Problem

To counteract hydrostatic pressure and maintain ground stability, TBM cutting chambers often must be pressurised. Operators then enter at above-atmospheric pressure to perform repairs, maintenance, block clearing, and face inspections. These hyperbaric interventions expose operators to the same physiological hazards as commercial diving, such as decompression sickness, barotrauma, nitrogen narcosis, and oxygen toxicity. A missed checklist step or a miscalculated decompression profile can mean permanent injury or death.

To protect workers, French and international regulations require that every intervention be planned, supervised in real time, and archived with a complete individual exposure record for each operator. This duty falls on the Compressed Air Operations Supervisor (CAOS), who is legally accountable for the safety of every person who enters the chamber.

To streamline this tedious paperwork, Bessac initially commissioned a systems integrator to develop a digital solution providing real-time tracking and hyperbaric intervention archiving. However, after field use exposed several significant limitations, Bessac collaborated with OperaMetrix to launch a second-generation solution that built on the lessons learned from the first version.

That earlier product was built as a thick client tied to a single Windows tablet, so any device failure meant the loss of the ongoing intervention's data. Its application flow was strictly linear: certain inputs were only available on specific screens with no way to navigate back to them, which led to frequent deadlocks. Sensor failures could similarly block step validation and halt the entire workflow. The product also lacked functional customization, offering no support for photo or screenshot uploads and providing only limited export options.

When designing the new application, OperaMetrix needed to balance deep technical rigor with onfield simplicity. Dozens of sensors flowing through PLCs, multi-stage decompression tables, certification management for every operator, continuous cloud synchronization, and automatic report generation all had to be hidden behind an interface that any operator could use confidently.

The build had to support any decompression tables to comply with standards used across the globe, deliver full localization in English, Spanish, and French throughout the application, and synchronize data reliably between distributed instances.

The intervention-tracking dashboard alone had to display live chamber states, operator positions, door states, and sensor readings onto a single screen without overwhelming the user — it was one of the boldest UX problems OperaMetrix took on.

On top of that, the solution required a multi-tenant access model to ensure each user role could see exactly what they need and nothing more, while a cross-site operator profile could maintain continuous certification and intervention history regardless of which site the operator worked on next.

Solution

HyperB'Assist is built as two complementary applications:

• The Hypervision - a cloud-based strategic center that consolidates every site, operator, and intervention into one place.
• The Worksite - an onfield operational assistant focused on the current intervention.

The central Hypervision instance is hosted on a dedicated Linux cloud server alongside its PostgreSQL database. It runs Ignition’s Perspective Module with unlimited concurrent sessions and the Web Dev Module, and serves as the single source of truth for fleet-wide configuration, archiving, and reporting.

Each tunnelling site runs its own Worksite instance on a Linux-based industrial-grade PC with a local PostgreSQL database, equipped with Perspective (capped at two concurrent sessions), the Tag Historian Module, and the Reporting Module.

Worksite instances communicate with a local PLC, typically a Siemens S7, that drives the chamber's pressure sensors and valves. They also interface with onsite cameras to stream a real-time visual feed of the chamber.

CAOS supervisors and operators interact with the system from rugged Android tablets selected for their first-class touch experience, battery efficiency, and resilience to harsh job-site conditions. The tablets act as thin clients running the Perspective-native app, so a device failure simply means picking up another tablet rather than losing an intervention's data.

On the Worksite, intelligent validation guides the operator: only certified personnel are selectable per role, and the matching decompression line is calculated automatically as the worksheet fills out.

The intervention-tracking dashboard brings the SAS chambers, operators, door states, sensors, and live indicators onto a single screen. Role-coded operator pictograms, with distinct colors and shapes, allow the team to be identified at a glance, and contextual action buttons appear only when relevant.

When a decompression begins, the application automatically switches to a dedicated focus view that strips away everything non-essential and overlays the theoretical decompression curve on the live pressure graph, an outstanding visual aid during a safety-critical phase.

On the Hypervision side, OperaMetrix designed a multi-tenant interface to scale to hundreds of operators and thousands of interventions across dozens of sites. It is structured around three role tiers — super, company, and site administrators — so each user sees exactly what they need and nothing more.

OperaMetrix created checklists once and replicated them across sites for operational consistency, with manual editing, Excel import, and export between sites.

Operator profiles act as a complete hyperbaric career memory, consolidating certifications and intervention history across every site each professional has worked on, including external interventions.

The solution generates PDF reports automatically. In-app notes accept photo and document uploads, including snapshots of legacy paper checklists, and can bulk-import reference data via spreadsheets.

Every pressure reading, valve action, operator entry/exit, and decompression step is timestamped, attributed, and retained as a tamper-evident, statutorily compliant audit trail. The system also generates reports in a format suitable for direct submission to labor inspectorates.

Result

This project has resulted in a single unified platform for hyperbaric operations at Bessac, spanning the chamber, the site, and the cloud, and replacing the previous fragile single-tablet workflow.

Modern full-web UI/UX removes the day-to-day burden previously carried by the CAOS with a flexible, non-linear workflow that adapts to real-world intervention conditions, full multi-device resilience, and rich reporting.

Beyond the increased productivity for the CAOS, the system materially improves regulatory posture: no intervention can finish without a complete legal record. Audit responses that previously took days are now a one-click export, and operator exposure history is preserved across projects rather than scattered on paper documents that need to be collected and manually centralized.

Crucially, the application gives users the confidence to go paperless on their own terms: any legacy form they still rely on can be photographed and attached to its intervention record, enabling a smooth, voluntary transition rather than a forced cutover.

Provisioning a new tunnelling site is also dramatically faster: Bessac staff can configure operators, companies, checklists, and worksite parameters ahead of time on the Hypervision, so a fresh Worksite arrives onsite already set up and ready to run on day one.

Above all, HyperB'Assist turns complexity into confidence: an interface that any operator can use on the field under pressure, backed by a Hypervision that gives a single audit-ready view of every intervention and the career memory of every operator.

HyperB'Assist is in production at Bessac's first TBM site, with a second deployment underway and at least one new Worksite expected to come online each year as Bessac's project pipeline grows.

Beyond Bessac, OperaMetrix is productizing the platform as a turnkey solution for other underground-works companies facing the same hyperbaric-compliance burden, making HyperB'Assist the first widely available Ignition-based health and safety system for hyperbaric tunneling on the market.

Project Team

OperaMetrix:

• Benjamin Freeman - project technical leader, Ignition Gold Certified
• Nicolas Gonzalez - Ignition UI/UX expert, Ignition Core Certified
• Ana Carolina Coelho Robl - Ignition integrator on Worksite and Hypervision applications
• Nicolas Sans Piché - Ignition integrator on the Hypervision application

Bessac:

• Maxime Maurin - project leader
• Florian Reysset - process engineer
• Sacha Lustro - Industrial IT engineer trained on Ignition in charge of onsite deployments

Project Scope

• Start Date: February 2025

• Deploy Date: October 2025

• Tags: ~1,500 per Worksite

• Screens: 10 per Worksite and 4 for Hypervision

• Clients: 2 per Worksite and 4 for Hypervision

• Alarms: 25

• Devices: 1 Siemens S7 on the current Worksite; the solution works with any Ignition-supported PLC

• Architecture: Hub & Spoke

• Databases: 1 PostgreSQL per Ignition Gateway

• Historical data logged: 20 tags per Worksite

• Number of people on team: 7