One system for every facade job. From tender enquiry to handover, built in Claude.

Who is Vertex Facades?

Vertex Facades is a specialist aluminium and glazed facade contractor for commercial builders across Western Australia. It designs, fabricates and installs curtain wall, structural glazing, aluminium windows and doors, and feature cladding, from its own fabrication facility in Perth.

It has delivered more than a hundred projects, across transport, aged care and mining camp work throughout WA.

What problem were they solving?

A facade job runs through a long chain of steps: tender documents, takeoffs, supplier pricing, quotes, purchase orders, deliveries and site work. Like most subcontractors, Vertex had that chain spread across spreadsheets, email and separate tools that did not talk to each other.

The team already used AI day to day, including for some takeoffs, but case by case. No off-the-shelf product covered the whole job the way Vertex works, and connecting several of them would have cost more than building one system of their own.

What did we do?

We started with a strategy call, mapped the whole process from tender enquiry to handover, then built the system with them in Claude, one stage at a time.

• Tenders: documents collected from the tender portal, sent to suppliers for pricing and filed, without relying on someone remembering each step
• Estimating: takeoffs from the architectural drawings using the same rules every time, with any assumed quantity flagged for a person to check
• Quotes and purchase orders: supplier prices and set rates flowing into a standard proposal, then into budgets and purchase orders once a job is won
• Installer logging: crews record what they worked on, and when, from their phones on site
• Tracking: one view of every job, from tender through to handover, so the office can see output by team, week or month

The leadership team knew every step of their jobs, and that made the build fast. Our part was turning that knowledge into a working system on a proper database, and training the team to keep extending it themselves.

What did it achieve?

Vertex now runs its jobs from one system instead of a patchwork of spreadsheets and tools. Tenders follow a set path, takeoffs are consistent and checkable, and the office can see site progress without chasing it.

Because it was built in Claude around their own process, the team owns it. When the way they work changes, they change the system, rather than waiting on a software vendor.

AI for construction subcontractors in Australia

Most commercial subcontractors in Australia run the same chain of tender, takeoff, quote, purchase orders, deliveries and site work. That makes them a good fit for AI, because so much of the work is reading documents, moving information between systems and keeping track of who did what.

Where AI helps first

Common first wins are reading tender documents and pulling out what matters, producing takeoffs from drawings for a person to check, drafting standard proposals, and giving site crews a simple way to log work and issues from their phones. Each one saves time on its own, and together they remove a lot of re-keying.

What to know before you start

Start with one job, not the whole business. Pick the step that holds everything else up, get it reliable, then move to the next. Keep a person in charge of anything that goes to a client or a supplier, especially quantities and prices.

Think about data early. Under the Australian Privacy Principles you need to know what personal information you hold, where it is stored and who can see it, so choose tools that let you control that. Plan how AI will connect to the software you already use, such as your file storage, email and accounts, so information is entered once.

If you want help mapping your process or building the system, see tender automation and custom development, or start with an AI audit.