The Air Warfare Destroyer Project was “the most complex ship construction undertaken in Australia”. It needed a website to match.
According to Defence SA: “Over the past decade over 5,000 employees have contributed millions of hours to the AWD program, building the foundation of Australia’s shipbuilding and integration industry”.
The scope of the project was immense. The AWD Alliance included Australia’s Department of Defence, shipbuilder ASC and mission systems integrator Raytheon Australia. In addition, the Alliance worked with the likes of Navantia, the United States Navy and Lockheed Martin to deliver the ships’ Aegis Combat System.
The aim of the website was to showcase the alliance partners, congratulate the people involved and encourage others to consider careers in the expanding defence sector in South Australia.
For such a multifaceted project, the beauty of the website is its simplicity. It cuts through the complexity of the ship build to tell a compelling story that is “people centric” and engaging.
To achieve the “storytelling” nature of the website, we concentrated heavily on videos, photographs and key milestones.
The design took its inspiration from the award-winning book, The Voyage of the Sea Warfare Destroyer.
The immediate response when we shared the initial design was, “Wow, it looks exactly like us.”
While it is a Defence and Defence Industry website, the website doesn’t just focus on the “hardware”; it also shines a light on the people who were involved in building the three ships. And because it is part of a greater storytelling narrative, the site links seamlessly with the client’s social media channels (YouTube, Facebook and Twitter).
The project evolved over time to meet the clients’ changing needs, moving from a single-page scrolling website to include several internal pages.
Before launch, the website passed through stringent quality assurance testing. This included cross-device testing, user experience, security, SEO and general QA.
The site then moved to a documented launch and hosting plan, which gave visibility to everyone involved in the launch. As the website is hosted and managed by Boylen, our tech team led the deployment process from start to finish.
"Brilliant! I love it!"
