Building a Cloud Platform for Modern Maritime Services
"The effective digitisation of the UK Ship Register is a central element to the creation of a new operating model for the service; fit for the 21st Century. The solution that has been developed is elegant in its design, thorough in its understanding of the customer and simple in its execution leading users seamlessly through the process. Both the system and teams stood up to the scrutiny and have delivered an exemplary platform that will be built upon and used by the MCA for many years."
Dan Vivian
Commercial Director. Maritime Coastguard Agency
New services deployable within minutes
9 weeks
Small Ships Register delivered
Same day turnaround on bug fixes
THE CHALLENGE
From manual to modern. Accelerating MCA’s digital ambitions
To replace slow, manual workflows with modern digital services, the MCA needed a platform that could scale, evolve, and deliver high availability with minimal internal overhead.
Key challenges included:
– Limited in-house engineering capability, making maintainability and ease of onboarding essential
– A need for API-first, cloud-native services that met GDS standards
– Pressure to deliver the MCA’s first fully digital public service within 12 months
– A requirement for high performance, easy feature updates and minimal service disruption
THE SOLUTION
A scalable cloud platform engineered for change
Catapult designed and built a cloud-native Microservices Enablement Platform to support continuous, reliable delivery of digital services. The platform followed Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles and included built-in observability for real-time insight and proactive alerting.
Key solution features:
– Microservices architecture with infrastructure-as-code for scalability and repeatability
– Support for both CaaS (containers) and FaaS (functions), allowing flexible service development
– Secure CI/CD pipeline for continuous integration, testing and deployment
– Real-time dashboards and alerts via integrated observability tooling
– Engineering and operational policy framework to onboard MCA teams and future vendors
– Agile and DevOps delivery model, enabling collaboration and rapid iteration
"This platform means that the registration services of the UK flag have the ability to be world leading, supporting the maritime sector and the wider UK economy. The project team has collaborated effectively and engaged the teams across the Maritime Coastguard Agency (MCA) at the appropriate times."
Dan Vivian, Commercial Director. Maritime Coastguard Agency
THE RESULTS
From first release to full transformation
The platform delivered immediate value through rapid service rollout while establishing a sustainable capability model to support long-term digital transformation.
Key outcomes included:
– First digital service (Small Ships Register) delivered in just 9 weeks
– Full UK Ship Register and Beacons services digitised over the following months
– Developers able to build in any common language using reusable project templates (Test Driven Development)
– Using the NodeJS and Java sample projects, new services were deployable within minutes, with same-day turnaround on bug fixes and response to customer feedback within hours,
– On-demand release capability, supporting multiple deployments per day
– Administrative burden significantly reduced, freeing staff to focus on strategic goals
– Platform positioned the MCA to scale its global service, grow registry tonnage, and remain competitive internationally
