We go and look
We start on site, with the person doing the job and the thing they built to cope with it. The workaround tells us more than a requirements document ever has.
Makers of Rectify
We build software for construction.
Rectify Labs makes products for the construction industry, starting with the jobs still being done by hand because the software never quite fitted. The first is Rectify, a snagging app for iOS.
Why we exist
The workaround is the requirement.
Most construction businesses run on something one of their own people built to get through the week: a spreadsheet, a WhatsApp group, a clipboard and a good memory. We read that as the specification.
Construction software is often written for head office. The people it is meant to serve are on site, in a van, or standing in the rain with a phone, so the tool gets worked around, and the workaround quietly becomes the real process. Undocumented, unsupported, and holding up the job.
- 001The same information gets entered four times, into four systems, and none of them agree.Open
- 002The process only works because one person remembers how it works.Open
- 003Reporting means rebuilding the same spreadsheet at the end of every month.Open
- 004Nobody finds the problem until it has already been built.Open
What we build
We build products, for problems that cost money, and cause headaches.
Rectify Labs is a software company, not an agency. We pick a problem that turns up on job after job, build a product that removes it, and then keep that product running for the people who depend on it.
Our first product
Rectify: snagging, minus the admin
Photograph a defect on site, add a note, and hand it to whoever owns it. Their update, photos and all, comes back onto that snag instead of arriving as a loose reply you have to match up and re-type into the list.
Because every update already lives on the snag, the reports write themselves. The outstanding list, the close-out rates and the photo trail for handover are current whenever you pull them.
How a problem becomes software
We build the smallest thing that removes it
One problem, solved properly, rather than a platform that solves it partly and brings problems of its own. If a feature is not carrying its weight, it does not ship.
It ships, and we keep it working
Issued for construction means it is in real use on real jobs. We maintain it, and we improve it, for as long as people are using it.
P: preliminary issue · C: issued for construction
Who builds it
We have been building and running software for over twenty years.
Behind Rectify Labs are systems designed, shipped, kept running, and occasionally rescued. Enough of them to know which decisions stay cheap to change and which ones you live with for years.
That work has spanned several industries and products used by millions of people. It has taken cost out of businesses that had stopped noticing where the money went, and given people a view of their own operation they had never had. The industries had little in common. The problems underneath them nearly always did.
Software can be produced quickly now. The harder part has always been the second year, and the software that still holds up when the data is messy, the signal is poor, and the person using it wants to be off site before dark. We build for that, and we keep what we ship rather than handing it over.
- Experience
- Over 20 years in software engineering and product strategy.
- Scope
- We design it, build it, ship it, and keep it running.
- Support
- The person who answers is the person who wrote it.
- Standard
- It ships when it works on site, not when it demos well.
Get in touch.
Questions about Rectify, about what we are building next, or anything else. One address, and it reaches us directly. We answer our own email.
hello@rectifylabs.co.uk