The situation
Anyone who has managed a building project knows the reality. Materials tracked in a spreadsheet that's out of date by lunchtime. Supplier quotes buried in email threads with no central history. Progress photos scattered across WhatsApp groups. PDF checklists printed, ticked by hand, and filed in a drawer. Bank statements manually cross-referenced against budget allocations at the kitchen table.
The commercial platforms that solve these problems are built for large contractors running multiple sites with big teams. They charge per seat, per month, and assume you have an IT department to set them up. For a self-builder managing a £200,000 renovation, or a small contractor running garden room installations, that pricing model doesn't work. But the spreadsheet chaos doesn't work either.
The client needed a proper project management platform that handled procurement from first material list to receipt reconciliation, tracked spending against budget by construction phase, stored all build documents and media in one place, and worked on a phone standing on a building site.
What we built
A complete construction project management platform that covers the full build lifecycle from planning through to completion.
The materials system is the core. Every item tracks through a clear workflow. Needed, ordered, received, cancelled. Materials import from CSV for projects with hundreds of line items. Batch operations let you mark an entire delivery as received in one action. Phase filtering shows exactly what's needed for each stage of the build.
Buying lists turn material requirements into structured purchase orders. Each list scopes to a supplier, tracks order status, and generates a shareable link that the supplier can view without logging in. When a buying list is marked complete, every linked material automatically updates to received. No manual status chasing.
The budget module tracks spending by construction phase with visual charts showing where money has gone and where it's heading. Price comparison tools track quotes from multiple suppliers side by side. Receipt scanning uses AWS Textract to read paper receipts and extract line items automatically. Upload a photo of a receipt, review the parsed data, and save it against the right budget line.
Build plans upload as PDFs with an embedded viewer. Progress photos organise into a diary grouped by construction phase. A full media library handles videos, documents, and images with tagging and search.
The platform installs as an app on any phone. It works offline. Per-project theming lets clients customise colours and fonts to match their brand or simply their preference. Dark mode works throughout.
Authentication uses magic links sent by email. No passwords to remember or reset. Every change logs to an audit trail. All files store in private cloud storage with secure, time-limited access links. Nothing sits on a public server.
The numbers
| Traditional build | Tyree Digital | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | £46,454 | £7,500 |
| Timeline | 5 to 7 months | 4 months |
| Speed | 1x | 5.1x faster |
| Saving | £38,954 (84%) |
The database pauses automatically when nobody is using the platform, which means the infrastructure costs literally nothing during quiet periods. For a project management tool used in bursts rather than continuously, that's the difference between a running cost that matters and one that rounds to zero.
At a mid-tier SaaS price of £99 per month, the platform pays for itself in under 7 months. At £49 per month, under 13 months. After that, every month is pure value.
For a client managing a £200,000 build, having this tool operational two months earlier than a traditional development timeline could prevent cost overruns and improve supplier coordination. That alone is worth more than the build cost.
What the client owns
A private cloud platform with no per-seat licensing, no vendor lock-in, and no third-party data sharing. Every document, receipt, photo, and budget figure sits in the client's own AWS account. 16 database models, 67 API endpoints, 36 interface components, and a complete automated deployment pipeline.
The buying list workflow (material requirements turning into supplier orders that auto-update on completion) is purpose-built for the way self-builders and small contractors actually procure materials. No horizontal project management tool does this out of the box.
What happens next
A monthly subscription covers hosting, maintenance, and ongoing improvements. The architecture supports adding new features (contractor collaboration, automated supplier ordering, building regulations tracking) without infrastructure changes. The platform grows with the project and stays useful long after the build is finished.