Choosing scaffolding software: what to look for

There is no shortage of software that will let a scaffolding contractor schedule a job and raise an invoice. There is much less that understands a structure as a thing with a design, a handover, an inspection clock and a history of alterations — which is the part of the work that actually carries risk.

Questions that separate the two

• –Is the structure a first-class record, or just a line on a job? If inspections attach to the job rather than the structure, the inspection clock will be wrong the first time a site has two scaffolds.
• –Can it hold the design — compliance sheet or bespoke — against the structure, and show it to whoever is inspecting?
• –Does the inspection interval run from the last inspection of that structure, with a reminder before it falls due?
• –Can an adaptation be logged on site, and does it change what the next inspection starts from?
• –Do handover certificate, tag status and loading class come from one record or three?
• –Does it track card and medical expiry per operative, with enough notice to book a course?

Questions about the vendor, not the product

• –What does it cost at the size you will be in two years — per user, per contract, or flat?
• –Can you export your records while the account is active, and in what format?
• –Who owns the data, stated plainly in the terms rather than implied in a sales call?
• –What is actually committed in writing — uptime, support response, hosting location — and what is a target?

That last one is worth pushing on. A vendor that will tell you plainly what it does not offer is a vendor whose other answers you can rely on. Our own specification page is written that way deliberately, including the rows where the honest answer is "not currently offered".

A note on 3D

A 3D builder is genuinely useful — it puts a drawing in the hands of the squad rather than a description, and it makes an unusual configuration obvious before the wagon is loaded. It is not a design package, and any vendor implying that a modelling tool removes the need for a competent designer on a bespoke structure is telling you something about the rest of their claims.