The permit runs out whether you are finished or not.
Permit dates watched before they overrun rather than after. Street works cards checked against the units each operative actually holds. Delivery tickets, tonnages and temperatures recorded against the lay while the wagon is on site. Traffic management booked to the job it is protecting. Around thirty modules on one account, and a surfacing firm turns on the handful it needs.
From the permit going live to the cores coming back.
Surface course, binder, planing, surface dressing or footways: the material differs, the office side does not.
Laying the mat is the part a surfacing firm already has right. It is everything with a clock on it that decides the job: a permit with a fixed end date, asphalt that is only workable for so long after it leaves the plant, a lane rental charge that starts the moment you overrun, and cards that are checked at the cones by somebody who will send a gang home.
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, materials and stock, certification and training records, documents, day works, variations and applications for payment.
Built for surfacing
What surfacing requires, and what Unibuild provides.
A fit-out job and a surfacing job look alike in a database. They stop looking alike at the cones, at the delivery ticket, and on the day a permit expires. Each requirement below is followed by what the platform does about it.
The tradeThe platform
Charged by the day, sometimes by the hour
The permit is the programme
Street works run to a permit with a start date, an end date and conditions attached to it. Overrunning is not a scheduling inconvenience, it is a charge, and on lane rental schemes it is charged by the day or by the hour.
Permits carry conditions that change the method as well as the dates
An extension has to be applied for before the permit expires, not after
Lane rental can run to thousands a day on the busiest routes
Fixed penalty notices follow works that run without cover
Permit dates on the same page as everything else
Permit start and end dates sit against the job on the reminder page with everything else that expires, banded amber before they pass. Nothing applies for an extension for you. What changes is that the date is visible on the Monday rather than discovered on the Friday.
Street works competence is per unit, not per person
The New Roads and Street Works Act qualifications are held as units, and a gang needs the right combination across operatives and supervisors for the specific activity. An inspector checks the card, and the units on it.
Operative and supervisor units are separate qualifications
Units are specific to signing and guarding, excavation, reinstatement and more
Cards are renewable and lapse quietly at five years
A gang without the right unit is a gang sent home
Units held against the person
Every street works unit, card and renewal date sits against the person on one matrix and turns amber before it lapses. Building a gang that carries the right units for the activity becomes a filter rather than a conversation with a supervisor.
Material leaves the plant at a temperature and has a working window measured in tens of minutes. The delivery ticket carries the mix, the tonnage and the time, and all three end up in a valuation and sometimes in a dispute.
Laying and compaction temperatures are specified, and recorded
A wagon held in traffic can arrive outside the specification
Tonnage delivered against tonnage laid is the yield conversation
Tickets accumulate in a cab and are reconciled weeks later
Tickets and temperatures against the lay
Each delivery is booked as a movement against the job as the wagon tips, with its ticket, tonnage, mix and temperature attached. The yield conversation happens on a dated record rather than on a bundle of paper found in a cab.
Cones, signs, barriers, lights and boards are owned or hired in quantity, spread across live sites, and stolen or destroyed routinely. They are also the thing that makes the works legal.
Signing and guarding is specified by the Red Book and Chapter 8
Kit is spread across sites that finish at different times
Hired traffic management keeps charging until it is collected
What is on site has to match what the permit and the layout say
Every layout booked to a job
Traffic management equipment is held as stock against the job it is protecting, and hired items sit with the job they were delivered to, with a standing view of finished jobs that still have kit on them. That list is the one that catches a fortnight of hire nobody was invoicing.
A reinstatement is inspected and can be cored, and it carries a guarantee period running to years. Failures are charged back, and the defence is the record of what was laid, to what depth, at what temperature and with what compaction.
Coring and inspection happen months after the gang has gone
Guarantee periods run for two years, and longer on deeper reinstatements
A failure means returning to a live road under a new permit
The evidence is the record made on the day, or nothing
The lay recorded where it happens
Depths, temperatures, compaction passes and photographs attach to the job and the location on the phone as the mat goes down. A chargeback two years later is answered from the record rather than from a gang who have moved on.
The National Highways Sector Schemes assess quality management for asphalt laying, surface treatments and traffic management, and they are audited annually against the records you keep rather than the assurances you give.
Plant calibration and thermometer records are sampled
Operative training is checked against the specific activity
Losing a scheme removes you from framework tender lists
The audit pack already assembled
Calibration records, training, plant examinations, accident and near miss reporting sit against the year they belong to with an audit trail on each document. The annual assessment becomes a retrieval rather than a fortnight of hunting.
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.
Surface course
Binder and base
Aggregates and chippings
Bitumen and emulsion
Kerbs and ironwork
Pavers and rollers
Lining and markings
Permits and records
The week
An ordinary week, and the record it leaves.
Six entries from a surfacing contractor's day book. Nothing here asks anybody to remember something at five o'clock on a Friday.
Monday, the permit
The permit end date sits on the reminder page with everything else that expires, amber three days out, so an extension is applied for while it can still be granted.
Applied for in time
Building the gang
The gang is built from operatives who hold the street works units for this activity, because the matrix and the labour run are the same account.
Right units on site
The first wagon
The delivery is booked to the job as it tips, with the ticket, the mix, the tonnage and the temperature attached, while the wagon is still on the site.
Ticketed at the tip
Behind the paver
Depths, compaction passes and photographs attach to the location as the mat goes down, before the road is opened.
Recorded as laid
At the cones
A street works inspector asks for the permit, the cards and the units behind them. All of it comes off the phone at the cones.
Inspection passed
Two years on
A reinstatement is cored and questioned. The temperature, the depth and the photographs from the day are all on the job.
Chargeback answered
What it must do
Eight requirements, and an honest answer to each.
Hot, gloved, on a live road with a wagon waiting, in two taps rather than ten. 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 surfacing firm turns on a handful.
Gloved, on a live road, with no signal
The field app carries 24 modules on the phone, granted per person, so an operative sees the three things they need and nothing else. Clock in is a QR scan at the compound. The design constraint throughout was a cold morning and a gloved hand, because a system that takes a minute behind a paver does not get used twice.
Dates that are watched rather than remembered
Reminders and expiry watches twelve registers on one page with a thirty day window, amber inside ninety days and red once passed. Permit end dates sit there alongside cards, calibrations and examinations, because they fail the same way.
Competence held as units, not as a yes or no
The training matrix holds each street works unit against the person with its renewal date, so building a gang that carries the right combination for the activity is a filter in the labour run planner rather than a phone call.
Deliveries recorded where the wagon tips
Assets and inventory holds stock against locations with an append only ledger, and booking a delivery to the job posts the movement rather than leaving a second job for somebody to forget. That is what makes yield visible in cost control.
Traffic management held as stock, not as a cost
Cones, signs, barriers and lights are held against the job they are protecting, and there is a standing view of finished jobs with kit still allocated. That list is what catches hire running on after the road reopened.
Plant with its calibration and examination current
Pavers, rollers, planers and thermometers are one record per physical item in assets and inventory, each with a serial, a QR label and a service history. Calibration sits on the instrument in compliance and certification, which is what a sector scheme audit samples.
The lay evidenced before the road opens
Project and site management holds the site diary, drawings, day works and dated photographs against the job and the location. On a trade where the product is cored two years later, that is the entire defence.
Priced per business, not per operative
Users are unlimited on every plan. Gangs, supervisors, the planner and the directors all sit on the same price, so a summer surge 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 it takes longer than a ticket in a cab, it will lose to the cab.
Site noticeWhere it stops
Four things Unibuild does not do today.
Every one of these has been asked for by a surfacing firm on a demonstration. They are published here rather than discovered in week three.
A street works permit integration
Permit references, dates and conditions are held against the job and watched on the reminder page. There is no connection to a highway authority permit system, nothing is applied for or extended automatically, and no notice is served on your behalf.
Automatic capture from the paver or the plant
Deliveries, temperatures and compaction passes are recorded on the phone. There is no telematics feed from pavers, rollers or thermometers, so the readings are keyed or attached rather than read from the machine.
Reinstatement coring and testing analysis
Core results and test reports are stored against the location they belong to and retrieved by it. The testing itself, and the interpretation of a failure, sits with the laboratory that carried it out.
Lane rental or charge reconciliation
The platform holds permit dates and the actual dates worked, which is what a dispute needs. It does not calculate lane rental charges, reconcile an authority invoice, or model the cost of an overrun.
Why this is hereHiding the gaps wastes both our afternoons. Ask about all four.
The depot
Materials schedule
The depot and the road, and the quirk in each line that breaks ordinary inventory software. Written for the trade rather than for any one firm. Most surfacing contractors will recognise seven or eight of these lines and ignore the rest.
What a UK surfacing contractor holds, and the tracking quirk in each line
Key
Category
Typical items
The tracking quirk
Surface course
Stone mastic asphalt, hot rolled asphalt, thin surface course systems, in several aggregate sizes
Delivered hot to a temperature and workable for tens of minutes. It is never stock: it is bought against a lay and wasted if the lay does not happen
Binder and base
Binder course, base course, recycled and warm mix variants
Ordered by the tonne against a design depth. The difference between tonnes delivered and area laid at depth is the yield conversation on every job
Bitumen and emulsion
Bitumen emulsion for tack coat, bond coats, polymer modified binders, sprayers
Stored and applied at temperature, with its own storage conditions and a shelf life that quietly makes stock unusable
Aggregates and chippings
Type one, coated chippings, dust, sand, surface dressing chippings
Bulk, weighed, and easy to lose between a stockpile and a job unless the movement is booked
Ordered per scheme and per colour. Part drums and preformed shapes left over from one scheme rarely suit the next
Small plant and tools
Wackers, whackers, rammers, saws, blowers, thermometers, hand tools
Portable appliance testing, hand arm vibration exposure and calibration on any thermometer whose readings end up on a record
Permits and records
Permits, conditions, notices, delivery tickets, temperature and compaction records, cards
Not stock, but everything with a date on it. Each one has a clock and a charge attached to running past it
Regulations
The regimes you work under
Surfacing carries a regulatory load that is almost entirely about the road rather than the material: who may open it, when, with what signing, and what happens when the reinstatement fails two years later. This is the reference version, kept factual.
What each regime asks of a surfacing contractor
Regime
What it requires
New Roads and Street Works Act 1991
The framework governing works in the highway. It sets the notice and permit regime, the competence requirements for operatives and supervisors, and the reinstatement standards and guarantee periods that follow the work for years afterwards.
Permit schemes and lane rental
Most highway authorities run a permit scheme, and busy routes may also run lane rental where an overrun is charged by the day or the hour. Conditions attached to a permit can change the working hours and the method as well as the dates.
Street works qualifications
Operatives and supervisors hold qualifications as individual units covering activities such as signing and guarding, excavation and reinstatement. A gang needs the right combination for the activity being carried out, and cards are checked on site by inspectors.
Safety at Street Works and Road Works
The code of practice, widely known as the Red Book, sets out the signing, lighting and guarding required for works in the highway. Compliance is inspected on site and is the most common cause of an immediate stop.
Chapter 8 of the Traffic Signs Manual
Governs temporary traffic management on higher speed and more complex roads, including layouts, taper lengths and signing. It sits alongside the Red Book rather than replacing it.
National Highways Sector Schemes
Sector Scheme 16 covers asphalt laying and Sector Scheme 7 surface treatments, with others covering traffic management and related activities. They are quality management schemes audited annually, and they gate access to most framework work.
Specification for Highway Works and BS EN 13108
The specification sets the materials, laying temperatures, compaction and tolerances for highway work, and the European standard series governs the asphalt mixtures themselves. Temperature and depth records exist to demonstrate compliance with both.
Control of Noise at Work 2005 and vibration
Planing, breaking and compacting put operatives over exposure action values routinely, and night working brings noise limits on the surrounding area as well. Exposure is assessed, controlled and monitored, with health surveillance where the limits require it.
Questions
Requests for information
The questions surfacing firms actually raise on a demonstration, answered on the record. Open one to read the response.
The marketWhat software do UK surfacing contractors use?+
Most run a combination rather than a system: a street works package for notices and permits, a spreadsheet for the gangs, delivery tickets in a cab, and an accounts package behind it. Unibuild does not replace the street works package. It runs everything around it: labour, competence, plant, traffic management stock, records and the commercial position.
PermitsDoes it apply for permits?+
No, and that is worth saying plainly. Permit references, dates and conditions are held against the job and watched on the reminder page so an end date is visible days out rather than on the afternoon it expires. Applying, extending and serving notices stay in your street works system, which is set out in the site notice above.
CompetenceCan it hold street works units rather than just a card?+
Yes, and it is one of the strongest fits for this trade. Each unit is held against the person with its own renewal date, so a gang can be built from people who carry the right combination for the activity. That is a filter in the labour run planner rather than a supervisor remembering who has what.
DeliveriesHow do delivery tickets and temperatures get recorded?+
Each delivery is booked as a movement against the job as the wagon tips, with the ticket photographed and the mix, tonnage and temperature entered. It takes seconds at the tip, which is the only moment it will ever reliably happen. There is no feed from the plant or the thermometer.
Traffic managementCan it track cones and signs across live sites?+
Yes, and it is where a lot of money quietly leaks. Traffic management is held as stock against the job it is protecting, and hired items sit with the job they went to. There is a standing view of finished jobs with kit still allocated, which is the list that catches hire running on after the road reopened.
AdoptionWill gangs actually use it?+
Only if what you ask of them is small. The realistic answer is to grant each operative three things on the phone, clock in, booking a delivery and RAMS acceptance, and leave everything else to the office. Permissions are granted per person, so that is a configuration rather than a compromise.
ReinstatementsWhat happens when a reinstatement is cored two years later?+
The temperature, the depth, the compaction passes and the photographs from the day sit against the job and the location, so the chargeback is answered from a dated record rather than from a gang who have moved on. That is the single strongest argument for recording the lay while the road is still closed.
PricingHow is it priced, and do you charge per operative?+
Users are unlimited and the price does not change when you take people on, which matters on a trade that doubles in the summer. There is no published rate card, because a twenty person firm running three modules and a hundred and fifty person firm running twenty are not the same product. Pricing is worked out on the demonstration.
SignalWhat happens when there is no signal on a rural road?+
The field app is built for patchy coverage, which on a night shift on an A road is the normal condition rather than an edge case. Test it on your worst site rather than your best one, because that is the site that decides whether the data is trustworthy six months later.
RolloutDo we have to move everything across at once?+
No, and it is usually a poor idea. Most surfacing firms start with competence and traffic management stock, because those are the two that cost most, and add delivery records once the first is habit. Cataloguing everything you own before anyone uses the system is the most reliable way to kill the project.
Return slip
Come and try it on your own scheme.
Half an hour, on your own jobs and your own gangs. Bring a live permit and we will set it up in front of you. Unlimited users, never per seat, and fourteen days to try it without a card.
