The City of Chicago and the Illinois Health & Hospital Association needed their disaster-preparedness platform dragged out of the paper era — training, events, and resources for the people who respond when everything goes wrong.
Public sector · ChicagoCity of Chicago + Illinois Health & Hospital Assoc.
WordPress + LMS · Pantheonsecurity-reviewed hosting, HIPAA requirements met
The setup
The City of Chicago and the Illinois Health & Hospital Association (IHA) Coalition run the systems that prepare first responders, medical administrators, and hospital staff for disasters in and around Chicago. Those systems were aging badly — and government software doesn’t exactly upgrade itself.
The coalition needed an online learning platform for responder training, an events system for conferences and registration, and a resource hub their community could actually navigate. They also needed a partner who could explain it all without the jargon — long-time staffers had been burned by vendors before.
We were tapped for the whole job: build, train, document, and stick around.
The challenge
Replace paper and phone calls with a platform first responders would actually use — on a city’s security requirements.
Training at scale. State directives required courses for first-responder teams and administrative staff — self-guided, online, trackable.
Events without the phone tree. Conferences and trainings with real registration, calendaring, and reminders.
Security that satisfies a city. Hosting reviewed against City of Chicago’s security, filesystem, and HIPAA requirements.
Bring the skeptics along. Staff who’d been disappointed by vendors needed plain-English training and documentation — on site.
The solution
Three WordPress sites, an LMS, an events platform — and the patience to train everyone on all of it.
An LMS for responders. Self-guided course delivery built around the coalition’s curriculum.
Events + email. Conference management with attendee signups and calendaring, plus email campaigns for the announcements that can’t be missed.
Pantheon hosting. Met the city’s requirements on security, filesystem privileges, and HIPAA.
The odd jobs too. Including a custom plugin that turns PowerPoint training files into web slideshows — because that’s what the job needed.
The results
Paper out. Platform in.
3 sites
built, redesigned, and maintained for the coalition’s response efforts.
Paper → digital
registration, training, and resources moved off paper and phones entirely.
Directives met
state training and education requirements for responder teams — satisfied.
On site
training and documentation delivered in person, in plain English.
A coalition off the phones
Event registration, self-guided training, and resources now run through the platform instead of a paper trail. Administrative costs dropped, and the coalition’s teams spend their time responding — not processing forms.
Trust rebuilt
The same staffers who’d been burned by vendors got documentation they could follow and a team that showed up in person. That’s what turned a software project into a working program.
Your turn
Got a mission that can’t fail?
Public sector, healthcare, infrastructure — when the platform has to work, the partner matters. Let’s talk.
