Urban Intelligence onboards new customers 20x faster with Radency’s embedded team
United Kingdom
Security-first architecture
Legacy modernization
Multi-tenant
Continuous delivery
20X faster
New customer setup reduced
from 40 to < 2 hours
from 40 to < 2 hours
Embedded team
2 Full-stack Engineers,
1 Delivery Partner
1 Delivery Partner
2021-now
Ongoing partnership
with Radency
with Radency
Business context
Urban Intelligence builds PlaceMaker, a platform used by UK councils to plan sustainable communities.
To scale, they needed to turn the product into a multi-tenant platform, one codebase serving many councils without engineering overhead. Despite doubts about outsourcing, they chose Radency for a more predictable model: certified engineers embedded in the team and guided by a Delivery Partner.
Four years later, Radency engineers are still helping evolve PlaceMaker.
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“They have continually outperformed with tight deadlines and with some considerable client pressures.”
How engineering bottlenecks nearly stalled PlaceMaker
Building and scaling PlaceMaker meant relying on a small number of critical engineers. For Daniel Mohamed and his team at Urban Intelligence, that dependency turned software development into the most stressful part of running the company.
1 critical dependency
Lost key developer to competitor (poached). Backlog froze.
0 hires in 6 months
Couldn't compete with big tech salaries. Every offer dead on arrival.
3 sprints, 0 on time
Tried freelancers. One ghosted mid-sprint. Deadlines slipped.
Replacing Key-Developer Risk with an Architect-Led Team
Daniel chose to rebuild PlaceMaker as a multi-tenant platform to eliminate the need to clone the codebase for every new council. Radency assembled an architect-led team that removed the single-developer risk and gave Urban Intelligence a stable engineering foundation for scaling the product.
01
First call, work started
in 2 weeks
in 2 weeks
Urban Intelligence reached out for an estimate and spoke directly with Radency’s Delivery Partner, Bogdan, who hand-picked engineers for this project.
02
Two full-stack engineers
on board
Two certified full-stack joined. Within the first two weeks, they delivered the base structure for a multi-tenant system and fixed priority bugs.
03
Multi-tenant platform foundation in 6 months
Over the first six months, the team laid the foundation for Urban Intelligence’s unified, multi-tenant platform, replacing the fragile cloned-code setup.
04
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Scaled to
4 engineers
4 engineers
“So happy with how Radency performed”, Daniel and Paul added two more engineers. At one point, they also asked to bring in extra engineer for just 1.5 months.
05
Still embedded,
4 years on
4 years on
Today, 2 Radency engineers continue improving PlaceMaker.
Both are from our certification program. One has been with the project since the start.
Both are from our certification program. One has been with the project since the start.
4+ years with Radency’s embedded team
20x faster engineering setup
Time to get a new council running on PlaceMaker dropped from 40+ engineer hours to ~2 hours, thanks to multi-tenant configuration and automated CI/CD
Zero missed deadlines
Since Radency joined, every delivery has shipped on time, even under pressure. Urban Intelligence’s own clients praised the team for their “rapid and responsive manner.”
25+ councils operational on PlaceMaker
The unified multi-tenant architecture let Urban Intelligence grow from 3–4 councils to 25+ without codebase clones or week-long engineering setup — a 5–7× jump in capacity.
1 “key area of stress” removed
CEO Daniel says working with Radency lifted a major source of stress from his role, while CTO Paul was confident enough to bring two more engineers on board.
“We were originally a bit sceptical about outsourcing our technology functions, but I’m delighted to say that deciding to go with Radency has taken away a key area of stress in my life!”
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Daniel Mohamed
Founder & Managing Director
PlaceMaker, now a multi-tenant platform used by 25+ UK councils
Each tenant (council) has access to the platform but with their own URL, branding, and configuration. Data is fully isolated per tenant to prevent leaks, with GDPR compliance and encrypted traffic between backend and frontend.
Key features shipped
01
Call for Sites
A public portal where councils collect and assess land proposals from developers, landowners, and residents. Submissions are mapped, validated, and stored automatically, cutting weeks of manual form entry and GIS work.
02
SAML / SSO
Beyond email/password, councils can log in using 3-rd party vendors with the help of SSO like Azure. This integration matches council IT policies and makes PlaceMaker easier to roll out at scale.
03
Green/blue deployment
Releases now run at ~99% uptime. Before, updates meant maintenance downtime. With blue/green deployment, new versions run in parallel, traffic switches instantly, and rollbacks take seconds.
04
Feature flags
Specific functionality can be toggled on/off per tenant. Councils get only the modules they need without forks in the codebase.
05
Version-based configurations
Admins can create and re-use versioned templates for dashboards, questionnaires, and map-based reports. Saves time when rolling out similar workflows across different councils.
06
Story Maps
Admins combine text, maps, and media into interactive dashboards. Councils use these to run public consultations and collect feedback on planned development.
“Not only have we managed to meet client expectations, but clients have thanked us for the rapid and responsive manner in which we have produced their solutions. This is largely due to the competency and work ethic of the Radency team.”
Paul Nebel Meng
CTO @ Urban Intelligence
Urban Intelligence took the embedded team bet. It paid off
Sceptical atfirst. Working with Radency’scertified engineers 4+ years later. Today, two remain embedded atUrban Intelligence. The company has also hired in-house, and one ofour engineers now leads their expanded team
2021
Sceptical about outsourcing
Cloning codebase for each client → ~1 week of engineer time to set up a new council
Fragile setup, bugs duplicated across instances,
weak security
weak security
3–4 councils supported
Constant hiring stress: freelancers, poached devs, failed
in-house attempts
2025
Working with Radency certified engineers 4+ years
Multi-tenant architecture → new council live in ~2 hours of engineer time
Blue/green deployment, CI/CD, and feature flags → stable, scalable, ~99% uptime
25+ councils supported → 5–7× capacity jump
Founders freed from hiring stress, with an embedded Radency team in place
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I'm delighted to say that deciding to go with Radency has taken away a key area of stress in my life!
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