The Lemon Fool

Construction has a unique way of dealing with payments. Over the last decade various acts of parliament have created frameworks around which payments need to be made. Case law also exists on various issues within the practice of payment.

I'm not going to bore you with the detail of how payments are made. It can soak up huge resources each month.

I'm reviewing the viability of a stand alone software programme to deal with this.

And that's as far as I have got.

Contrary to popular belief within this community I do have a few decent brain cells left and realise I need to ensure the idea is viable before pursuing. In that sense I have no idea how I would market such an app. I don't know how much it would cost to develop, who my target customers would be (main contractors or subcontractors) and if it would be profitable.

There's software already out there that sort of does this ... but it's often expensive and not quite as good as a few columns on a spreadsheet. Before you all rush to tell me to stick with a spreadsheet I can assure you the idea would take this to a more seamless level and become collaborative between parties. Thus reducing overhead to carry out thus function.

Before works commence on a building site the commercial teams will commit to an enquiry process and gather prices and or bids for the various packages. This is the point at which the main contractor has maximum leverage. Contrary to popular belief the cheapest prices is often not the winning price. The commercial team are looking for the best value which will embrace programme, quality, price, service and resources.

After the subcontract order is placed a monthly system of application for payment and payment will ensue. This will occur within a thirty day period.

This sound easy - but is fraught with issues.

DO we have anyone out there who could perhaps point me in the right direction for software development companies who would very quickly be able to give me a price for a product. It's not an all embracing price - just a figure to sense the overall viability of the idea.

Thank you in advance
AiY

Im not going to recommend anyone specific, but professional software developers I know would not consider quoting anything less than 1 month of time for a new software build. So thats somewhere north of £25K, most projects if they get off the ground take several months.

AsleepInYorkshire wrote:
DO we have anyone out there who could perhaps point me in the right direction for software development companies who would very quickly be able to give me a price for a product. It's not an all embracing price - just a figure to sense the overall viability of the idea.

Thank you in advance
AiY

I can't help with company advice but I have worked on a few projects. One thing I would emphasise before seeking any professional time is the importance of being able to describe exactly what you want. Draw it out on paper if need be because unless you can describe exactly what you want then nobody will know what it needs to do and how viable the software will be. I mention it because in my experience getting the end-user to describe exactly what they want can be a hair-pulling exercise.

RC

Pity John Hemming has withdrawn from TLF as he might well give good advice on this.

Unless very simple

You will not build a software product from scratch for less than 100k and often much much more.

Good developer is 100k a year

Any decent foolproof spec should not cost less than 25k and unlikely to be foolproof.

From someone that spent 5 million on a product over 8 years. Initlal cost 50k.

You haven't indicated how big a task this is, nor what your prospective market looks like. So how long is a piece of string?

If it's a substantial task, one option might be to develop it as open source. A potential advantage there is that you get to harness the talent from many different companies (and perhaps others - like academia) with an interest in the project, so you only pay a fraction of the development costs. The advantages build up further when you consider longer-term maintenance.

Are you looking for a chat to try and flesh out your ideas?

UncleEbenezer wrote:So how long is a piece of string?

Indeed!

The clearer you can be about what is needed; who it's for, what is expected - the more useful any quote or suggestions will be.
Have a look at something like this page on writing a spec
- it should at least give you some idea of the kind of thing to consider

Once you have a spec consider things like platform
- if you're thinking of it being a web app - there are no/low-code ways to go about that e.g. https://bubble.io/ or https://zapier.com/
- if you want to distribute it for download - download on to what? from where? paid via? updated by?
- could you get the same functionality as a plug in for some existing platform?

AsleepInYorkshire wrote: it's often expensive and not quite as good as a few columns on a spreadsheet

If this really is the case (and I don't doubt it - it's just a strange slightly accusatory idiom )
Have a look at this litany of add-ons to google sheets done on the zapier platform


- sd

Just some random thoughts on this:

Are you looking at contract management software or just payment management software? If you're going for payment management software then the market would be limited to the UK if you're going to base it meeting the requirements of the HGCRA and the Construction Act.

What the target market? If you're going for projects using the NEC suite then you're up against CEMAR and probably targetting the contract administrator rather than the contractors/subcontractors. Although there may be some debate about how exactly it interprets some of the NEC clauses it's a good piece of software and has good market penetration with the public sector and the bigger firms.

If you're going for NEC then theres (IIRC) about 40 different contracts albeit the payment mechanism are similar, but not identical. There's also the issue that applications for payment under JCT can be required to show any information that the payer asks for in the format specified in the employers requirement document. If thats not included, or in the wrong format, than you've not met the condition prescendent to be paid and it all gets complicated. It's not just a matter of checking that an invoice has been received then checking it gets paid, and this would need human interaction or at least a good deal of initial configuration when setting up a new contract. On smaller value contracts i'm not sure what value this would add tbh.

If you're targetting smaller tradesmen or companies then what the USP compared to the existing apps?

It may be a little late for this opinion but here goes:

Nowadays, it's better to hire people remotely. So you can check companies that provide software developers, UX/UI designers, or other IT professionals in a remote setup. In this case, there will also be chances when you can go under your budget, as hiring remotely is relatively cheaper than hiring someone on the same shore. I know some links to legit companies working remotely!