When Bangladesh’s next generation electronic passport was first issued in January 2020, it represented a new generation of border security for the South Asian nation. By now, the country’s transition to the ePassport is well established and the holistic identity solution is a recognized success. So, how do you guarantee that a mega project of this scale keeps on running smoothly and delivering its targets during the 10 years  project duration? Service and maintenance are the solution.

The €340-million ePassport project started in 2018, when the Bangladeshi government assigned Veridos to supply, install and implement next generation ePassports and sophisticated border control systems, including eGates, to combat fraud and enhance border security.

The government and Veridos entered into partnership to establish a local production and personalization factory with high-tech equipment in the country’s capital, Dhaka. Today, the facility produces up to 25,000 ICAO-compliant ePassports per day – an industry benchmark.

Maintaining such high production volumes while guaranteeing the utmost security levels is not always easy, particularly when unexpected risks such as the COVID-19 pandemic, seasonal flooding or IT problems occur. Thankfully, the service and maintenance team are at hand to solve  such problems, as well as supporting the entire ecosystem and delivering goods, such as spare parts.

Repair and upgrade

What do we mean exactly by service and maintenance? Maintenance includes preventive and corrective measures to take care of all machinery, hardware and software. As part of preventive maintenance, regular checks are carried out on all machinery and IT systems to assess whether they are functioning at an optimum and to thereby reduce accidents.

Corrective maintenance takes place when machines or IT systems fail. The Bangladeshi project employ a local team, who respond within one to 12 hours and resolve any issue within 24 hours to five days. These fast resolution times rely on close proximity to the customer, provided by a team of 40 Veridos engineers on customer premises, who can ensure that operations continue to run smoothly in the event of a software bug, parts failure or any other unexpected problems.

It is also crucial that international hardware and software vendors are available 24/7 to resolve incidents remotely if these prove to be too complex for local teams.

During the first three years of the project, the service and maintenance team has managed to resolve more than 20,000 incidents. “In this way, they have provided a high degree of stability to operations and helped to achieve high productivity levels,” said Shankar Pahari, Operations Manager, Veridos. “This keeps our customers happy as we can meet the high demand for ePassports while keeping costs low by maintaining a scrap rate below 1%.”

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