For the client who pays you

The client portal
for your customer.

Unibuild's client portal is software for UK trades, specialist contractors and FM firms that gives each customer a login, in your name, logo and colours, to their own projects. They read the programme, approved photographs, day works, RAMS, drawings, registers and certificates, and stop ringing your office for documents.

See the client portal in a demo → Ask for a quote

Client viewing their project portal on a laptop

In plain terms

A client portal is the window you give a customer onto their job. Unibuild’s is for UK trades, specialist contractors and FM firms of 5 to 300 people, built on the records your office keeps. Client logins are unlimited, inside one monthly figure, with a 14-day trial and no card.

What it replaces

Without a client portal, your office
is the bottleneck between your client
and information you already hold.

Every one of these is a document that exists, in your system, that your customer has to ask somebody for.

A construction customer portal, which most firms call a client portal and some a contractor client portal, is the part of your own system you open to the customer who pays you: their projects, their evidence, their programme. It is the opposite direction of travel from the subcontractor portal, which is the account you give the firms working for you. Subcontract orders, subcontractor invoices and subcontractor payments do not appear on any client surface.

Monday

The client emails asking for the RAMS again. The version they were sent in March is on a laptop belonging to somebody who left.

Re-sent

Quarterly

The asset register goes out as a spreadsheet attachment. Their copy and yours diverge within a fortnight.

Two versions

Friday, every week

The client rings to ask how it is going. Your contracts manager sends four photographs he happened to be sent himself.

An hour a week

The alternative

Somebody adds the client to the site WhatsApp group. Your staff stop speaking freely in it that afternoon.

The channel dies

Six months on

A different person at the client asks for the service certificate. It was definitely issued.

Searched for

Weekly call

Fifteen minutes establishing what is actually happening on site next week, before the meeting can start.

Every week

The mechanism The portal is built on the same records the contract runs on So there is nothing to maintain

ProjectsProgrammeProgress photosDay worksCall-out requestsRAMSConstruction phase planDrawingsMaintained assetsFire assetsScan any QRTesting and calibrationQuotationsOur teamHealth and safetyFeedback ProjectsProgrammeProgress photosDay worksCall-out requestsRAMSConstruction phase planDrawingsMaintained assetsFire assetsScan any QRTesting and calibrationQuotationsOur teamHealth and safetyFeedback

See the portal as your client would, then ask for a figure.

Book a 30-minute demo → Ask for a quote

What your client sees

Six of the seventeen client portal areas,
and why each one removes a phone call.

You choose which of the areas each individual contact gets, and which projects they can open. Both are set per person rather than per company.

Scoped project
by project

Access

A client contact sees only the projects you tick for them. Access is checked twice on every page, against the assignment list and against the project's client record.

A regional manager and a site caretaker see different things
Assign nothing and they see nothing
Repeated on every document download
Repeated again on every mobile call

Per person, not per companyLive

Approved
photographs only

Control

Nothing reaches the client automatically. Every upload starts at pending, and a member of your office staff opens it full screen and approves it before the client can see anything.

Your engineer photographs the mess freely
The approval records who released it and when
Grouped by visit, with your remark underneath
230 of 438 uploads released, 208 held back

The control is real and usedLive

Certificates
on demand

Docs

Maintenance reports, F-Gas records, fire door records with signatures and photographs, permits, accident reports, calibration certificates and quotations, all printable from their own login.

Generated from the live record, not a stored copy
Available at eleven at night without ringing anybody
The client produces it in their own name at audit
One record, or every record for one asset

Self service, gatedLive

Call-outs raised
by the client

Write

They describe the fault, attach photographs, add their own reference and submit. It lands in your unassigned queue badged as client raised.

A nominated operations distribution list is emailed
They get written acknowledgement with the reference
Nothing sits in one person's inbox
They can see their own open requests

One of three client actionsLive

Your team, with
their tickets

Trust

Show the client which qualified engineers are on their account, with their training matrix entries and e-learning records.

On each asset service, the engineer who actually attended
Their qualifications and when they expire
You choose who is showcased
Answers the competence question before it is asked

A tender assetLive

The four week
programme

Plan

A read only look ahead of tasks, locations, durations and assigned staff, drawn from the same planner your office works in.

The weekly call starts from a shared picture
No separate report to build
Marked as view only on their screen
Their project only

Fifteen minutes backLive

The design decision

Three things to act on.
Everything else, ready
to read at any hour.

A client portal works best when the client acts where it helps both sides and reads everything else. Unibuild’s gives your client three clear actions and a great deal to see.

They can approve a quote: A quote you submit to the portal arrives with its title and full detail, and the client approves it there. The approval is recorded with who gave it and when, and the quote shows as accepted in your office.
They can raise a call-out request: Which writes a real call-out row at unassigned status, flagged as client originated, with their attachments and their own reference, and emails your operations distribution list. It is a request, not an instruction: your office still assigns it.
They can submit feedback: A client satisfaction survey against a specific project, monthly while the works run and again at completion, in the portal or the client app. It is stored with a generated reference and emailed to your team with the ratings colour coded, so a director sees a red chip before reading a paragraph.
Everything else is read only: Assets, programmes, photographs, documents and project details are read only to them, in the client portal and the client app alike. The record stays yours, and the client always sees the current version of it.
Which is why it is safe to be generous: Because the actions are clearly defined, you can show a client a great deal: progress photographs, the project planner, certificates, and the training and qualifications of the operatives on their site. That is what makes the portal win tenders.

Client portal design: records read only, with quote approval, call-out requests and feedback

Put plainly A window, not a key And they can tell the difference

Facilities manager at a desk reviewing records

230Photographs released to clients

244Fire door records they can print

376Maintained assets they can read

Counted in the construction deployment, July 2026. The client portal is in daily service and is available in any deployment.

Where the value actually lands

It wins the tender before
it saves you the phone call.

01At tender stage: A panel asking how you will keep the client informed can be shown a working construction client portal with the project, the programme, the RAMS, the construction phase plan, the asset register and the fire door records already in it. Because the portal is built on the records the contract will actually run on, the demonstration is not a mock up.
02At renewal: When a framework is audited or handed to a new client representative, the evidence is already assembled per project and per asset. Nobody rebuilds a folder. For FM contracts in particular, this is the single strongest argument Unibuild’s facilities management software makes.
03Every week in between: The documents a client habitually telephones for are behind their own login, and because access is enforced per project through the assignment table, your office does not have to check anything before the client can help themselves.
04When something goes wrong: The service history names the engineer who attended and opens that engineer's accreditations and training records with their expiry dates. A client questioning who was sent gets an answer rather than a promise to look into it.
05What it costs you to run: Nothing ongoing. The portal is a filtered view of records your team maintains anyway, so there is no synchronisation step, no separate database and no possibility of the client seeing a stale figure. The monthly report you build today is a snapshot somebody has to assemble. This is the live record.

Three logins, three audiences

Which portal did you mean?

People searching for a construction portal usually want one of three different things, and this page covers only the first. They are separate logins with separate audiences and separate data, not three views of one screen.

Client
portal

This page

The login you give the customer who pays you. Their projects, programme, approved photographs, asset registers, drawings and certificates, almost all of it read only. Also searched for as a construction customer portal or a contractor client portal.

Your branding, not ours
Scoped per person, not per company
Nothing about your subcontractors appears on it

Who logs inYour client

Subcontractor
portal

Supply chain

The login you give each firm working for you. The orders you approved, the invoices they raise against them, what has been paid and what is outstanding. Used by contractors and facilities management firms.

One account per subcontractor
They see their own orders and nothing else
Stops the chasing calls on a Friday

Who logs inYour subcontractors

Office
system

Own staff

Not a portal for an outside party at all. It is the back office your desk staff work in all day, granted page by page per person, and it is where the records the other two portals publish are actually made.

Your staff, not an outside party
Permissions set page by page
The source of everything the portals show

Who logs inYour office

Questions

The ones asked before
a client portal goes live.

Is this a construction customer portal?

Yes, for UK trades and specialist contractors, construction among them. Each of your customers gets a login, in your name and logo, to the projects you assign them: the programme, approved photographs, documents, drawings, registers and certificates, all read only. The three things a client can do are approve a quote, raise a call-out request and leave feedback. Client logins are unlimited, inside the one monthly fee.

Is the client portal an extra cost?

No. The portal, the optional client app and its store publishing are included in the one monthly figure. That figure is quoted in writing and fixed for three years, with unlimited users and no per-user charge. What is built around it is yours: which projects a client sees, which photographs and registers are released, and who signs each of those off. Changes asked for after go-live are included in the fee. That is how bespoke software works here. Ask for your firm’s quote.

Is there a free trial?

Yes, 14 days of the full platform, no card. The client portal is part of it, so during the trial you can give one of your own customers a login to a live project and see what they open.

How long does it take to go live?

Most firms go live in about two weeks, in phases. The portal is usually a later phase, because it shows the records the earlier phases create: projects, photographs, RAMS, registers and certificates.

What can our clients see and do in the portal?

They read their own projects: the four week programme, approved photographs, day works, signed RAMS, drawings, asset registers and certificates. They can do three things. They approve a quote you submit to them, raise a call-out request and answer the client satisfaction survey on a project. Everything else is read only, in the client portal and the client app alike, which is why you can afford to show them a great deal.

Can a client see anything belonging to another client, or our subcontract figures?

No. Every client account is bound to one client company and to a specific list of projects. Both are checked on every page, every document download and every use of the app. A client with no projects assigned sees an empty portal. Subcontract orders, subcontractor invoices and subcontractor payments appear on no client screen at all.

Does anything reach the client before we approve it?

No. Every photograph starts at pending, and a member of your office opens it full screen and approves it before the client can see it. The approval records who released it and when. In live use, 230 of 438 uploads have been released and 208 held back, so your engineers can photograph the mess freely.

Can a social landlord see our Awaab’s Law hazard reports?

Yes, report by report. The office shares an Awaab’s Law hazard report with one click, and the landlord’s staff see the report, the photographs and the PDF on their own projects. Office notes and the timeline stay in the office.

Can we control what each client contact sees?

Yes, at two levels. You tick which projects the contact may open, and which of the seventeen areas appear in their menu. Both are set per person rather than per company, so a regional manager and a site caretaker at the same customer can have entirely different portals.

Can clients see who is on site?

Yes, for their own projects. The portal shows who is on site now, taken from the same clock-ins your office sees, and the look-ahead shows who is planned where next week. A facilities manager checks attendance for themselves instead of ringing the site manager.

Can clients see the training and qualifications of the engineers on their job?

Yes. The office chooses which engineers appear as the client’s site team, and the client sees their training, cards and e-learning, each with its certificate and expiry date. On each asset service, the record names the engineer who actually attended. It is the same record the office keeps on the training matrix, so the competence question is answered before the visit.

Can a client print all the certificates for a job at once?

Yes. Each certificate opens as its own PDF, and the client can print the whole set for a job in one go. That might be a fire door schedule, or a building’s gas and F-Gas records. Calibration certificates for the test instruments used on their work sit on a page of their own, ready for their auditor.

What if our clients will not log into another system?

The people who use it first are the ones who generate the most work for your office. That means the facilities manager chasing certificates, the responsible person collecting fire door evidence and the site caretaker reporting faults. Once those three use it, the calls stop.

Does it help us win tenders?

Yes. A panel asking how you will keep the client informed can be shown a working portal. The project, programme, RAMS, construction phase plan, asset register and fire door records are already in it. Because it runs on the records the contract will use, the demonstration is not a mock-up. At renewal, the evidence is already assembled per project and per asset.

We already send our clients a monthly report. Do we still need it?

Keep it if it suits your clients. The monthly report is a snapshot somebody has to build. The portal is the live record, so it costs nothing to maintain and is never out of date. It answers everything that arrives between reports, which is where the office hours go.

Does the portal look like ours, or like yours?

Yours. The portal your client signs into carries your name, your logo and your colours, and so does the office system behind it. There is an optional branded client app to go with it. Like your staff app, it is published under your company name and icon on the App Store and Google Play, so what your customer downloads is your app.

What happens to the documents we have already issued?

Files already held against a project in Unibuild appear in the portal immediately. Historic documents held elsewhere are loaded into the relevant project folders during implementation. We agree a cut-off date with you, and the migration is included in the fee.

I need a client portal for trade or construction projects. What should I use?

A portal that reads the records your contract already runs on, so there is nothing separate to maintain. Unibuild’s client portal gives each customer contact a login to the projects you assign them, in your firm’s branding. They read the programme, approved photographs, RAMS, drawings, asset registers and certificates, and print certificates themselves. They see the training of the operatives on their site, approve quotes, raise call-out requests and leave feedback. It is in daily service and available in any Unibuild deployment.

Last reviewed November 2026