Work / Shell barge fleet

safety rules enforced

A safety-critical barge fleet platform for Shell, built from zero in Go

ShellEnergy & logistics

Results · built from zero

Business rules

200+

enforced on every voyage

Hazmat regulations

50,000+

checked against IMDG / ADN

Route graph

15,000+

river segments

Live river data

500+

gauging stations integrated

The challenge

A wrong answer here is a safety incident, not a bug.

Barges carrying hazardous cargo must have every load checked against international hazmat rules, and every route must respect draft, bridges, locks and live river depth. Shell needed one platform to plan, check and track it all.

Architecture

100%

CLIENTS · API GATEWAY

CHEMICAL COMPATIBILITY · SAFETY-CRITICAL

VESSEL PHYSICS

ROUTE PLANNING

FLEET ORCHESTRATOR

WORKFLOW & COMPLIANCE

INTEGRATIONS

DATA LAYER

VESSEL TELEMETRY

OBSERVABILITY

Operations dashboardReact · fleet map

Captain appReact Native · offline

Reporting portalBI · compliance KPIs

API gateway · GoJWT · rate limits · audit log

IMDG / ADN rule base50,000+ hazmat rules

Compatibility matrixmemoised pair checks

Segregation enforcerminimum distances

UN number resolvercargo → UN code

Hydrostatic modelstability curves

Draft calculatordepth + safety margin

Trim & list optimiserweight distribution

Load sequence plannersafe loading order

River network graph15,000+ segments

Dijkstra / A* pathfinderdraft · bridges · locks

Lock schedulerpassage slots

Depth forecastslive river levels

Voyage plannerbarge assignment

Maintenanceinspection holds

Crew assignmentcerts ↔ hazmat cargo

ETA calculatorlive updates

Cargo manifestsversioned · locked

CustomsADN documents

Incident reporternear-miss · spills

Audit trailimmutable · append-only

Approval workflowhazmat exceptions

River authorities500+ gauging stations

Port authoritiesberth booking

Customs EDIelectronic docs

Shell SAPcosts · invoicing

Meteorologicalwind · visibility

Insurance APIcertificates

PostgreSQLprimary + replica

Timescaledepth · telemetry

Redismatrix cache

Elasticcargo · incidents

MinIOmanifests · certs

AIS receiverpositions

IngestorNMEA → Kafka

History90-day GPS

Prometheusfleet KPIs

Grafanadashboards

OpenTelemetrytracing

PagerDutycompliance alerts

Kafkatelemetry stream

cargo inputroute requestmax draftAPPROVED / REJECTEDsafe route / BLOCKEDriver depths

Switch layers on and off above, or hover a line in “What we built” to light up its layer.

What we built

Five layers. One of them can never be wrong.

01 · SAFETY · CRITICAL

Chemical compatibility engine: approves or rejects every cargo manifest against IMDG/ADN rules and segregation distances.
02 · VESSEL PHYSICS

Vessel physics calculator: draft, trim and a safe load order for every barge.
03 · ROUTING

Route planning engine: Dijkstra/A* over a 15,000-segment river network with live depth forecasts and lock scheduling.
04 · FLEET

Fleet orchestrator: voyages, maintenance, crew certifications and live ETAs.
05 · WORKFLOW · COMPLIANCE

Workflow and compliance: cargo manifests, customs declarations, incident reporting and an immutable audit trail; integrations with river and port authorities, customs EDI and SAP.

Stack

GoReactReact Native · offline captain appPostgreSQLTimescaleDBRedisElasticsearchMinIOKafkaOpenTelemetryPagerDuty

Building something where mistakes aren't an option?

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