The variation agreed on site
The ceiling grid change was agreed verbally three weeks ago. It went in, it cost you labour and materials, and nobody has priced it, signed it off or invoiced it.
orcascale.co / trades
QUOTES · JOBS · CERTS · VARIATIONS
Construction & Trades
Run the jobs. Stop running the admin.
OrcaScale builds bespoke quoting, job tracking and certificate systems for UK contractors, subcontractors, M&E and fit-out firms of roughly 5 to 50 people. Built around how your firm prices and runs work, not how a software company thinks you should.
Sound familiar?
A normal week, in most trades businesses we talk to
Not hypotheticals. This is the week that turns up, one way or another, in almost every conversation we have with a contractor.
The certificate nobody uploaded
Handover is Friday and the EICR still is not in. The electrician is on another site, the paperwork is in a van, and the client will not release anything without it.
The six-hour quote
An evening rebuilding a quote in Excel from the last similar job, ringing round for supplier prices. Sent it Thursday. Lost on price to a firm that guessed in twenty minutes.
Pricing that lives in one head
The rates and margins that actually win work sit in one estimator's head. When they are on holiday, or if they ever leave, quoting stops with them.
Jobs across WhatsApp and a whiteboard
Three WhatsApp groups, a whiteboard and a diary. Snagging lists on paper, RAMS in email threads, day rates in someone's notes. You find out a job slipped when the client rings.
Cash flow discovered, not managed
Valuations, retentions and unpaid variations tracked nowhere in particular. The month turns out to have been bad, and the bank balance is the first thing to say so.
None of this is a people problem. It is what happens when a firm that prices and runs work in its own particular way tries to hold that work in tools that were never shaped around it. The fix is a system shaped around your way, and that is the only kind we build.
Real build · Real numbers
What this looked like for a UK construction business
Ducky Construction is our flagship build: a complete quoting and project management platform for a UK construction firm, live and demonstrable today.
Ducky Construction · Bespoke build
Quoting and project management platform that took 8-hour quotes down to 15 minutes
8 hrs → 15 minPer quote
38.75 hrs/wkSaved on admin
2,015 hrs/yrReclaimed for site work
Greg, the owner, was spending around 8 hours building each quote and writing roughly 5 quotes a week: 40 hours every week just on quoting, before supplier emails, progress tracking and chasing client approvals. We took his real categories, his real preset rates and his real workflow, and built the platform around them.
- 4-step quote builder with his own category presets and default rates already in
- One-click professional PDF quotes, with a searchable archive
- Approving a quote auto-creates the job with milestones, no double entry
- Job progress tracking with milestone tick-off and auto-calculated % complete
- A client portal, so clients see progress without ringing for it
- Supplier management with pricing requests and inquiry tracking built in
Want more of a feel for it first? Our homepage carries a full clickable sample system for a fictional Leeds fit-out and M&E contractor: jobs, variations, snagging, certificates, quotes and an ops assistant. It is sample data, clearly labelled as such, but it shows exactly the kind of system we mean.
The honest bit
Should you not just buy Tradify or Jobber?
Maybe. Genuinely. Off-the-shelf job management tools are good software, they cost about as much as a round of bacon rolls, and for plenty of firms they are the right answer.
Here is the position we will give you to your face: if an off-the-shelf tool fits how you work, buy it, and we will tell you so. We have no interest in selling bespoke software to a firm that does not need it. The question is never "is custom better", it is "where does the off-the-shelf shape stop fitting your shape, and what does that gap cost you every week".
Buy off the shelf when
The standard shape fits you
- Your quoting is straightforward: parts, labour, a margin, done
- Your jobs follow a common pattern a template can hold
- You are happy to adapt your process to the tool's process
- One subscription covers what you need without workarounds
Bespoke earns its price when
The workflow is specifically yours
- Your pricing logic does not fit anyone's form fields: presets, rules, margins and exceptions that are your competitive edge
- The work crosses quoting, scheduling, certificates, variations and invoicing in one flow, and every gap between tools is where money leaks
- Changing your process to suit the tool would cost more than the tool saves
- You want the system to be an asset you own, not a subscription you rent
The test costs you nothing either way. Describe your operation to us and we will build a working demo of your system for free. If, while scoping it, an off-the-shelf tool turns out to be the honest answer, we will say so and point you at it.
How it starts
See your system working before you spend anything
Not slides, not a proposal document. A real running system, built around your operation, that you click through before any money changes hands.
STEP 01
Describe your operation
About ten minutes at /builder: how work comes in, how you price it, where the time goes, what you use now, who needs access. Ed reads every application himself.
STEP 02
Ed builds a working demo
If it is a fit, he builds a working demo of your system, usually within 3 to 7 days. Real software with your workflow in it, not a mock-up or a slide deck.
STEP 03
You judge it on a call
You click through it together and decide if it is worth taking further. If it misses, you walk away owing nothing, and you keep the written requirements to take elsewhere.
He only takes on a few free builds a month, so not every application gets one. It is how he decides which projects he can do properly, and it cuts both ways.
After launch
Kept running, without you becoming an IT department
Once your system is live, one optional monthly care plan covers keeping it healthy and moving: you run jobs, we run the software. It is part of the offer, priced with your build quote before you commit to anything.
And it is optional either way. The system is yours: you own the code, the data and the database, whether you take a care plan or not. Full details are in the FAQ.
- Hosting management and uptime monitoring
- Security patches and dependency updates
- Small UI, copy and data changes
- A pool of build hours for new features
- Priority support when something matters
Your quoting, your jobs, your certificates. One system, shaped around your firm.
Apply for a free build
See all case studies