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The research.

What builders told us.

Long conversations with the people who run construction work, from a joiner on his own to the people running Tier 2 commercial jobs. Everything below came out of those.

$200k+
of variation opportunity missed on one job, about one per cent of its value. Finding 01
100+
emails a day for one site manager, with nothing sorting them. Finding 03
5 days
to notify a variation on some contracts, or the entitlement is gone. Finding 01
Half
of what is known about a job, sitting outside the system bought to hold it. Finding 03

Finding 01 · Variations

Every one of them is losing money on variations.

It came up unprompted in every conversation, and it was the only thing that did.

$200k+

of variation opportunity missed on one job, about one per cent of its contract value. A hundred thousand of that was a single missing attachment.

  • $200k a year in variations one builder never billed.
  • 5 days the notice period on some contracts. Miss it and the work was done for free, whatever it cost to do.
  • Even a joiner working on his own loses a few thousand a year to changes he never wrote up.
  • Subbies are quick to claim their extras and slow to hand credits back when scope comes off.

Finding 02 · Getting paid

Getting paid is the thing they would fix first.

Asked to pick one problem to solve, a contract administrator running some of the largest work we saw picked progress claims.

The 23rd

one internal deadline a month that every claim piles up behind.

  • 4 to 5 hrs a day on financial admin for a week and a half of every month. Six hours a day once a job is closing out.

Finding 03 · The information gap

About half of what is known about a job is not in the system.

It is in email, in text messages, and in the head of whoever happened to be standing there.

100+

emails a day, with nothing telling the site manager which ones will cost him.

  • 9 spreadsheets one contracts administrator keeps per project, alongside the tools bought to replace them.
  • Decisions get made out loud on site and never written down. When someone leaves the job, the context goes with them.

Finding 04 · Procurement

Procurement sets the margin months before anyone can see it.

Order early and the price is locked. Order late and steel moves underneath you.

$20k to $30k

a week to keep a job running, so a week of delay is a week of margin.

  • $25,000 of scope one estimator left out of a package. The builder wore the lot.
  • Scope missed at procurement comes back as a variation later, priced at whatever the subbie asks for it then.

Finding 05 · Subbies

Two subbies out of twenty make half the work.

Not the whole trade base. A small number of them, week after week.

2 of 20

subcontractors generating about half of one contract administrator's weekly workload.

  • Scope gaps between trades, like who cuts the slab penetrations, surface on the day and get settled with a site instruction.

Finding 06 · What they asked for

Nobody asked for more features.

None of them said the word AI. Every one of them described the same handful of jobs they wanted taken off their hands.

  • Catch the variation before the clock runs out on it. Rory
  • Say what changed between one drawing revision and the next. Rory
  • Sort the inbox so the thing that will cost money is at the top. Rory
  • Show spend against budget now, not at the end. Footing
  • Let them talk instead of type. They are on site, with a phone, with their hands full.

What we took from it.

Every person we spoke to could name the money they were losing and roughly where it went. None of them had the hours to go and get it. That gap is what Folkware is for.

A day where none of it slips

What we're building.

Two tools, because they didn't all want the same thing.

Some want to keep the systems they already run and stop losing money inside them. Others want the whole job in one place, from the first estimate to handover.

Early access

Rory

A contract administrator on every job, 24/7.

It reads the job the way a contract administrator would, catches the extras before they slip, and keeps every job moving with the chase already written.

What it answers

Join the waitlist

Now live

Footing

The construction business operating system.

Every job, claim, subbie and dollar on one record, so you know where each job is at without ringing the PM, and see the margin before close-out, not after.

What it answers

Start a 60-day trial
Rory Footing

Together

Footing holds the job. Rory has the run of it.

On the systems you already have, AroFlo or Buildxact, Microsoft or Google, Xero, Rory reads what lands and drafts what needs doing. Inside Footing it does the work itself: raises the variation, prices it, builds the claim, issues the invoice, moves the job on. You approve what goes out.

Kosta, founder of Folkware
Kosta, founder. Adelaide.

Still going.

These conversations are still going.

If you run jobs and you'd sit down for an hour, I'd like to hear how you run.

Nobody I've sat down with is named on this page. You wouldn't be either.

Kosta

From Adelaide, talking to builders across Australia.