Building a COVID-19 screening platform that processed 80,000+ daily health checks across 157 schools — deployed under emergency timelines and running flawlessly from day one.
In late 2020, Ontario mandated daily COVID-19 health screenings for every student, staff member, and visitor before entering any school or administrative building. The province launched its own screening questionnaire at covid-19.ontario.ca/school-screening — but it was a generic tool with no verification, no institutional integration, and no way for schools to confirm that a screening had actually been completed.
The Thames Valley District School Board — one of the largest in the province with over 80,000 students, 8,500 staff, and 157 schools spread across Southwestern Ontario — needed more than the provincial baseline. They needed a full verification layer: a system that could confirm screening completion at the door, track compliance across every building, flag symptomatic students and their siblings, and adapt on the fly as health guidelines shifted — sometimes with only days of notice.
Paper-only screening at this scale was a logistical impossibility. TVDSB needed a digital platform that could handle the morning rush of 80,000+ simultaneous screenings, generate verifiable passes, and give school administrators real-time visibility into compliance — all while being simple enough for a parent to complete in 30 seconds at 7 AM.
The screening tool needed to handle an extreme traffic pattern: near-zero usage overnight, then a massive spike between 6:30 and 8:30 AM as tens of thousands of families screened simultaneously before the school day. It also had to adapt quickly — Ontario updated its screening criteria multiple times throughout the pandemic, sometimes with less than a week's notice before new rules took effect.
The screening tool wasn't a build-it-and-forget-it project. As the pandemic evolved, so did the requirements. In December 2020, Ontario shifted to stricter screening criteria during the Grey Lockdown — if a child had even one new or worsening symptom, they stayed home, and their siblings did too, regardless of whether they were symptomatic. Without a negative test, the entire household faced a 10-day isolation period.
Each policy change meant updating the screening logic, notification workflows, and parent-facing guidance — often on timelines measured in days, not weeks. The platform I built was designed for this kind of rapid iteration: the screening rules engine was decoupled from the core application, so health criteria could be updated without redeploying the entire system.
In January 2022, when Ontario mandated reinstatement of daily on-site screening confirmation for all students and staff, the system scaled seamlessly. Elementary students received blue TVDSB screening stickers printed with unique login credentials, while secondary students accessed the tool via QR codes linked to their TVDSB email accounts. The progressive web app architecture meant families could save the screening portal directly to their phone's home screen — turning a daily compliance task into a one-tap morning routine. The infrastructure was ready because it had been built to flex from the start.
The screening tool went from concept to serving 80,000 users daily in a matter of weeks. There was no room for downtime, no soft launch, no beta period. It had to work on day one — and it did.
The TVDSB Daily Health Screening Tool operated continuously from the 2020–2021 school year through March 21, 2022, when Ontario lifted COVID-19 screening requirements province-wide and the board stood down its health and safety measures. Over that period, it processed millions of screenings without a single day of unplanned downtime.
The tool became the backbone of TVDSB's safe return to in-person learning — the gatekeeping mechanism that gave parents, teachers, and administrators confidence that health protocols were being followed consistently across every school in the district. It kept schools open by catching potential cases early and enforcing isolation protocols before they reached the classroom.
For me, this project was a masterclass in building under pressure. There was no luxury of extended planning cycles or iterative user research. The pandemic set the deadline, provincial health guidelines set the requirements, and 80,000 families needed it to work. It reinforced a core principle I carry into every leadership role: when the stakes are highest, simplicity and reliability matter more than features.