Why we built Complys: The story behind construction's most affordable compliance software

I didn't set out to build a software company. I built Complys because I was tired of the way construction compliance actually works — and frustrated that nobody had fixed it.

The problem I was living with

I run DDC Scaffolding. We do real work. Scaffolding on live sites, Network Rail projects, complex jobsites where mistakes don't just cost money — they cost lives.

I needed RAMS (Risk Assessment and Method Statements). I needed them good, specific to each site, correct. Not templates. Not copy-paste. Not generic fill-in-the-blanks that I'm half-sure are accurate.

So I tried the market. HandsHQ. Citation. swiftRMS. All the tools everyone uses.

Every single one had the same problem: they were all templates.

You'd open them, see generic sections, fill in your company name, and you'd still have to write huge chunks yourself. Or worse, you'd find yourself copying RAMS from an old job and tweaking them slightly. And suddenly you're not being specific to the actual site hazards. You're being fast. And in construction, fast compliance is how accidents happen.

I watched this happen in my own business. A scaffolder finishes a job, the next job comes in, and instead of doing the thinking — really analyzing the site, the weather, the neighbours, the timeline — we'd grab the last RAMS, copy it, change a few names, and send it. It worked. Sometimes. But I knew it wasn't right.

And then came the rejections.

The moment I realized the system was broken

We submitted RAMS to Network Rail for an Exeter College project. Professional work. Detailed. We thought it was solid.

It got rejected.

The assessors came back with gaps. Not typos. Not formatting. Actual completeness failures. Cross-document inconsistencies. Things that, on a real site with real hazards, could have been dangerous.

We had to redo them. We looked unprofessional. I wasted time. And I realized: the tools I was using weren't helping me avoid this. They were just forms. Empty shells. The hard work — the actual thinking about what could go wrong — was still on me. And I wasn't always getting it right.

Worse, I had to use multiple systems. One for RAMS. One for compliance tracking. One for project management. One for worker training records. One for... on and on. Each subscription. Each login. Each place where data didn't talk to the others.

I was spending money on five systems. Time switching between them. And risk because none of them knew what the others were doing.

That's when I decided: this is broken. And I can fix it.

What I built instead

I built Complys to solve three core problems:

First: Actually good RAMS, not templates.

Complys doesn't give you a blank form. It asks you questions about your site. Your trade. Your hazards. Then it generates the RAMS using AI trained on real, correct, UK-specific compliance frameworks. CHAS. SafeContractor. SMAS. Network Rail. CDM 2015. Not generic. Specific.

And when a RAMS gets rejected by an assessor — which still happens, because sites are complex — you don't start over. You feed the rejection notes back into Complys. It regenerates the RAMS with the feedback baked in. No rewriting. No guessing what the assessor meant. Just correct, updated RAMS.

Second: Everything in one system.

RAMS. Compliance tracking. Worker training. Site projects. CRM for customer follow-ups. Toolbox talks. Health & Safety policies. Accident logs. Document upload. All in one dashboard. All talking to each other.

When a worker's CISRS card is expiring, Complys knows. When you need to update a Toolbox Talk because something in your RAMS changed, Complys knows. When you're onboarding a new client, you're not toggling between five systems. You're in one place.

Time saved. Cost saved. Risk reduced.

Third: Pricing that doesn't punish small businesses.

HandsHQ, Citation, the big players — they price for enterprise. For large contractors with admin staff. A solo scaffolder or small roofing firm? You're paying enterprise prices for starter features.

I built Complys so that a one-person operation and a 100-person firm can both afford it. You don't have to choose between compliance and cashflow.

Why this matters beyond just speed

I talk to trades constantly. Scaffolders. Roofers. Electricians. Groundworkers. Plasterers. I ask them: what systems do you have? What's missing? What's broken?

Every conversation pointed to the same gap: nobody was solving compliance the way it actually needs to be solved in construction.

And the stakes are real. My workers aren't just filling in paperwork. They're working at heights. With heavy equipment. Near electrical installations. On live sites. A RAMS that's vague or copy-pasted isn't just unprofessional — it's dangerous.

That's my responsibility. Every worker who leaves here needs to know exactly what the hazards are on their next job and exactly what to do about them. Not a generic template. The specific truth.

What I'm building next

Complys started with construction trades because that's where I know the pain is deepest. CHAS. Network Rail. SafeContractor. SMAS. CDM 2015. These aren't theoretical — they're the actual compliance landscape I live in.

But compliance isn't unique to construction. Every business needs it. We're expanding Complys so any business can use it. One operating system for compliance and business management.

And we're linking it to accounting platforms (Xero, QuickBooks) so compliance, operations, and finances all talk to each other.

The paperwork was winning

The honest starting point for Complys was frustration. Running a scaffolding business, the actual work — putting up safe, well-built scaffolds — was never the hard part; the hard part was the ever-growing pile of paperwork around it. RAMS for every job, compliance packs for every contractor, certificates and cards to keep current, documents to dig out whenever someone asked. It was the kind of work that filled evenings and weekends, added nothing a customer could see, and yet could lose you a job if it was late or wrong. The paperwork was quietly winning, taking time and energy that should have gone into the business or simply into having a life.

What made it worse was knowing the work itself was good. Losing out, or scrambling at the last minute, because a document was not to hand rather than because the scaffolding was lacking, is a particular kind of frustrating. That gap — between being good at the trade and being buried by the admin around it — is the itch Complys was built to scratch, and it is a gap almost every trade recognises.

Why the existing tools did not fit

The obvious question is why not just use what already existed, and the answer is that the available tools were built for other people. Generic document storage did not understand construction compliance. Generic CRMs understood sales but not RAMS or accreditations. The construction-specific software that did exist tended to be aimed at large main contractors with big budgets and dedicated administrators, priced and shaped for a world most trades do not live in. Nothing was built for the sole trader or the small firm who is expert on the tools but has no back office, who needs to produce a decent RAMS and share a compliance pack without it eating a day.

So the choice was to keep cobbling together spreadsheets, folders and email, or to build something that actually fit the way a trade works. The tools were not bad; they were built for someone else. That mismatch — powerful software for big firms, nothing sensible for the small ones who make up most of the industry — is what made building something new feel worth doing.

Building it for the way trades actually work

The guiding idea behind Complys was to build for the reality of a trade's day rather than for an office. That meant things had to be fast, because a trade producing a RAMS is doing it between jobs, not at a desk with an afternoon spare. It meant it had to be affordable, because the fear of cost is what stops most small firms adopting anything. It had to work on a phone, because that is where trades are. And it had to understand construction — to know a scaffolder's hazards, a roofer's accreditations, a contractor's document requirements — rather than being a blank tool the user has to teach.

Those principles shaped every decision: a free way in so cost is not a barrier, generation that turns an hour of RAMS writing into minutes, compliance that can be shared in a couple of taps, and a design a busy person can use without training. The test was always whether it would have saved us time and stress back when the paperwork was winning — and if it would not, it did not belong in the product.

From RAMS to a whole compliance platform

Complys began by solving the sharpest single pain — producing RAMS quickly — but the same frustration existed across everything around compliance, so the product grew to meet it. Storing documents and tracking their expiry so nothing lapses unnoticed. Sharing a compliance profile with a contractor rather than emailing a zip of PDFs. Onboarding and checking subcontractors for the firms on the other side of that exchange. Getting found in a directory, building a mini site, introducing yourself to contractors to win work. Each piece came from the same root problem: trades are held back not by their skill but by the admin and visibility around it.

Joined up, these turn compliance from a burden that costs you time and jobs into something that actively wins you work — which is the shift the whole platform is aiming at. It stopped being a RAMS tool and became the thing that handles the business side of being a trade, so the trade can get on with the trade.

What the trades using it have taught us

Building for other trades means listening to them, and much of what Complys is now came from the people using it telling us what actually got in their way. Features that seemed clever but did not fit a real day got dropped; unglamorous things that saved genuine time — an expiry reminder, a faster share, a clearer directory listing — got prioritised because users kept asking for them. The recurring lesson is that trades value time and simplicity over sophistication: a tool that does the boring compliance jobs reliably and quickly beats one that does something impressive but fiddly.

That feedback loop is why the product keeps changing in the direction of the people who use it rather than the people who build it. It is being made by a trade, for trades, and shaped by the trades on it — which is both the reason it exists and the reason it keeps getting closer to what a small construction business actually needs.

Why affordability was non-negotiable

One decision shaped Complys more than any other: it had to be genuinely affordable, because the whole point was to help the trades who are put off by cost. The pattern in construction software was powerful tools priced for big contractors with budgets and administrators, which left the sole traders and small firms — the majority of the industry — with nothing that fit. But those are exactly the businesses that most need help with compliance and can least afford a heavy monthly bill or a scary commitment. If the tool that was meant to lower the barrier to being compliant was itself a barrier, it would have failed at its own purpose.

So affordability was built in from the start: a real free way in, so becoming compliant and getting found costs nothing to begin, and pay-as-you-go and modest plans so a one-person firm only pays for what they use rather than facing a big fixed cost. The aim was that a one-man band could become properly compliant and start winning work without it costing them a fortune, and that a larger contractor could get their trades on board without a heavy outlay either. Getting the pricing right was not a commercial afterthought; it was central to whether the product could do the job it existed to do.

Compliance as a way to win work, not just a cost

The deeper shift behind Complys is a change in how compliance is framed. For most trades, compliance feels purely like a cost — time, money and hassle spent to be allowed to work, with nothing to show for it. The vision behind the platform is to flip that: to make your compliance something that actively wins you work rather than just permits it. When your insurance, accreditations and RAMS are in order and easy to share, they become the reasons a contractor picks you; when you can be found, verified and introduce yourself with your compliance attached, the same paperwork that felt like a burden becomes a marketing asset.

That is why the product grew beyond RAMS into getting found, sharing compliance, introducing yourself and winning work — because the goal was never just to make the admin less painful, but to turn it into an advantage. A trade who is compliant, visible and proactive should get more work, not just avoid trouble. Building the tools that make that possible, at a price the smallest firms can afford, is what Complys is really for — and it is where it is still heading.

What building this for other trades has meant

Building Complys while running a scaffolding business has kept it honest, because every feature has had to earn its place against the reality of a working week rather than the ideas that sound good in a meeting. When you are both the builder and exactly the kind of person the tool is meant to serve, you feel the difference between what is genuinely useful and what is merely clever, and that has shaped the whole thing towards saving time and removing hassle over adding complexity. It has also meant staying close to the other trades using it, because they catch the things one person never would and they keep the product pointed at real problems.

The wider hope is simple: that a good trade should not be held back by paperwork or by being hard to find, and that the smallest firms should have tools as capable as the biggest, without the cost. If Complys helps a one-person business become compliant, get found and win work that would otherwise have gone to someone with a bigger back office, then it is doing the job it was built for. That is the standard every new feature gets measured against, and it is why the product keeps growing in the direction of the trades who use it rather than away from them.

If you're still doing RAMS the old way

If you're copying RAMS from old jobs. If you're using five different systems. If you've been rejected by an assessor and had to start over. If you're unsure whether your procedures are current and site-specific.

That's not your fault. The tools haven't been there.

Now they are.

Complys is built by someone who actually runs a construction business. Who's lived the rejections, the frustration, the time wasted, the risk. Who talked to dozens of trades to understand exactly what you need.

It's not a template. It's not generic. It's built for the way construction actually works.

Try it free for 90 days. Generate a RAMS. See if it's different from what you've been using. See if you save time. See if your workers understand the hazards better.

If it helps your business run safer and faster — and saves you money doing it — then I've built what I set out to build.