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Client

Friskfaktorlabbet for Suntarbetsliv

A reusable form tool that guides work groups through improving their health factors, built over two years as a consultant through Kumpan, with the project management around it.

Open Friskfaktorlabbet (opens in a new tab)About the tool (opens in a new tab)

The problem

Suntarbetsliv is run jointly by unions and employer organisations, for people who work in municipalities and regions. Friskfaktorlabbet gives a manager and a safety representative guided activities to run with their work group: everyone rates the workplace's health factors, then the group agrees on where things stand, prioritises and makes a plan. The tool had to carry several activities like that, not one fixed form.

Friskfaktorlabbet's start page: the health-factor wheel, eight orange segments for factors such as leadership, participation, communication and early support.
The health-factor wheel on Friskfaktorlabbet's start page. Screenshot from the live site, November 2026.

Constraints

  • I took over a legacy, custom-built WordPress setup at short notice, with a tight deadline.
  • Suntarbetsliv's site was still on WordPress, so the tool had to live there.
  • It had to stay maintainable after the contract, by Suntarbetsliv or the next team.
  • About ten people were involved around it, so plans and priorities had to stay clear.

My part

I worked in a core team of four, with one other developer, and about ten people around us. I built the tool full-stack, shaped its architecture and took on nearly all the project management on the assignment. Later I worked in Next.js, Payload and Supabase too, and built the AI chatbot on suntarbetsliv.se, using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and vector search.

Decisions

  • One reusable tool, not one-off forms

    The activities are built from reusable components, so a new one doesn't mean starting over.

  • WordPress, for now

    Suntarbetsliv hadn't moved off WordPress yet, so the tool was built in PHP and MySQL, inside the site they already had.

  • Take the reins, work Lean

    With a tight deadline on a build that was new to me, I took the reins and ran the work the Lean startup way: small, fast steps, each checked against what the client and the users needed. That kept the other developer and me in close step too.

  • A chatbot with a feedback loop

    The chatbot uses RAG: it finds relevant material with vector search in pgvector before it answers. Every answer was logged and could be rated or flagged, which gave a feedback loop for improving it.

Result

We met the deadline with a tool that fit the client and its users, and Friskfaktorlabbet is live today. Afa Försäkring (opens in a new tab) points work groups to it in its 2024–2026 focus on health factors in the welfare sector.

What I’d do differently

Given a fresh start and more time, I'd plan the architecture first, properly evaluate the different options, and choose the ones that best fit the tool and the client, instead of building on what was there. Fast Lean startup steps were how we met the deadline on the legacy build.

PHPMySQLWordPressWPBakeryNext.jsPayloadSupabaseRAGVector databasesAWS

Want the details behind this? Email me at filip@heinel.dev.