A student-facing workflow that staff could actually run
At Royal Holloway, University of London, coursework extension requests were a manual, mailbox-driven process. A five-month engagement replaced it with an online system that students could apply through and staff could process 40% faster.
- Client
- Royal Holloway, University of London
- Sector
- Higher education
- Period
- 2017
- Role
- Full stack developer (contract)
Delivered by Brad McAllister, founder of Real Code Ltd, while embedded in the institution's engineering team.
01
The challenge
Coursework extension requests are a small process with outsized load: predictable volume spikes at assessment deadlines, sensitive student circumstances behind every request, and staff rekeying details between mailboxes, spreadsheets and records systems.
It is exactly the class of problem — high-friction, rule-tolerant, emotionally sensitive — where badly designed automation makes things worse.
02
What was delivered
An ASP.NET Core web application integrated with the university's existing systems, giving students a single route to apply for extensions and staff a centralised way to review and manage them.
The work sat within a wider remit developing online systems for centralised management of courses and programmes across the Web and Mobile department.
03
Measured results
Staff processed extension applications 40% faster once requests arrived structured rather than as free-text email.
Administrative efficiency in the affected processes improved by around 30%, and delivery practices adopted during the engagement lifted project delivery speed by roughly 20%.
These figures are from the institution's own delivery reporting at the time — we quote them as measured, not extrapolated.
04
Why it matters for AI
The pattern has not changed since 2017: structure the intake, keep a human on the decision, measure the result. Agentic workflows apply the same discipline to harder problems — the difference is that agents can now handle the unstructured middle, not just the form.