Shortlisted for IT Project of the Year at the Tech Excellence Awards 2026
On 14th May we made the trip down to the Royal Marine Hotel in Dún Laoghaire, overlooking Dublin Bay, for the Tech Excellence Awards hosted by TechCentral. Scaffold Digital had been named a finalist for IT Project of the Year (Private Sector), and we wanted to be there to see how the night unfolded.
We didn't take the award home. Storm Technology won the category, and they thoroughly deserved it. But we left genuinely pleased, because being shortlisted in a strong field says something about both the work and the people behind it.
The project: a customs declaration platform built with Derry Bros
The project that earned us the nomination was Digicom, the customs clearance platform we built alongside the team at Derry Bros Customs Clearance. Customs declaration software is exactly the kind of operationally complex, heavily regulated problem we enjoy getting our teeth into, and this one had a clear pain point at its centre.
A customs declaration process that used to take around two hours now takes under two minutes. That is not a marginal efficiency gain. It is the difference between a process that constrains the business and one that quietly gets out of the way, so people can focus on the work that actually needs human judgement.
Getting there took close collaboration with Derry Bros, who understand the customs domain inside out. The best results in regulated environments tend to come from that kind of partnership, where deep operational knowledge meets the engineering to match it.
Why the shortlist matters to us
It is easy to be dismissive about awards, and we try to keep a level head about them. But a shortlist in a strong field is a useful external signal. It tells us that work we are proud of internally also stands up when held next to the best projects others are delivering across the Irish tech sector.
We were up against seriously strong company, and that made the recognition mean more, not less. Hats off to Storm Technology on the win, and to everyone else on the shortlist.
Thank you
Most of the credit belongs to the team who built Digicom and to the people at Derry Bros who trusted us to take on a difficult problem and solve it properly. Nights like the one in Dún Laoghaire are a good reminder of what that work adds up to.
On to the next one.
