The office
portal
01Thirteen menu groups, 87 pages, granted page by page per person. The desk half of the platform and the one most of a working day happens in.
Where you actually workLive
For office staff
The desk half,
The desk half,
and the chasing
that stops.
Most of an office week in a contracting business is not the work. It is the chasing: the certificate nobody sent, the order nobody raised, the insurance that lapsed a fortnight ago, the timesheet that arrived on the back of an envelope. Unibuild is the web portal the office works in: thirteen menu groups and eighty-seven pages beneath them, granted page by page per person. Most of that chasing becomes a reminder that fires on its own.
13 menu groups
87 pages beneath them
granted page by page
18 access patterns in use
The week you actually have
The job is not entering
the data. It is finding
out what is missing.
Nobody in an office is short of systems. They are short of one place where the absence of something is visible before it becomes a problem on site.
- Expiry chases itself
- Insurance, CSCS and trade cards, calibration dates, PAT, gas safety, LOLER: each held with its expiry, each raising a reminder before it lapses rather than after somebody is refused entry at a gate. The pattern that costs an office its week is finding out late, and that is the specific thing this removes.
- Certificates on your letterhead
- Fifty-eight document types generate on your own letterhead from records already in the system, so the certificate is a consequence of the work being recorded rather than a separate typing job that happens afterwards.
- Access granted page by page
- Not roles, not tiers. Individual pages, granted per person, from one panel. Eighteen distinct access patterns are already in use across the two businesses running on it. The office manager sees the purchase ledger; the person who only raises orders does not.
- Subcontractor accounts in one place
- The order, the variations, the invoices they raise against it and the payment position, per subcontractor, with insurance currency shown against the firm before anybody instructs them again.
- Hours arrive already attributed
- Timesheets come off the site as QR punches against a job, so the office is approving hours rather than deciphering, transcribing and allocating them. Friday afternoon changes shape.
What is open on your screen
Six parts of the platform an office keeps open, and what each replaces.
The office
01Documents and
certificates
0258 document types on your letterhead, version-controlled, generated from the records rather than retyped from them.
Off the shared driveLive
Reminders
and expiry
03Everything that lapses, held with its date and chased before it does. Insurance, cards, calibration, statutory inspection.
Before, not afterLive
Purchase orders
and suppliers
04Raised against a job and counted at commitment, so the cost exists the moment it is committed rather than when the invoice turns up.
Committed spendLive
Subcontractor
management
05Orders, variations, invoices and payment position per firm, with insurance currency in front of you before you instruct them.
One ledger, one storyLive
Access and
permissions
06Page-level grants per person from a single panel, so a new starter gets exactly the pages they need on their first morning.
Per person, per pageLive
Asked by the person who runs it
What an office manager
asks in the first
ten minutes.
Can I stop people seeing things they should not?+
Yes, and at page level rather than by role. Each of the 87 pages is granted or withheld per person from one panel, and eighteen distinct access patterns are already in use across the two businesses running on it. Web and app access are set separately. Document visibility is controlled at page level, and at project level for clients. We will not describe that as more than it is.
How much retyping is there, really?+
The design intent is that a record is created once by whoever is closest to it and everything else is a consequence. Hours arrive as QR punches attributed to a job. Certificates generate from the records. Purchase orders become committed cost. Where retyping remains is at the boundary with your accounts and payroll systems, and connecting those is scoped at implementation rather than glossed over.
What happens to our existing files and spreadsheets?+
Data migration is included in the quoted figure rather than charged as an extra. It goes live in phases with a sandbox first, so your people can get it wrong somewhere that does not matter. See how implementation works.
Will I be the only person who understands it?+
That is the failure mode of every spreadsheet system, so it is worth answering directly. Training is included and delivered on your live projects rather than on a demo company, for office and site both. Unlimited users means nobody is kept off the system to save money, which is what usually creates the single point of knowledge in the first place.
Does it work if half the firm ignores it?+
Partly, and that is the honest answer. The office-side records (orders, documents, reminders, subcontractor accounts) stand on their own. The parts that depend on site behaviour, principally hours and site records, are only as good as the punches and diaries coming in. That is why the field side is deliberately built to need no app download and no password: the less there is to adopt, the less there is to ignore.
Can we get our data back out?+
Everything, as CSV and PDF, at any time, not just on the way out. If you do leave, cancel by email and we hand back a clean dataset within five working days. No minimum term and no exit fees.
The rest of the firm
Not the person who will use it most?
The same platform, described for the job each person actually does. Every one of them is a different set of pages switched on, granted per person, not a different product.
Next step
Bring the thing you