For construction, fabrication & fit-out

From tender
to retention.

Tenders · jobs · costs · the site clock · never per seat

The situation

Every job is its own small business.
The office keeps it in six places.

In most contractors, a job lives in a tender spreadsheet, an estimate workbook, a folder of drawings, a diary of who is on which site, a stack of timesheets and somebody's memory of what the client agreed on the phone. Nobody's fault. Construction software tends to come in two sizes: a spreadsheet, or a system built for a firm ten times bigger.

It holds together, mostly, until a variation gets argued over at the final account, or a retention quietly passes its release date, or the question is simply whether the job made any money.

ORCA puts the whole job in one place, from the enquiry to the day the retention comes in.
What gets built

The standard pieces, plus the ones
only a contractor needs.

Every firm starts with companies, contacts, calendar, tasks and reports. What follows is shaped around how the firm wins and runs its work. Yours will differ, which is rather the point.

The page people notice first is the job. The estimate sits on it as lines, quantity times rate. Approved variations add themselves to the value; rejected ones don't. The forecast margin is worked out from both, live, and once the job is closed its figures lock, so the final account stays the final account.

The card here comes from Brackwater Fabrication, a steel fabricator in the demo login. The firm and everyone in it are invented; the workings are real. Log in with demo@orca-crm.com and explore-orca, choose Brackwater Fabrication, open Jobs, then Northfield Medical Centre, and press Overview: the card here, from the job itself, ready to download as a PDF.

Walk round a contractor

Northfield Medical Centre

Snagging

Structural steel · for Calloway Build · Marlby · 5% retention

£187,300Contract
£7,120Approved variations
£162,930Estimated cost
£31,490Forecast margin

Variations

  • VO1 Lintels to plant room openingsApproved£2,940
  • VO2 Stair stringers revisedApproved£4,180
  • VO3 Return visit, out-of-sequence steelRejected£1,950

Snags before handover

  • Handrail gap at landing over 100 mmHighOpen
  • Touch up paint at site-bolted connectionsMediumIn hand
7 estimate linesLocks when the job is closed
Northfield's Overview in the Brackwater Fabrication demo account, trimmed to the variations and snags. The firm, the job, the client and every figure are invented. The sums are worked out the same way for a real firm.

A tenders board

Every enquiry from first look to won or lost, with its value, return date and estimator, on a board the whole office can read. Lost reasons are recorded as they happen, so the pattern behind them shows up before the next bid rather than after the year end. A won tender converts into a job, so nothing is typed in twice.

Jobs, stage by stage

Order received, design and drawings, fabrication, on site, snagging, handover, retention due, closed: or whatever stages the firm actually uses. Contracts manager, site manager, start and handover dates, and RAMS sign-off sit on every job.

Costs that add up as you go

Estimate lines on each job, totals that roll up to the job, and a margin worked out from them. Time booked against the job from site and from the office lands in its costs too. Totals then answers the bigger questions: margin by work type, value by client, hours by job.

Variations on the record

Each variation logged when it is instructed, with who instructed it, its value and its status. Only approved ones count towards the job's value, so the figure the office works from is the one the client has agreed.

Snags and handover

Snags against the job, with location, priority, who has it and when it is due, on a board of their own. Handover is a stage the job moves into, not an email that might have been sent.

Retentions that get asked for

The retention percentage and release date on every job, and an automation that raises a to-do as the date approaches. Retention due is a stage on the jobs board, where anyone can see it, rather than a date in a drawer.

Freeze, revise and sign off

Records lock at the stages the firm chooses, with a proper revision when something has to change. Sign-offs decide who can move a job or a quote on, and only above a value if that's how the firm works.

Clients and the supply chain

Main contractors, developers, suppliers and subcontractors as companies with their people, every email and call against them, and the jobs and tenders they sit on, so the history reads properly from either side.

On site

Built for the people
who are never at a desk.

Most of a contractor's team spends its day on site, on a phone, with gloves on. So the parts they use ask for very little: no password to remember, no app store, one button.

  1. The night before

    A text says where they're going tomorrow, taken from the plan, with their clock-on link. Replies come back to the office, where anyone can answer.

  2. Arriving

    One tap to clock on. The phone shares its location at that moment, and only that moment, and ORCA checks it against the job's site. A personal link needs no login; signing in by text needs only a mobile number and a six-digit code.

  3. During the day

    Their own Today page, added to the phone's home screen once, with the jobs they're on and nothing they don't need.

  4. Going home

    One tap to clock off. Start, finish, hours and whether they were on site go straight onto the timesheet, with travel and overtime worked out if the firm wants them.

  5. In the office

    The planner shows two weeks of people against jobs; drag a block to move someone, and double bookings turn amber. Everyone else fills in a weekly grid against jobs or cost codes, so management time reaches the job's costs as well.

Site staff who only clock on and off from a personal link don't need an ORCA login, so they don't count towards your plan.
Who it suits

Firms that win work by tender
and deliver it on site.

Typically five to a hundred people, with an office that prices and runs the jobs and a team out on site, and nobody whose job is the system. ORCA earns its keep where every job has its own figures and more is happening than any one person can hold.

Steel & metal fabricators

Frames, mezzanines, stairs and canopies, from drawings through the shop to erection.

Building contractors

Tenders, packages and subcontractors, with the main contractor's paperwork kept straight.

Fit-out & interiors

Offices, retail and hospitality, with design, procurement and a tight programme to handover.

Joinery & shopfitting

Bespoke work quoted line by line, made in the workshop and fitted on site.

M&E & specialist trades

Engineers out every day, with timesheets, travel and costs that need to reach the job.

Installers

Surveys, installs and aftercare, with the crew booked, texted and clocked on.

Pricing

We charge for the tailoring.
Never by the head.

From £100 a month. Plans by the size of your team, never a price per person.

Most software is sold off the peg and charged by the head. ORCA works the other way round. Everyone in your team gets an account, from the partners to the six-month placement, and adding someone within your plan costs nothing. Well done for employing.

Solo
£100
a month + VAT

Up to 2 people. The full platform; add any specialist module.

Team
£350
a month + VAT

Up to 10 people. The full platform, with 1 specialist module of your choice included.

Business
£700
a month + VAT

Up to 50 people. The full platform, with 3 specialist modules of your choice included.

Enterprise
From £1,000
a month + VAT

More than 50 people. Every module included, set up with you.

Every plan starts from a template suited to your kind of work, shaped with us, with your existing data brought across. Then you pick and mix: the site clock, the planner, job costs, automations and the rest, each at its own monthly price, with the dearest you choose included in your plan. When your team outgrows its plan, we show you the next one before anything changes.

Beyond that is where ORCA earns its keep: sections built around the things only you track, dashboards for the people who need the whole picture, links to the systems you already run. We quote each piece once, before we start, and then it's part of your ORCA.

For a contractor, the modules that matter are usually the site clock, the planner, job costs and totals. Only people who sign in count towards a plan: site staff who just clock on and off from their own link do not, so a firm of eight in the office and thirty on site is priced for the eight.

You'll struggle to find anything cut this closely, at any price. And if it isn't earning its place, you can leave whenever you like. Your data comes with you.

Prices exclude VAT. Paid monthly, with no contract, and you can change plan or modules whenever you like. Charities and non-profits pay less on every plan.

A second opinion

Don't take our word for it.
Ask your own assistant.

A lot of people now run this kind of decision past Claude, ChatGPT or whichever assistant they already use, and it tends to know a fair bit about how they work. So rather than tell you ORCA is a good fit, here is a prompt that asks for an honest answer either way. Copy it, paste it in, and see what comes back.

Open in Claude → Open in ChatGPT →

Claude shows a standard caution note on any question that arrives from a link. The question is shown in full, and nothing is sent until you press send.

The prompt asks where ORCA would be the wrong choice as well as where it would be the right one. If the answer comes back "stay where you are", that is a useful answer too, and it has cost you nothing to get. What the assistant reads is at orca-crm.com/for-agents. It says the same things as this page, arranged for something that reads quickly.

Membership

Shaped around the firm,
looked after properly.

We would rather work closely with firms, on a platform cut for each of them, than run thousands of accounts on a generic one. The people who built ORCA do the setting up, the migration and the building, and stay on hand afterwards.

The first conversation is about the firm, not the software: what it builds, how its jobs run, and where the tenders, costs and timesheets live today.

Apply

Apply for membership.

Tell us a little about the firm. We'll be in touch to arrange a conversation and a hands-on look at ORCA set up for jobs like yours.

Something went wrong. Please try again, or email us directly at hello@orca-crm.com.

Your data stays yours. We don't sell it, we don't train AI on it, and anything built for you leaves with you if you ever go.

Thank you.

We have it, and will be in touch shortly.
We're looking forward to seeing how your jobs run.

We support
1% for the Planet White Logo
Also see ORCA overview ORCA for Advisory & Investment ORCA for Renewables ORCA for the Arts ORCA for Charities & NGOs