Ten years,
one system.
Electrical & Mechanical Services (UK) Ltd have been installing temporary site services in London since 1992. They have run their own business on Unibuild every working day since 2016.
The firm that turns
the lights on.
EMS delivers temporary power, water and welfare services to construction projects across the UK and Europe.
Battersea Power Station, Royal Wharf, London City Island, 20 Fenchurch Street, the Manchester City training campus. EMS installed the temporary power, water and welfare on all of them while they were under construction, and removed it when each job finished.
Established. Family run. Still running.
Known in the industry as EMS, the firm was founded in London in 1992 by Kevin Cook and is still run by the family that started it. It employs more than two hundred people and works across the UK and into Europe.
Tendered work. Measured rates.
The work is won by tender and priced against measured rates rather than a lump sum, so the estimate has to be right before any work starts. Once a job is running, the value of what has been installed is measured on site every week and claimed against those same rates.
Physical assets. Constantly moving.
All of it depends on physical assets, generators, distribution boards, cabins and tanks, moving constantly between a central store and dozens of live sites.
Get it wrong and it costs.
Price the job wrong and it loses money from the start. Under-measure in a given week and the work goes unclaimed; over-measure and the money comes back off the next application. Plant that is not tracked is hired in twice.
Twenty-four years of complexity. Then Unibuild.
By 2016, when EMS came to Unibuild, they had been managing all of this for twenty-four years.
Five things that were
quietly costing money.
None of these were disasters. That is exactly why they went on for years: each one looked like a normal cost of doing business, and none of them showed up as a line on any report.
Two estimators, two different prices
Everybody priced from their own spreadsheet, built up over years and understood only by them. Put the same job in front of two estimators and the numbers came out a long way apart. Nobody could say which one was right.
Month end rebuilt from memory
What had actually been installed that month got reconstructed at the end of it, out of a site diary and somebody's recollection, then argued over line by line with the client's surveyor.
Over-claiming, found by the other side
Claim for more than the contract allows and it is the client's surveyor who finds it, not you. The money comes back off the next application, and the damage to the relationship costs more than the money did.
Plant promised to two sites at once
Two site managers both told they had the same tower scaffold. A job finishes and the kit stays there, because nobody is watching for it. Meanwhile something identical gets hired in.
Retention nobody asked for
Half the retention should come back at practical completion. On a job that finished a long time ago, with the people who ran it now on other work, somebody has to remember to ask. Often nobody did.
Four things it does every week.
EMS run a great deal more than this. But if you want to understand why the system matters to them, it is these four.
Everyone prices from the same book
One shared catalogue of materials and labour, with real supplier part numbers and real fit times behind every line. Any estimator can price any job, not just the one who has been here longest. When prices go up, the annual uplift is a number typed into a box rather than a rebuild of everybody's own workbook.
The week's work is measured on site, and signed there
A supervisor measures what has been installed, on the phone, standing in front of it. It is priced automatically from the rates on that job's own contract, and the client signs it on the screen before anyone leaves. No reconstruction at month end, and nothing to argue about later, because both sides already agreed it.
You cannot claim more than the job allows
The system knows what the estimate allowed and what has already been certified. If a supervisor tries to claim beyond that, it stops at the point of entry rather than three weeks later in somebody else's spreadsheet. A check that sits anywhere else is a report somebody reads afterwards.
The store knows where everything is
Kit is picked against the actual bin and the actual serial number, signed for on handover, and the stock moves itself when the delivery note is confirmed. Jobs that have finished show up with their plant still sitting on them, so it comes back instead of quietly disappearing.
The same five things, ten years later.
| Before | Now |
|---|---|
| Every estimator prices from their own workbook, and two of them come out a long way apart. | One catalogue, one set of fit times, and an annual uplift is a number typed into a box. |
| Month end rebuilt from a diary and a memory, then argued over line by line. | Measured in the week it was done, and already signed by the client when it reaches the office. |
| Over-claiming found by the client's surveyor, which costs more than the money. | Claims capped at what the job allows, on the screen, at the moment somebody enters them. |
| Two sites both told they have the same tower scaffold. A job ends and the plant stays there. | Kit is picked against live stock, and a finished job flags up if its plant is still sitting there. |
| Half the retention should have come back at practical completion. Nobody asked. | Retention runs as a live figure and is released through its own application, once. |
Nothing was switched
on all at once.
This is the part worth knowing if you are wondering what your own first few years would look like. EMS did not buy a finished system in 2016. They started with the part that was hurting most, and everything else was added, one piece at a time, as the business hit the problem it answers.
Some of that arrived in year one. Some of it arrived last year. None of it required the business to stop.
Ten years of real jobs sit in this system, and nobody has ever sat down and counted them, so there is no accurate number to put here. The demonstration runs on the live thing, so you can look at whatever you want to look at. The contractor's story does carry counted figures, because those were measured.
Ten years on, the same system now handles
Enquiry and tender
Estimate and the rate library
Labour plan and timesheets
Permits and safety certificates
Store and deliveries
Plant and repairs
Valuations, variations and applications for payment
Retention, invoicing and the aged debt report
A training copy of itself, refreshed from the real thing, so a new starter can learn on the company's own jobs without touching them