Why BRCKS exists

The problem we set out to solve

On a typical UK residential or small-commercial job, decisions, photos, variations and delays are buried in WhatsApp threads, voicemails and site notebooks. When a client disputes a cost, an insurer asks for evidence, or a warranty claim surfaces two years later, the answer exists — but nobody can find it.

Our answer: don't change the behaviour, capture it

BRCKS gives every company a dedicated WhatsApp number. The site team messages it exactly the way they'd message anyone else. BRCKS turns those messages into a dated, searchable project record: site diary, snag list, RFI log, variation register, file store and client portal — all built automatically.

Who it's for

UK builders, electricians, plumbers, solar installers, HVAC engineers, AV specialists, maintenance teams and property managers running 2–50 live projects. Not for enterprise ERP users, estimators or BIM teams.

Built in the UK

BRCKS is designed around UK construction practice: NHBC and LABC evidence trails, the Building Safety Act 2022 "golden thread", Part P electrical compliance, and the everyday reality of subcontractors who will not install another app.

What we refuse to do

We won't charge you per subcontractor. Trades, subbies and clients are free on BRCKS forever, because charging for them is what stops a project record from ever being complete. We won't ask your site team to learn commands, forms or a new interface — if a feature only works when everyone is trained, it doesn't work. And we won't sell your project data or use it to train our own models.

What it looks like in practice

A site manager sends: "Plot 12 second fix done, client wants the sockets moved by the island, sparky invoiced 2k." BRCKS files the progress against Plot 12, raises a variation for the socket change so it gets priced before it's built, logs the £2,000 cost, and adds it all to the day's diary entry. Nobody filled in a form. At final account, the evidence is already there.

See it working: snagging, site diaries, variations and WhatsApp project management.

Why the other tools didn't stick

Almost every builder we speak to has already bought construction software once, and stopped using it. The pattern is consistent: the office team learns it, the site team half-learns it, and the subcontractors never touch it. Within a month the real conversation has moved back to WhatsApp and the software holds a partial, misleading record — which is worse than no record, because people trust it.

The failure is rarely about features. It is about who is required to change. Any system that depends on a rotating cast of self-employed trades logging into an app will produce gaps exactly where the evidence matters most: the day the leak was found, the afternoon the client changed their mind, the week access was refused.

What a complete record is actually worth

Three things get argued about at the end of a job: what was agreed, what it cost, and whose fault the delay was. All three are decided by contemporaneous evidence. A dated photograph and a message from the day beats a well-argued email six months later, every time. That is the whole commercial case for BRCKS: not saving admin minutes, though it does, but having the answer when a final account, a retention release or a warranty claim is on the table.

Where we're taking it

The direction has not changed since the first version: keep the behaviour, deepen the record. Snagging, variations, RFIs, plots, costs, the free client portal and 360° tours were all added because customers hit the edges of what a diary alone could prove. Recent work has gone into asking BRCKS questions in plain English and filing straight to plots from WhatsApp. Everything we ship is published weekly on the changelog, and the shortest route to influencing it is to talk to us and tell us what your week actually looks like.