CONSTRUCTION · EDINBURGH
IN SHORT
We are an Edinburgh-based team building AI automation for contractors across the city and the Lothians — tender triage, site paperwork capture, variation catching and payment applications.
Edinburgh construction: what the admin actually looks like
Edinburgh construction runs on constrained city-centre sites, heritage and planning constraints, university and financial-sector fit-out programmes, and a steady flow of residential and infrastructure work across the Lothians. That mix means high administrative load per pound of turnover: more permits, more restrictions, more paperwork and more client reporting than an equivalent job elsewhere.
Why work with us locally
- Edinburgh-headquartered team — we can be on your site or in your office the same day.
- Experience with the permit and consent paperwork that comes with city-centre and conservation-area work.
- Delivered permit, quoting and job-management software used by Scottish contractors in production.
Systems we build for Edinburgh construction businesses
Tender and enquiry triage
An agent reads every incoming tender pack and enquiry, extracts scope, value, trade and return date, scores it against the work you actually want, logs it in your pipeline and sends a same-hour acknowledgement. Estimators only open what is worth pricing.
Site paperwork and photo capture
Site teams keep sending what they already send — photos, day sheets, delivery notes over WhatsApp or email. The system reads them, works out the job and cost code, files them against the right record and chases whatever is missing at the end of each day.
Variation and day-works capture
The system watches the channels where extra work actually gets agreed — site messages, emails, day sheets — flags anything that reads like a variation, drafts a formal instruction from your template and sends it to the QS for approval.
Payment applications and cash chasing
Applications built on the contract calendar from job data you already hold, invoices chased automatically with escalation, and retention tracked so releases are claimed rather than forgotten.
Questions we get asked
- Do you work with construction businesses in Edinburgh in person?
- Yes. We are Edinburgh-headquartered, so Edinburgh is a short trip. Discovery and process mapping usually happen on site or on your yard, and the build runs remotely with weekly demos.
- How long before a Edinburgh construction business sees anything working?
- The £499 AI Ops Audit takes five working days and returns a costed plan. A first production workflow is typically live within four to six weeks of starting the build.
- What does it cost?
- £499 for the audit, then usually £6,000–£25,000 for a first production workflow depending on how many systems it touches, plus a monthly running cost for hosting, model usage and support.
TRUST & CREDENTIALS
How we work, and what stands behind it
This page is maintained by Forth Systems. Everything listed below describes our own team, hosting choices and the technologies we build on — it is a statement of practice, not an independent certification or an endorsement by the vendors named.
UK team & data residency
Who builds it, and where your data sits while they do.
UK-based engineers
Edinburgh-headquartered. Every system is designed, built and supported by our own UK-based engineering team — no offshore delivery pool.
UK / EU hosting by default
Applications and databases are provisioned in UK or EU regions unless you require otherwise, with encryption in transit and at rest.
Human-in-the-loop by design
Every AI system we ship keeps a manual override. Nothing irreversible happens without an operator able to review, edit or stop it.
Audit trails as standard
Automated actions are written as first-class records — who or what did it, when, against which input — so operations stay evidence-ready.
Systems we build on
The platforms our systems run on. These are the technologies we deploy and support — not sponsorships or reseller badges.
OpenAI, Anthropic & Google models
Model-agnostic delivery. We route each workload to the model that fits it on cost, latency and accuracy, and can switch without a rebuild.
Supabase & Postgres
Row-level-security Postgres as the operational spine under every platform we run.
Stripe payments
Payment capture, checkout and reconciliation wired directly into job and permit workflows.
Xero, Sage & HubSpot integrations
Production integrations into the finance and CRM systems UK operators already run, so automation lands where the business keeps its records.
Streetworks & industry credentials
Operational domains we build in daily, with the sector systems we integrate against.
DfT Street Manager integration
Our Kerbco permit chain creates and tracks streetworks permit applications against DfT Street Manager and local highway authority processes.
NRSWA-aligned workflows
Permit, reinstatement and traffic-management workflows built to the New Roads and Street Works Act process contractors are inspected against.
Traffic management planning
Roadplan produces signing and guarding layouts for council submission and for the crew installing them on site.
Operator-built, not consultancy-built
We run streetworks and plant operations ourselves. Every platform started as a system we needed in our own business.
Insurance certificates, registration numbers and security documentation are available on request — ask the team.