Every appliance held as an asset with its own service history, its next date and the engineer who signed the last one. ACS competence held per category rather than per person, so who can take a job is a filter. Commissioning readings, gas rates and flush certificates captured on the phone in the plant room. Around thirty modules on one account, and a heating and plumbing firm turns on the handful it needs.
Boiler replacement, plant room installation, hot and cold water services, or a book of service contracts: the work differs, the office side does not.
Getting the appliance in and running is the part a heating and plumbing firm already has right. What costs money is everything the job drags behind it: a commissioning record that the warranty depends on, an engineer whose ticket for that appliance category runs out in April, an analyser whose calibration ran out last month, and an annual date that arrives whether anybody diarised it or not.
Unibuild is construction management software for UK contractors, built inside a contracting business rather than sold into one. One account carries the labour run, plant and equipment registers, van stock, certification and training records, maintained assets and their service history, documents, day works, variations and applications for payment.
Built for heating and plumbing
What heating and plumbing requires, and what Unibuild provides.
A fit-out job and a boiler replacement look alike in a database. They stop looking alike when somebody asks which engineer was allowed to touch that appliance, what the flue gas ratio read on the day, and when the next check falls due. Each requirement below is followed by what the platform does about it.
The tradeThe platform
Per category, not per person
Competence is held against the appliance, not the engineer
The business is on the Gas Safe Register. The engineer carries categories, and they do not expire together. One man can be in date for central heating and water heaters and out of date for cookers, and the card in his pocket is the only place that is written down.
ACS categories renew on a five year cycle, each with its own date
Unvented hot water, LPG and commercial categories sit outside the domestic core
F-Gas handling and MCS bring a second and third set of dates for heat pump work
Sending the wrong man is not an inconvenience, it is unregistered work
One grid, every category, warned before it lapses
The training matrix holds each category against the person with its own expiry, banded amber inside ninety days and red once passed. Who can take tomorrow's commercial boiler service is a filter rather than a phone call and a photograph of a card.
The commissioning record has to be made where the work is
Gas rate, working and standing pressure, the flue gas ratio, the flush and the inhibitor, the pressure test, the disinfection sample. All of it is captured standing in front of the appliance, and all of it is what the warranty, the handover and next year's service hang on.
A manufacturer's warranty depends on a completed commissioning checklist
Readings written on a job sheet reach the office days later, or never
The customer's copy is often wanted before the engineer leaves
Year five is when somebody asks for the record, not week one
A finished certificate the moment it is saved
Documents and certificates issues 58 document types on your own letterhead, with the readings, the engineer's printed name and registration number, both signatures and the next date on the face of it. It is a document when it is saved, not a form waiting to be typed up.
Installation and service do not run on the same clock
The contract side is measured, valued and applied for. The service side is a book of assets, each with its own anniversary, invoiced on renewal and interrupted by breakdowns. Most software is built for one of those and treats the other as an afterthought.
Installation runs on programme, variations, retention and applications
Service runs on assets, schedules, visit records and renewal dates
The same engineers move between both in the same week
Margin is made and lost in different places on each
Both sides on one account, sharing the same people
Maintained assets holds the service book as a register with a twelve month PPM pattern per asset, while applications for payment and rate valuations run the contract side. The labour and the cost land in the same place, so a week split between the two still adds up.
Fittings, valves, flue components and sundries live in the back of a van and are used without anybody booking them out. Alongside them sit items that carry a serial number and a warranty: boilers, cylinders, pumps, press tools and the analyser.
Small fittings are counted by the hundred and reconciled by nobody
A cylinder or boiler carries a serial that has to reach the record
Stock moves van to van on a Friday and is never seen again
Buying a second one is cheaper than the hour spent looking
Bin locations, serials and an append only ledger
Assets and inventory holds stores and van stock by item with bin locations and serial numbers, and every movement is an entry rather than an edit. Vehicles and fleet carries the vans themselves, their MOT and service dates and the daily walkround.
A flue gas analyser out of calibration produces numbers that look exactly like the numbers from one in calibration. The same is true of pressure gauges, gas detectors and torque tools. The certificate is worth what the instrument behind it was worth on the day.
Analysers are calibrated annually and the certificate is asked for
An instrument out of date puts every reading it took in question
Instruments are shared, and the last man to use one is not recorded
The audit asks for the instrument record, not the appliance record
The instrument register, watched like every other date
Compliance and certification holds calibration records as a register with due dates carried forward and a forward warning, alongside PAT, gas and water hygiene. The instrument is an asset with a history rather than a serial number somebody remembers.
Some anniversaries arrive whether you diarised them or not
An annual gas safety check is a duty with a date on it. So is an F-Gas leak check, a legionella monitoring round and a TMV service. A missed renewal on the commercial side costs a customer. A missed date on this side is a different conversation entirely.
Regulation 36 requires a check on each relevant appliance and flue every twelve months
The record is kept for at least two years and the tenant gets a copy within 28 days
F-Gas leak check intervals are set by the charge in the system
Monitoring dates come out of a written scheme and land per location
Twelve expiry registers, on one page, watched
Reminders and expiry puts every register that carries a date on one page, assigned to a person and warned before it passes. Nothing depends on a wall planner or on the one person in the office who has always known.
Counted in the deployment Unibuild was built on, July 2026: one expiry page carrying 376 assets, 141 subcontractor certificates, 84 accreditations, 80 health assessments, 55 instruments and 9 vehicles.
Appliances and plant
Pipe, fittings and valves
Chemicals and consumables
Instruments
Tools and small plant
Vans and access
Renewables and heat pumps
Records and certificates
The week
An ordinary week in a heating and plumbing firm, and the record it leaves.
Six entries from a heating contractor's day book. Nothing here asks anybody to remember something at five o'clock on a Friday.
Monday, the plant room
A commercial boiler goes in. Serial, gas rate, working pressure and the flue gas ratio are entered against the appliance on the phone, with a photograph of the data plate, before the engineer leaves site.
Certificate issued on site
Tuesday, the office
A commercial service is booked for next week. The matrix answers who holds the category in date, and the job goes to a man who can legally sign for it.
Allocated on competence
The van
Two cylinders and a box of press fittings are booked out to a van against the job rather than off the shelf and into the fog. The serials follow them.
Issued to the job
Wednesday, the breakdown
A no heat call on a maintained asset. The engineer opens the asset on his phone and reads its full service history and last year's readings before he gets out of the van.
Arrived knowing
Thursday, the extra
A run of pipework is found buried and has to be rerouted. It is priced and signed on site as a variation against the job, with photographs, rather than argued about at the valuation.
Signed before it was done
Eleven months later
The asset's next check surfaces on the expiry page thirty days out, assigned to a person, with the customer, the appliance and last year's certificate attached.
Booked before it lapsed
The test
Eight things heating and plumbing software has to do.
In a plant room, in a loft, kneeling under a sink, often with no signal and usually with one hand. A system that cannot meet these eight gets abandoned inside a month, and that is a failure of design rather than of discipline. Unibuild is around thirty modules on one account, and a heating and plumbing firm turns on a handful.
Readings taken where the appliance is
The field app carries 24 modules on the phone, granted per person, so an engineer sees the three things he needs and nothing else. Commissioning readings, photographs and signatures are captured in front of the appliance, because a job sheet in a van door pocket is a record that has not happened yet.
Competence held per category with its own date
The training matrix holds ACS categories, unvented tickets, F-Gas handling certificates, MCS, water hygiene and card schemes against the person, each with its own expiry, amber inside ninety days. Allocation becomes a filter rather than a memory test.
An asset register that carries a service history
Maintained assets holds every appliance you look after with its attachments, its twelve month PPM pattern and every visit in date order with photographs. The asset and its history open on the engineer's phone in about four seconds.
Documents that are finished when they are saved
Documents and certificates issues 58 document types on your own letterhead with an audit trail on each one. A gas safety record carries the appliance by appliance status, the defects, the engineer's registration number, both signatures and the next date due.
Stock that lives in twelve vans
Assets and inventory holds stores and van stock by item with bin locations, serial numbers and an append only ledger, so a cylinder is issued to a job rather than lost between two vehicles on a Friday afternoon.
Extra work priced where it is agreed
Onsite quotes and variations are raised, priced, photographed and signed on site against the job, then converted. On this trade the extra is usually found behind something, and the argument about it happens weeks later unless it is papered on the day.
Every date on one page, assigned
Reminders and expiry carries twelve expiry registers on one page: gas checks, F-Gas leak checks, calibration, PAT, insurance, tickets and vehicle dates, each assigned and warned ahead. Compliance and certification holds the records those dates belong to.
Priced per business, not per engineer
Users are unlimited on every plan. Engineers, the office, the supervisor and the directors all sit on the same price, so taking on four more people for a boiler replacement programme does not change the bill. Pricing is set against the size and shape of the business rather than published as a rate card, and the pricing page explains how that is worked out.
Governing clauseIf the record is not made in front of the appliance, it is made from memory in the van.
The stores
What a heating and plumbing firm holds
The stores, the vans and the customer's plant room, and the quirk in each line that breaks ordinary inventory software. Written for the trade rather than for any one firm. Most heating and plumbing contractors will recognise seven or eight of these lines and ignore the rest.
What a UK heating and plumbing contractor holds, and the tracking quirk in each line
Key
Category
Typical items
The tracking quirk
Appliances and plant
Combination and system boilers, commercial modular boilers, unvented cylinders, calorifiers, plate heat exchangers, pumps
Each one carries a serial and a warranty that starts on commissioning, so the record is the difference between a free repair and a chargeable one in year four
Pipe, fittings and valves
Copper, steel, MLCP and plastic, press fittings, compression, isolation and commissioning valves, TMVs, flue components
Counted by the hundred, worth pennies each, and the single biggest source of stock that walks. Sized and material specific, so two boxes that look alike are not interchangeable
Carries a COSHH assessment and a shelf life, and the dose used on a system is part of the water treatment record rather than a stores movement
Instruments
Flue gas analysers, manometers, pressure test gauges, gas leak detectors, thermometers, TDS and inhibitor test kits
Calibrated annually, and every certificate produced with one inherits its calibration status on the day. An expired analyser puts a year of readings in question
Tools and small plant
Press tools and jaws, pipe freezers, power flushing machines, magnetic filters, core drills, hot works kit
Press jaws have a service interval measured in cycles, not months, and the machine records it. Most registers have nowhere to put a cycle count
The van is a stock location that drives home every night, so what is on it is only knowable if somebody books stock to it rather than off it
Renewables and heat pumps
Air and ground source heat pumps, buffer vessels, cylinders with coils, solar thermal, controls and sensors
Brings a second regime with it: refrigerant charge, leak check intervals, scheme registration per installation and a handover pack the customer needs for a grant
Customer plant you maintain
Appliances under contract, plant room assets, water systems, TMVs, tanks, calorifiers, dosing pots
Not your stock and not your site, but your liability, and every one of them has an anniversary that arrives whether the contract was renewed or not
Records and certificates
Gas safety records, commissioning checklists, flush and inhibitor certificates, disinfection results, warranties, F-Gas logbooks
Not stock, but the deliverable. Each one attaches to an appliance and a customer rather than to a folder, because that is how it will be asked for
Regulations
The regimes a heating and plumbing firm works under
Few trades carry as many separate registration schemes as this one, and almost none of them are about how a joint is made. They are about who made it, what it was set to, and whether any of that can be shown a year later. This is the reference version, kept factual.
What each regime asks of a heating and plumbing contractor
Regime
What it requires
Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998
Work on gas fittings and appliances may only be carried out by a business on the Gas Safe Register, with individual engineers holding current competence for the categories they work in. Regulation 36 requires an annual check on each relevant appliance and flue in rented property, a record kept for at least two years, and a copy given to the tenant within 28 days.
ACS competence and the categories behind it
Registration is of the business. Competence is of the person, assessed by category and renewed on a five year cycle: the domestic core, central heating and water heaters, cookers, fires and heaters, and combustion performance analysis, with separate routes for commercial, LPG and unvented hot water. Which categories an engineer holds decides which appliances they may legally work on.
Building Regulations Parts G, H, J, L and P
Sanitation and hot water safety including unvented systems, drainage and waste, combustion appliances and flues, conservation of fuel and power, and the electrical work around an installation. Gas work is usually notified through the competent person scheme rather than to building control, which means the record has to exist to be notified from.
Commissioning and manufacturer warranty
An appliance is commissioned against the manufacturer's checklist, with the gas rate, burner pressures and combustion readings entered and signed. Extended warranties are conditional on that checklist being completed and on an annual service being carried out and evidenced. The commissioning record is the document that fails to exist when the claim is made.
Water Supply (Water Fittings) Regulations 1999
Fittings must not waste, misuse, contaminate or unduly consume water, certain installations must be notified to the water undertaker before work starts, and backflow protection is set by fluid category. Approved contractor schemes let a competent business self certify, which is only worth holding if the certificates can be produced.
BS 7593 and system water quality
The code of practice for cleaning, flushing, dosing and then checking the water in a heating system, with the inhibitor concentration verified at each annual service. Boiler warranties commonly reference it, so the flush certificate and the test result are part of the appliance record rather than a courtesy.
ACOP L8, HSG274, BS 8558 and BS EN 806-4
The water hygiene regime. A written scheme produces monitoring dates, temperature checks, tank inspections and TMV servicing, and a new, altered or repaired installation is disinfected with a certificate naming the standard, the contact time and the results before and after.
Retained UK F-Gas Regulation and MCS
Heat pump and refrigerant work needs company certification and personnel handling certificates, with leak checks at intervals set by the charge in the system and a logbook covering gas added or recovered and who checked it. Grant funded installations also need scheme certification and registration of each installation.
CDM 2015, CIS and the VAT reverse charge
Heating and plumbing work on construction projects sits under CDM, and payments between contractors fall under the Construction Industry Scheme with deductions at verified rates and the domestic reverse charge for VAT on most business to business supplies.
On the record
Questions heating and plumbing firms ask
The questions heating and plumbing firms actually raise on a demonstration, answered on the record. Open one to read the response.
The marketWhat software do UK heating and plumbing contractors use?+
The market splits in two. There are field service apps built around a diary and a job sheet, strong on dispatching an engineer and weak on the commercial side of a contract. There are construction systems that run contracts well and have no idea what a maintained asset is. Unibuild sits nearer the second, with a real asset register and PPM alongside the contract side. If your whole business is same day domestic call outs, say so early and we will be straight with you about the fit.
CompetenceCan it hold ACS categories separately rather than one Gas Safe date?+
Yes, and it is one of the strongest fits for this trade. Each category is its own record against the person with its own expiry, so an engineer in date for central heating and water heaters and out of date for cookers shows exactly that. Unvented tickets, F-Gas handling certificates, MCS, water hygiene and card schemes sit on the same grid. It holds the records and warns on the dates. It does not decide who is competent, and it does not check the Gas Safe Register.
CertificatesDoes it produce a gas safety record we can hand over?+
It produces the document on your own letterhead, carrying the appliance by appliance safe to use status, the defects, the engineer's printed name and registration number, the issue date, the next check due date and both signatures. It is finished the moment it is saved. It does not email it to the tenant automatically, and it is not a Gas Safe branded form.
CommissioningWhere do the commissioning readings go?+
Onto the appliance, on the phone, in the plant room. Gas rate, working and standing pressure, combustion readings, the flush and inhibitor, the pressure test and the photographs attach to the asset and the job, so next year's engineer opens last year's numbers before he touches anything. They are typed or photographed rather than pulled off the analyser, which is covered in the limits below.
Service contractsWill it chase the annual services, or just show them?+
It chases them. Every asset carries its service schedule, completing a visit records that visit against the asset, and the next due date follows from it. The reminder engine watches those dates and surfaces what is coming rather than waiting to be asked. A twelve month PPM pattern is held on the asset itself as month columns, so a quarterly and an annual on the same plant do not need two systems.
DesignDoes it do heat loss calculations or pipe sizing?+
No. That is design work and it belongs in the tools your engineers already trust. What the platform does is hold the estimate, the price list, the fit times and the markup behind a quotation, so the commercial side of the job is priced consistently once the design is settled. If somebody tells you their job management system does heat loss properly, ask to see it against a real property.
VansCan we see what stock is on each van?+
Yes, if stock is issued to the van and to the job rather than taken off a shelf. Items are held with bin locations and serial numbers and every movement is an append only entry. That last part matters more than it sounds: the reason van stock is unknowable in most firms is not the software, it is that nothing was ever booked out, and no system fixes that on its own.
Both sidesWe do contract installation and maintenance. Does that need two systems?+
No, and it is the reason most firms of this shape end up here. The contract side runs on quotations, variations, valuations and applications for payment with retention carried. The maintenance side runs on assets, schedules and visits. The same people, timesheets and costs feed both, so a week split between a boiler replacement programme and a book of services still reconciles at month end.
AdoptionWill engineers actually use it?+
Only if what they are asked to do is short. The realistic answer is to grant each engineer three things on the phone: clock in, the asset with its service record, and the certificate. Everything else stays with the office until the first three are habit. A rollout that puts twelve modules on a phone in week one is the most reliable way to kill the project.
PricingHow is it priced, and do you charge per engineer?+
Users are unlimited and the price does not change when you take people on, which matters on a trade that grows a team for a programme and shrinks it again. There is no published rate card, because a ten person firm running four modules and a sixty person firm running twenty are not the same product. Pricing is worked out on the demonstration.
Neighbouring tradesHow does this differ from your M and E page?+
They sit beside each other rather than against each other. M and E and building services is the whole building services picture including the electrical side, safe isolation and larger maintenance operations. This page is the wet side: gas appliances, heating systems, hot and cold water services and the certification that goes with them. Temporary site services is a third thing again, the trade the platform was originally written for.
Honest limits
Where it stops for heating and plumbing
Four things a heating and plumbing firm asks for that are not in the platform as it stands. Unibuild is bespoke, so each one is a scoping conversation rather than a dead end: customer specific modules, fields, rules and reports are written on request and included in the monthly fee.
Notifying the workRecords and certificates are produced and held. Nothing is submitted to Gas Safe, a competent person scheme, building control or the water undertaker.
Registering a warrantyThe serial, the install date and the commissioning readings are held against the appliance. The registration with the manufacturer is still made by your office.
Reading the analyserCombustion readings are typed or photographed against the appliance. There is no link to a flue gas analyser, and nothing is pulled off the instrument.
Sequencing a day of call outsThe labour run plans who is on which job weeks and months ahead. It does not dispatch reactive calls dynamically or route a van between them.
Other trades
Not quite your line of work?
The same platform, written for the trade that runs it. Each of these is a different set of modules switched on rather than a different product.
Return slip
Half an hour, on your own plant.
Bring one live installation and one service contract, and we will set both up in front of you on the call. If the fit is wrong for how your firm works, we would rather tell you in the first ten minutes than in month three.
