Digitising field operations for social housing maintenance
Responsive repairs contractors run on Excel trackers, WhatsApp photo streams and a whiteboard. Operative Intelligence replaces all three: a 10-stage job workflow from first call to invoice, a drag-and-drop planner, and a field app designed for tradespeople working one-handed in poor light. Built with a maintenance contractor, productised for the industry.
- Client
- OI Group
- Sector
- SaaS and mobile
- Relationship
- 2025 to present
- Services
- Product strategy · Platform development · Mobile app design · AI and RAG engineering · Ongoing partnership
2,000+
Jobs digitised
10
Workflow stages
89
Field app screens
3,300+
Automated tests
01 / the problem
2,000 jobs tracked in a spreadsheet.
The founding customer, a social housing maintenance contractor, tracked every job on a running Excel sheet, collected site photos over WhatsApp and scheduled operatives on a physical whiteboard. Evidence lived in camera rolls. Nothing connected.
The harder problem was the field. Operatives won't use software that slows them down, so the mobile experience had to handle the whole day: vehicle checks, materials, RAMS sign-offs, task evidence and resident signatures, working offline and one-handed.
- 01 Replace the Excel running sheet with a real job workflow
- 02 Kill the WhatsApp photo stream with structured evidence capture
- 03 Give schedulers a live planner instead of a whiteboard
- 04 Design a field app tradespeople actually open
02 / the solution
Office and field, finally on the same system.
The platform models the whole operation: clients, contracts with schedule-of-rates pricing, a 10-stage job lifecycle with a full audit trail, quoting with separated approval, a 7-day drag-and-drop planner and document management with certification expiry tracking. An AI chat layer searches across jobs and documents.
For the field we designed OI Flow, an 89-screen mobile experience covering the operative's entire day, from shift start and vehicle checks through task evidence to resident sign-off, built to survive basements, gloves and dead spots. The v2 platform hardens everything with an immutable audit log and a job state machine enforced inside the database.
what we delivered
The work behind the result
10-stage job workflow with audit trail
Mapping the users, journeys and decisions before anything was designed.
Drag-and-drop operative planner
Live availability, bookings and scheduling handled by the platform.
Schedule-of-rates quoting and approvals
Live availability, bookings and scheduling handled by the platform.
89-screen field app design
Interface and identity work that gives the product its feel.
Evidence capture and resident sign-off
The detail work that lifts the product above its spec.
Certification and document expiry tracking
The detail work that lifts the product above its spec.
AI search across job history
Mapping the users, journeys and decisions before anything was designed.
Immutable audit logging (v2)
Mapping the users, journeys and decisions before anything was designed.
03 / the result
From whiteboard to platform, then to product.
The platform is live in production with the founding contractor, 2,000 jobs and counting under management, and a native field app on the road to pilot. OI Group now sells it to the wider trade.
“We're a property maintenance business, not a tech company. We came to Code23 with 30 years of industry knowledge, a head full of ideas and a spreadsheet-and-whiteboard operation, and asked them to turn it into a proper platform. A year on, our office runs on it daily: clients, contracts, jobs, quoting against schedule of rates, planning, and a full audit trail on every job from first survey through to invoice.
What sets James and the team apart is how they work with you. Every founder call gets turned into something concrete within days - we'd describe how a job actually runs on site, and the next review we'd be clicking through a prototype of exactly that. They don't just take instructions either. When we asked for something that would have caused problems down the line, they said so and explained why, and they were usually right. You're getting a thinking partner, not an order-taker.
The bit that's impressed us most is the field app. They sat with us, pulled apart how our operatives really work - van checks, materials, RAMS, evidence photos, resident sign-off - and designed an app around the reality of the job, not a generic form-filler. Our engineers are not app people, and it's built so they don't need to be.
Responsive, straight-talking, and they genuinely understand how a trades business operates, which is rare in software people. We're now taking the platform to market as a product in its own right, which tells you what we think of the build quality. Couldn't recommend them more highly.”
