Sherpa
My strategy. My sustainability.
The challenge
A farming business answers to many standards at once. Between them they hold many hundreds of control points, most asking the same question in different words, answered again every year for each auditor. The result is duplicated effort, fragmented systems and no shared truth, and at the end of it the farm holds certificates rather than a strategy. Blue North Sustainability needed one system that turns all of that work into something the business owns and can act on.
The solution
We designed and built Sherpa for Blue North Sustainability: the sustainability operating system for a farming business. It collapses every standard a farm holds into one harmonised master set to prepare, records every audit and corrective action in one place, and scores the whole farm across 45 subjects of sustainability, so the business sees where it stands, the performance behind it and what is being done about the gaps.
One
Master set to prepare
0
Subjects, one score
Farm-owned
Data, shared by choice
In their words
“Working with Handee was an absolute dream, we really felt they had the time for us and the whole project was seamless start to finish.”
What we built
One process for every standard
Harmonise, comply, score, measure and act: the five movements of the system, on one shared truth the farm owns.
- 01
Harmonise
The farm's chosen standards collapse into a single master set. Every requirement knows which standards it satisfies, so one preparation is every audit's preparation.
- 02
Comply
Each audit report is recorded as it arrives, and non-conforming control points open as corrective actions automatically, so nothing is lost between seasons.
- 03
Score what is real
45 subjects, 8 question types, 360 cells. The score is the most rigorous tier actually reached, never a number that flatters.
- 04
Measure what matters
Performance indicators track outcomes by annual cycle, enterprise and commodity. Captured once, a reading counts wherever it's needed.
- 05
Act on every gap
Every gap becomes an action with an owner, a due date and the evidence that will prove it was done.
- 06
Evidence, owned by the farm
Documents sit behind every answer and carry every audit, shared with retailers, funders and certifiers only when the farm chooses.
In a nutshell
Sherpa gives a farming business one process for every standard it holds: harmonise, then score, then act, then report. The evidence is gathered once and owned by the farm, the score shows the whole picture rather than a pass mark, and the results can be shared with retailers, funders and certifiers only when the farm chooses to.
Gallery
On the farm
Sherpa is built for the people doing the work: in the office, in the field and from the air.
Keep exploring
From our insights
Practical writing on how we build, from the first prototype to a fleet in the field.
Next project
Crest
Parking & access control
Read the case study
