Groundworks & civils estimating software
For groundworks and civils firms
Priced while you're on site.
Nexley measures excavation, drainage and concrete off the drawings and prices them from your rates, matches plant hire and muck-away bills to the right job and keeps your CIS straight. You approve each one in WhatsApp.
Nothing is paid or posted until you say yes.
Updated
In short
Nexley is the AI back office for UK groundworks and civils contractors. It measures excavation, drainage and concrete off the drawings and prices them from your rates, matches plant hire and muck-away bills to the right job in Xero, and keeps your CIS deductions straight.
Retentions and CIS are tracked job by job. You approve each one in WhatsApp. £799 a month for the firm, with 7 days free.
Plant hire, muck-away and CIS come with every groundworks job. Nexley matches the bills to the job and keeps your CIS straight.
Pack in at eight. Bill back by quarter past.
It cost me 1,200 quid… and we didn't even win the jobs.”
What Nexley does for groundworks and civils firms
The office work that comes with the trade.
Measured off the drawings
Excavation, drainage runs and concrete, each line traced.
Plant and muck-away matched
Every bill read from your inbox and coded to its job.
CIS kept straight
Deductions, statements and the monthly return tracked.
Materials priced
Pipe, aggregates and concrete priced at your suppliers.
All your admin. Done.
Five assistants. One WhatsApp chat.
Each one takes a part of the office. You talk to all five in the same chat, the way you'd message a colleague.
Tenders and take-offs, priced from your rates.
Estimator: how it worksTenders and take-offs, priced from your rates. More about the Estimator
Your numbers
What tendering costs you now.
A year of tenders, priced your way and ours.
Plus £20,000 of work a year you don't bid for today.
- Nexley, 12 months−£9,588
On QS fees alone, Nexley saves you £4,812 a year
Your numbers, not a promise. Work you could bid for is contract value, not profit, and isn't counted in the verdict. Nexley never submits a tender for you.
Why not just…
Three things groundworks firms try first.
…pen and paper?
It works until the sale, the audit or the dispute. Then you need the records.
…a bookkeeper?
They match the bills a month late. Nexley does it the day they land.
…a freelance QS?
You pay per tender, win or lose.
In detail
Groundworks and civils, in detail.
In most groundworks firms there is exactly one person who can price a job, and that person is also running the sites, chasing the wagons and answering the phone. Nexley is how the estimating stops depending on the owner's evenings: earthworks quantities from the levels, drainage measured from the layouts, and plant and muck-away costs that track what suppliers are actually charging this week.
- Bulk quantities from the level drawings
- Plant and haulage rates kept current
- Estimates the owner reviews, not writes
When the owner is the estimating department
Civils work punishes this harder than any other trade, because the quantities are unforgiving. A brickwork package priced slightly thin loses a few points of margin; an earthworks package priced off a glance loses the cost of a hundred extra wagon movements. So the owner does every estimate personally, every estimate takes an evening, and the firm can only bid what the owner's evenings can absorb — the growth ceiling is not the order book, it is one person's spare hours. Handing the measurement to Nexley and keeping the judgement is how that ceiling lifts; the wider pattern is the whole subject of back office automation.
Not sure a firm your size needs estimating software at all? Our guide to estimating software for UK builders and trades covers the four main types, how they are charged for, and when a spreadsheet is still fine.
Quantities you can stand behind
From the existing and proposed levels, Nexley works the cut and fill: reduced level dig, what can be re-used as fill, what has to be carted away, with the balance shown as workings rather than a single take-it-or-leave-it number. Drainage runs are measured from the layouts — pipe by diameter and depth band, manholes and gullies counted, beds and surrounds allowed by specification — through the same measured take-off engine used for bills of quantities. Attendances, temporary works and the NRSWA notices a street works job drags with it are itemised too, because the items nobody priced are the ones that eat the margin.
The costs that move daily
Groundworks estimating has a problem drylining does not: the input costs will not sit still. Excavator hire moves with season and availability, tipping charges move with material classification and the tip's appetite, haulage moves with diesel. An estimate built on last quarter's rates is wrong before it is printed. Nexley keeps a living rate book — plant, haulage, tipping, imported fill — updated as your suppliers quote, so the price you tender on a Friday reflects what Monday's wagons will actually cost. Smaller jobs that need a quote rather than a tender go out through automated quoting, priced from your own rates.
Price an earthworks package with itWhat changes in the first month
The three shifts groundworks firms report once the measuring moves off the kitchen table.
Evenings come back
The take-off happens during the day, at machine speed. The owner's evening job becomes a twenty-minute review with a red pen instead of a four-hour measure.
The back office story →More tenders go out
When measuring stops costing evenings, the marginal tender is suddenly worth bidding — and civils is a numbers game won by firms that can afford to keep bidding.
Tendering with Nexley →The reconciliation exists
Tipping tickets against allowed loads, plant hours against the estimate — the job-cost feedback loop most small civils firms never have time to close.
Cashflow & accounts →Off the Tools: free guides
Guides for groundworks and civils firms
Standard plan
£799 a month
All five assistants. Accounting connections included. No contract, and the first 7 days are free.
Got questions? We have answers
Send this month's bills. See them matched by morning.
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