Palawan Infrastructure Layer
Transport, supply chains, coordination
Shared coordination for what every operator on the coast needs — boats, vans and supplies — so nobody runs a half-empty bangka.
01The situation
Every resort and operator on the coast runs its own boats and vans, often half-empty, coordinated across dozens of WhatsApp threads. The boatman gets forty messages a day. Nobody knows who is going where tomorrow.
02What we built
A shared coordination layer: tide and wind data pulled every morning, a single request queue fed by a WhatsApp flow (voice notes welcome), and one clear manifest to each boatman and driver the evening before.
Operators can post spare capacity and book space on each other’s runs.
03What broke
The first version tried to replace the boatman’s judgment with a schedule. He ignored it — correctly. The system now proposes; he decides.
04What’s next
More operators on the queue, cold-chain runs for restaurants, and pooled supply orders so the coast buys cement once, not twelve times.
Stories from this build
All stories
No. 042People
The Crew Is the Infrastructure
Solar and software get the attention. What actually keeps a remote site running is nine people from the next barangay who know how the sea behaves.
6 min read · 23 Aug
No. 041Logistics
Scheduling Around the Tide: Bangka Logistics as a System
We tried a logistics app. Then we built a WhatsApp flow around the boatman’s tide table. Guess which one works.
7 min read · 16 Aug