Nimbus Disabilility.

The Access Card provides a recognised way for disabled people to communicate the reasonable adjustments and accessibility requirements they may need at venues and events. Behind that experience sits a substantial technology ecosystem responsible for everything from applications and payments to assessments, card administration, and public-facing services.

Some elements of that technology have evolved over almost 20 years.

Nimbus Disability needed more than developers who could work with an established PHP codebase. They needed a technology partner that could understand how a complex, interconnected platform supported the organisation, its team, and Access Card holders.

The ecosystem consists of four interconnected applications, with data and business processes shared between them. Changes to one part of the platform can have consequences elsewhere, and years of development have created business rules and dependencies that are not always captured in documentation.

Much of that knowledge was held by a small development team managing both front-end and back-end technology across consumer-facing products and internal business systems.

That made collaboration central to a successful handover.

Our first priority was to understand why the existing platform worked the way it did, what knowledge needed to be preserved, and where Arch could begin adding value safely, instead of treating it as something to replace.

Key challenges included:

• Transferring years of technical and operational knowledge without disrupting ongoing services.
• Understanding dependencies across four interconnected applications.
• Working alongside Nimbus Disability's existing developers to uncover undocumented business logic.
• Creating a reliable development environment for investigation and testing.
• Triaging an existing backlog to identify business-critical priorities.
• Balancing immediate development requirements with the long-term evolution of the platform.
• Establishing a collaborative delivery process that gave both teams visibility over priorities and progress.

We began the partnership with a focused two-week discovery and knowledge transfer period, working directly alongside Nimbus Disability's developers to understand both the technology and the thinking behind it.

That process began with understanding, and the code came later.

We first immersed ourselves in Nimbus Disability's brand, values, services, and the role technology plays in delivering the Access Card. Understanding the organisation and its users gave our developers the context to make better technical decisions later.

From there, our teams worked side by side to explore the existing codebase, business processes, dependencies, and development history. Instead of asking only how individual components worked, we focused on why they had been built that way and what consequences changes could have elsewhere in the ecosystem.

Arch adopted the codebase and established an internal local development environment, giving our team a consistent foundation for investigation and testing. In parallel, we reviewed and triaged the existing development backlog with Nimbus Disability, identifying the work that was most important to the organisation and agreeing clear acceptance criteria before development began.

That collaborative approach let us move from discovery into active development quickly, while taking the care that long-established, business-critical systems need.

We also reached an important technical decision together: not to rebuild for the sake of rebuilding.

With a platform carrying years of business logic and interconnected dependencies, replacing the entire stack would add unnecessary risk. Arch and Nimbus Disability agreed on an incremental approach that protects existing knowledge while steadily improving the platform.

New development is being approached with reusability in mind, so the work completed today keeps its value if elements of the technology are modernised or rebuilt in the future.

Collaboration continues beyond the initial handover. Shared planning, agreed priorities, clear acceptance criteria, and focused touchpoints between both teams keep development aligned with what Nimbus Disability needs from the platform.

Our partnership with Nimbus Disability goes beyond supporting its existing technology. We're also working together to redesign its website, to give Nimbus a digital presence that reflects its position as a leader in accessibility and innovation.

The new site will make it easier for organisations to understand Nimbus's services, from training and consultancy to the Access Card and NOS, with clearer journeys tailored around different sectors and audiences.

Accessibility is built in from the outset, with a mobile-first experience targeting WCAG 2.2 AA standards. A flexible, component-based CMS is also intended to give the Nimbus team more control over content while keeping it consistent and accessible.

With a considered SEO migration and improved analytics, the result is intended to be a scalable platform that can grow alongside Nimbus's services and technology.