Unibuild was written in 2016 for a UK provider of temporary power, site electrics, water and welfare, and it has run that business every working day since. Rates held per job. The measure captured on site in the week the work was done, and signed there. Stock picked against the serial numbers you actually hold. Isolation permits, chlorination certificates and applications built from work already approved.
Temporary power, water and welfare, or permanent mechanical and electrical: the work differs, and the shape of the record does not.
A services contractor works on somebody else's site, on somebody else's programme, and gets paid for what somebody agrees was done. The margin is decided at tender, on rates, before anyone turns up. Everything after that is measurement: what went out, what was installed, what was actually done that week, what came back, and what state it came back in. Lose any one of those records and the money quietly goes with it.
Unibuild is bespoke business software for UK trades and specialist 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.
The fit
What site services and M&E work require, and what Unibuild provides.
This is the one trade on this site where the answer is not that the platform adapts well. Advanced estimating, the rate valuations, the bin locations, the signed delivery and collection notes, the damage recharge and the retention engine all exist because a temporary site services business asked for them, one problem at a time, over a decade. Each requirement below is followed by what the platform does about it.
The tradeThe platform
Priced before anyone turns up
You tender on rates, so the margin is set at the estimate rather than on site. If the price file behind it was last reviewed two years ago, nobody finds out until the job is finished and the numbers are history.
Sectional build ups price from your own catalogues and price lists, with kits that price a whole assembly on one line. The markup is snapshotted onto the estimate when it is created, so a later rate change cannot alter a tender already issued, and per line locking leaves negotiated rates alone during a bulk reprice.
Stock leaves the store hatch without a serial number or a bin location. What is out on hire, what is in for service and what has quietly gone missing are three different questions in three different places.
Assets and inventory picks against real bin quantities and real serial numbers, splitting across bins and refusing to over allocate. The driver leaves with a delivery note the receiver signs, and confirming the note moves the stock and the asset location together.
Equipment sits on a site that finished a month ago until someone remembers to ask. Damage on return is absorbed by your yard rather than recharged to the contract it came from.
The standing view of jobs finishing with equipment still allocated to them is a working list the store goes through rather than a notification nobody reads. Damage flagged on return recharges against the site that had it, turning a quiet loss into a line somebody has to answer for.
Isolation happens on a verbal instruction. If an accident happens, proving what was isolated, when, and by whom is a matter of memory against a claim.
The safe isolation permit runs the four part structure engineers recognise: authorise, accept, sign off, cancel. Points of isolation and points of earthing are named, switching schedules cover sequenced isolations, and limitation of access forms sit alongside.
Electrical and water certificates are filled on paper or typed into a standalone package. Finding the EICR for a distribution board three years later is a search through three folders.
The EIC, EICR, Minor Works and chlorination certificates are produced in the platform, branded to your firm. Every certificate sits against the job, the client, the site, the permit and the instrument used to test it, on your own letterhead.
Counted in the deployment Unibuild was built on, July 2026: 1,842 asset records tracked across 14 store bins, 312 isolation permits issued, and 94 test instruments on active calibration clocks.
Generation and supply
Distribution and outlets
Site lighting
Temporary water
Welfare and hygiene
Mechanical and plant
Instruments and testing
Permits and certificates
The week
An ordinary week in a site services firm, and the record it leaves.
Six entries from a site services day book. Every one of them is a record that either gets made where the work happens or does not get made at all, and the difference shows up in the valuation rather than on site.
Monday, at the store
A distribution board, four festoon runs and a transformer are picked for a new site against the serial numbers actually on the shelf. The pick splits across two bins and cannot over allocate, and the driver leaves with a note the receiver will sign.
Picked on serials
Tuesday, on site
The supply goes in and the certificate is produced on the phone, branded to your firm, with the instrument that tested it and its calibration status on the same record.
Issued the same day
Wednesday
An engineer needs to work on a live board. The permit runs the four part structure he will recognise as the real thing, authorise, accept, sign off and cancel, naming the points of isolation, the points of earthing and where the danger signs went.
Made dead, on the record
Thursday, before he leaves
The week's measure goes in against that contract's own rate card, capped at what the section was priced for. The site manager signs it on the screen having just watched the work, with his typed name and a remark.
Signed where it happened
A job finishing
The standing view of jobs finishing with equipment still allocated to them puts three items on the collection list. One comes back damaged, flagged against the site it came from and recharged rather than absorbed.
Back into stock
Month end
The application is assembled from measures already signed and already approved. Retention runs as a figure rather than as a hope, and approved work nobody claimed sits in a queue instead of disappearing.
Nothing rebuilt
The test
Eight things site services software has to do.
In a van, at a store hatch, on a live site with a client's man waiting. 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 30+ modules on one account, and a services contractor turns on a handful.
A rate card per job, not per company
Every job carries its own labour rate card across all rate types, its own markup and its own assigned price list. Two jobs running the same week value the same hours differently, correctly, without anybody having to remember which is which. On this trade that is the normal case rather than the exception, which is why it is the first thing on the list.
The measure taken where the work was done
Rate valuations capture the measure on site, in the week, by the person who did it, priced from that contract's rate card. The client signs on the screen before anyone leaves, and photographs attach to the claim. A measure taken in the van on Friday is a different document in every way that matters.
Over claiming prevented, not corrected
Claimable hours for each section are capped at the estimated allowance less what has already been approved, and the cap applies in the app at the point of entry. A claim inside the allowance can approve automatically. One that exceeds it is refused before it reaches your client's surveyor, which is the only point at which refusing it is cheap.
Stock picked on the serial, not on a number
Assets and inventory picks against real bin quantities and real serial numbers, splitting across bins and refusing to over allocate. The receiver signs on handover, and confirming the note moves the stock and the asset location together. The movement and the record are one action rather than two, which is the whole difference from a spreadsheet.
Collections before the kit is written off
There is a standing view of jobs finishing with equipment still allocated to them. It is a working list the store goes through rather than a notification nobody reads. Damage is flagged against the site it came back from and recharged, which turns a category of quiet loss into a line somebody has to answer for.
Isolation permits your engineers recognise
The safe isolation permit runs the four part structure of the real thing: authorise, accept, sign off, cancel. Points of isolation and points of earthing are identified, switching schedules cover sequenced isolations, the questions are configurable from the office, and limitation of access forms sit alongside. This is what health and safety looks like when it was written by people who had to use it.
Certificates produced, not filed
The EIC, the EICR and the Minor Works Certificate are produced in the platform, branded to your firm. Chlorination certificates record free chlorine, total chlorine and turbidity before and after, the contact time and the standard worked to, with tester and acceptor both signing. Documents and certificates issues 58 document types on your own letterhead.
Priced per business, not per engineer
Users are unlimited on every plan. One monthly figure covers everything, sized to the business when it is quoted and fixed for three years. A summer of extra labour never changes the fee, and the pricing page explains how it is worked out.
The store
What a site services and M&E firm holds
The store, the yard and whatever is currently standing on somebody else's site, and the quirk in each line that breaks ordinary inventory software. Written for the trade rather than for any one firm. Most services contractors will recognise seven or eight of these lines and ignore the rest.
What a UK site services, electrical and mechanical contractor holds, and the tracking quirk in each line
MOT, service, insurance and driver licence checks on four different clocks, and the van is also a store location nobody counts
Regulations
The regimes a site services firm works under
Temporary electrical and temporary water each carry their own compliance estate, and a firm doing both carries both. Unibuild records, evidences and prompts, and the duty stays exactly where it always was. This is the reference version, kept factual.
What each regime asks of a site services, electrical and mechanical contractor
Regime
What it requires
Electricity at Work Regulations 1989
Regulations 12 and 13 require suitable means of cutting off the supply and isolating equipment, with adequate precautions against equipment made dead becoming charged. In practice the permit is the record: a declaration that the equipment was made dead, isolated and earthed, identifying the specific points of isolation, the specific points of earthing and where the danger signs were placed.
BS 7671
The wiring regulations govern installation, inspection and testing, and the certificate is the deliverable rather than a by-product. The EIC, the EICR and the Minor Works Certificate are produced in the platform, branded to your firm, and held with the job, the labour, the client and site record, the isolation permit, the instrument used and the audit trail.
ACOP L8 and HSG274
The water hygiene and legionella regime. A written scheme produces monitoring dates, and those dates are held per client, per project and per named location, assigned to a person, warned thirty days ahead and turning red once late. The risk assessment and the written scheme itself remain the work of your competent person.
BS 8558 and BS EN 806-4
Disinfection before a system is put into service. The chlorination certificate names the standard worked to, records the contact time, and holds the before and after readings as individual pass or fail results, with the bacterial sample taken after flushing and both tester and acceptor signing.
PUWER 1998
Work equipment must be suitable, maintained in efficient working order and inspected where safety depends on its condition. For a services contractor that covers generators, transformers, pumps, jetting kit and every power tool, each held as an individual record with its own service history and repair history.
LOLER 1998
Where you hold lifting accessories such as slings or chain blocks, the movement record identifies which physical unit was on which site and when, and thorough examination reports are held against the unit as attachments.
Gas and refrigerant, on the mechanical side
A firm carrying mechanical work sits under Gas Safe registration and the annual check under regulation 36 of the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, and under the retained UK F-Gas Regulation with refrigerant type, charge weight and calculated carbon dioxide equivalent held per asset, with leak checks on a frequency band you set. See M&E and building services for the detail.
CDM 2015
You are a contractor on somebody else's site, which shapes almost everything. Project records carry the F10 notification flag, method statements and construction phase plans are held against the job, and permits, toolbox talks and site records attach to the same project. See the CDM 2015 guide for the duty holder detail.
Calibration traceability
Every test instrument carries its make, model, serial number, the engineer holding it and its calibration expiry, warned thirty days out and coloured red once passed. The calibration house's certificate attaches to the record that carries the date, so the instrument and its evidence are the same object.
On the record
Questions site services firms ask
The questions site services, electrical and mechanical firms actually raise on a demonstration, answered on the record. Open one to read the response.
RatesOur rates differ from job to job. Can every job carry its own rate card?+
Yes. Every job carries its own labour rate card across all rate types, its own markup and its own assigned price list. Two jobs running in the same week value the same hours differently, correctly, without anybody having to remember which is which.
MeasuresCan the week's measure be signed by the client on site?+
Yes. Rate valuations capture the measure on site, in the week, by the person who did the work, priced from that contract's rate card. The site representative signs on the screen with their typed name, the date and a remark, and photographs attach to the claim. Where a client prefers not to sign on a phone, the valuation still runs.
ClaimsWhat stops a supervisor claiming more than was priced?+
On jobs that came from an estimate, the claimable hours for each section are capped at the estimated allowance less what has already been approved. A claim inside the allowance can approve automatically. One that exceeds it is refused in the app at the point of entry, before it reaches your client's surveyor.
ApplicationsIs the monthly application built from that approved work?+
Yes. The application is assembled from measures already signed and approved, so nothing is rebuilt at month end. Retention runs as a figure on the account, and approved work nobody has claimed sits on a list rather than disappearing.
IsolationCan we prove what was isolated, when and by whom?+
Yes. The safe isolation permit runs the four part structure engineers recognise: authorise, accept, sign off, cancel. Points of isolation and points of earthing are named, switching schedules cover sequenced isolations, and limitation of access forms sit alongside. Each permit is held against the job, so the record is there if an accident is ever questioned.
CertificatesDoes it produce electrical and water certificates?+
Yes. The EIC, the EICR and the Minor Works Certificate are produced in the platform, branded to your firm. Chlorination certificates record free chlorine, total chlorine and turbidity before and after, the contact time and the standard worked to, with tester and acceptor both signing. Each certificate sits against the job, the client, the site, the permit and the instrument that tested it.
StoresWe already have a stores spreadsheet. What does this add?+
A record of what physically moved, because the movement and the record are the same action. The picker selects the serial number, the receiver signs the delivery note, and the stock and the asset location move together. A pick can split across bins without over allocating, and it shows which bin the stock came out of.
CollectionsHow do we stop plant being left on finished jobs?+
A standing view lists jobs that are finishing with equipment still allocated to them. It is a working list the store goes through, so the kit still out is visible to everyone. Damage on return is flagged against the site it came from and recharged rather than absorbed.
Price fileHow much of our price file do we have to load?+
The loading is done for you. Your existing file is mapped to categories, units and suppliers, imported, and then reviewed with you. A page then counts every item still missing a fit time, a price or a rate, so completeness is a number you can chase.
The marketWhat software do UK temporary site services contractors use?+
Most run a hire management package for the kit, an accounts package, and spreadsheets for rates, measures and applications, with the measure on paper until Friday. Unibuild was written in 2016 for a UK temporary power, water and welfare provider and has run that business every working day since. A building services contractor now runs on the same platform, using a different half of it. How it compares with four other systems.
PricingHow is it priced, and do you charge per engineer?+
No. Users are unlimited on every plan. One monthly figure covers everything, sized to the business when it is quoted and fixed for three years, so a summer of extra labour never changes the fee. How pricing works.
RolloutDo we have to move everything across at once?+
No. Most services firms start with whichever end is costing most, commonly the measure and the valuation, or the store and its collections, and add the rest from there. Your rates, jobs, store and open applications are brought across for you. Most firms go live in about two weeks, in phases, and the 14-day trial is the full platform with no card needed.
Half an hour, on your own rate card and your own store. Bring one live job and last month's valuation, and we will set it up in front of you. Unlimited users, never per seat, and fourteen days to try it without a card.
