Three years,
still adding.
A UK construction contractor, roughly fifty staff, working across many sites at once with employed and subcontract labour. On Unibuild since 2023.
Every stage of the work,
on one system.
- 01
Win it
EnquiriesQuotationsClient register - 02
Plan it
Labour plannerWallboardHoliday - 03
Work it
QR punch inSite diaryCall outs - 04
Prove it
CertificatesRegistersPhotographs - 05
Buy it
Purchase ordersApprovalsSubcontract - 06
Show it
Client portalClient appJob costing
What they use it for,
day to day.
QR punch in
Scan the poster at the gate. The time comes from the server, with a photograph and a location, so it cannot be adjusted later.
Evidence on the phone
Inspections written in front of the asset, with the photographs and the signature attached to the record rather than a camera roll.
Compliance registers
Fire doors and fire assets, gas records, PAT, maintained assets and PPM, each with its own expiry date and its own reminder.
The client portal
Their customers log in and read their own registers, certificates and approved photographs without ringing anybody.
Purchase orders
Nothing bought without an order. Approved from a phone in under a minute, and the order number is only issued on approval.
Subcontract control
A proper two page order, and a lapsed insurance certificate removes that firm from every order form overnight.
Three years of switching
things on, one at a time.
None of this arrived on day one. Each module went into a business that was already running, which is the part worth knowing if you are wondering how your own first two years would go.
Winning work
On site
Compliance
Buying and subcontract
Clients and admin
Five things that used to
land on somebody's desk.
Paper pads filled in on a Friday from memory, and a day and a half a week typing them up.
Roughly two thirds of the hours arrive from a scanned code, already on the right job.
A driver rings at half seven to ask if he can spend two hundred pounds. Someone says yes.
He raises it at the counter and a named approver answers on a phone, in under a minute.
The invoice turns up four weeks later and gets coded to whichever job seems likely.
It sits against the order it belongs to, with both values on the same row.
A subcontractor on site in March whose insurance lapsed the previous October.
Checked nightly. An expired document removes them from every order form until it is replaced.
The client rings to ask whether door B-64 has been done. Somebody rings back tomorrow.
The client opens their own login and reads the signed record, with photographs, at any hour.
Nothing was switched
on all at once.
Go live
The web portal and the staff app.
Clients, projects and jobs become one record instead of four, and the office stops keeping a second copy of everything.
Approvals
Hours start going through a named approver.
Each change carries who made it, when, and whether it came from the app or the portal.
The phone
Hours move onto the phone, then onto the QR code.
Scan the poster at the gate and the day writes itself, with the time coming from the server rather than the handset.
Purchasing
A new module lands in a business already three years in.
Past 800 orders within five months, each one approved by a named person before the money is committed.
Clients
Day works reach the client portal.
Signed twice: once instructing the work, once confirming it is finished. No more arguing about it later.
A small share of those orders go through an automatic approval route rather than a person, and no value thresholds are configured here. Both are setup decisions rather than gaps, and both are worth deciding deliberately when it is configured for you. The business is not named until it gives written permission, which is set out on who runs on Unibuild.