields
• sending emails automatically to the prevention team
• the one responsible for the action to learn what the status of a request is and what actions have been undertaken

Regarding the risk situations assessment form, 4000 findings were created and 90-95% of the cases were resolved. Six serious accidents, sixty light ones, and nearly two hundred hardware problems were avoided.

With respect to wiki forms types at Naval Group, there are (as of February 2013) 5 WIKEO form types deployed, 2 in development and 2 in conception. More generally, WIKEO is a success at the level of editorial wikis as well as form wikis.