Real-time integration for a recycling operator's AI contamination detection

The client: a national waste and recycling operator

A national waste and recycling operator, upgrading the technology its recycling trucks use to spot contaminated recycling bins. Working with its on-truck detection provider, the operator was moving from an older depot-and-WiFi setup to a modern, 4G-connected, cloud-based detection platform.

The challenge: two-way data between trucks and operational systems

For the new platform to work, it had to talk to the operator's existing operational systems in both directions: receiving the photos and detection data the trucks capture, and feeding back the live vehicle and collection data the detection relies on. That integration layer is what the operator came to us to build.

What we built: one integration service, four connected flows

A single integration service handling four connected flows:

• Contamination capture - receives the photos and detection data a truck sends when it flags a contaminated bin, stores the images in the operator's systems, and records each event against the right collection.
• Collection lookups - gives the detection platform the live list of bin lifts for each residential truck, so every photo is matched to the correct bin and household.
• Vehicle lookups - tells the platform which trucks are fitted with detection equipment, and of what type.
• Weekly data export - an automated job that compiles and delivers a weekly file of around 1.1 million records, linking households to their bins.

How we built it: Azure, infrastructure as code and continuous testing

• Built on Microsoft Azure with a modern, cloud-native design, and all infrastructure defined as code - so it is repeatable, reviewable and secure.
• Security built in from the start: authenticated access, personal references hashed rather than stored in the clear, and an internal security review before release.
• Backed by an automated test suite of over 300 tests, plus live monitoring that alerts our team the moment anything looks wrong.

The results: live in under four weeks, load-proven to 17x peak

Delivered to a fixed scope and fixed price, on budget and on schedule.

Independent load testing put the service through 3,480 requests with zero application errors. The detection provider expects busy-hour peaks of around 1,000 contamination reports; the service sustained roughly 17x that load in testing, holding response times inside our three-second target at realistic volumes.

A clean example of what we do: connecting a modern platform to the operational systems a complex business already runs on, built to enterprise standards without the big-consultancy price tag.