Microsoft for Startups PartnerAI for Private Building Control — England
Skirr AI helps registered building control approvers across England find and recover wasted time — inspection write-ups, Approved Document lookups, client chasing, BSR compliance admin. We built the Scottish Government's building control app. We know this workflow inside out. We know exactly where the time goes.
9,000 hrs
Wasted annual capacity identified in a single AI audit
1 week
From audit start to prioritised roadmap in your hands
£3,500
Fixed price. No surprises. No obligation to proceed
3–5 hrs
Typical time recovered per surveyor per week
Scottish Building Standards Hub
Fife Council
Scottish Futures Trust
RSE Water Technology
Microsoft for Startups
Crown Commercial Service9,000hours
Our AI audit for Scottish Futures Trust identified over 9,000 hours of potential annual time savings — the same workflow discipline we apply to private building control firms in England.
“Skirr AI have provided vital support to our Public Sector Digital Estate Working Group. As AI develops at pace, they have provided reliable advice and are a trusted delivery partner.”
Skirr AI designs, builds, and operates production automation on OpenAI, Anthropic (Claude), Google Gemini, Grok, OpenClaw, NemoClaw, and Microsoft AI Cloud—including Copilot and Azure AI services—so what we recommend is grounded in the same stacks we run for clients day to day.
Every private building control firm in England we speak to is dealing with the same problems. Most assume it is just the cost of doing business. It is not. It is recoverable time — and in a sector under the kind of pressure building control is under right now, recovering it matters.
After every site visit, your registered building inspectors spend 30 to 60 minutes writing up the inspection from hand-written notes or memory. Multiply that across your team and across a year. AI can draft the report from a voice note recorded on site before the RBI gets back to the van.
Plans checkers and field surveyors across England repeatedly search the same Parts of the Building Regulations for the same answers. An AI assistant trained on Approved Documents Parts A through S eliminates most of this lookup time and gives cited answers in seconds — not minutes.
Developers and architects call to ask where their project is. Where is the completion certificate. When is the next inspection. Your office staff spend hours fielding calls that a well-configured notification system could eliminate entirely.
Since the Building Safety Act 2022 introduced the RBCA regime in England, operational standards reporting, CPD logs per registered building inspector, and impartiality declarations are all required — and almost all done manually. This is automatable. Most building control firms have not automated any of it.
Project data lives across email, a shared drive, inspection notebooks, and a case management system that nobody fully trusts. When an RBI is off sick, projects stall. When a client chases, staff scramble. This is a structural problem and AI can fix the underlying data chaos.
An RBI travels to site. The work is not ready for inspection. That visit is unrecovered cost — fuel, time, rescheduling. One abortive visit per surveyor per fortnight is thousands of pounds a year in unrecovered cost across a building control firm. A pre-inspection readiness checklist sent automatically to the client eliminates most of these.
With the registered building inspector shortage across England well documented, firms are hiring people who need support on site. Without a searchable knowledge base accessible in the field, every query becomes an escalation to a senior surveyor. An AI assistant trained on your firm's own procedures changes that from day one.
Signal is unreliable on new builds, in basements, and in rural locations across England. Surveyors who cannot access Approved Documents on site either guess or call the office. We have already solved this — it is built into the live app we delivered for the Scottish Government.
One week. Fixed price. A clear picture of where your building control team is losing time, what AI can recover, and what it costs to implement. No overhaul, no retraining everyone, no disruption to live projects.
£3,500 — fixed price, delivered in one week
We talk to your building control surveyors and office staff. We follow the actual work, not the org chart. Where does time really go inside a private building control firm?
We map each workflow, estimate time loss, and identify where AI can intervene — and where it would create more problems than it solves.
A written report with a prioritised opportunity matrix, ROI estimates per opportunity, and a clear implementation roadmap your building control firm can act on immediately.
We walk through the findings together. You ask the hard questions. We give honest answers about what AI can and cannot do for your firm at your current size and stage.
We are not a generalist AI consultancy that discovered building control exists last month. We built the official mobile app for the Scottish Building Standards Hub — commissioned by the Scottish Government, now live on iOS and Android — serving surveyors, developers, and local authority verifiers across Scotland. The building control workflow in England is the same workflow. Same inspection stages, same compliance documentation challenges, same client communication pressure. Approved Documents replace Scottish Technical Standards. The problems are identical.
“Skirr AI took our brief and developed a clear, focused and user-friendly product that met the brief, in a friendly, professional and no-fuss manner. They took care of everything whilst regularly engaged with us during development and we look forward to working with them in developing the app further.”
“Skirr AI have provided vital support to our Public Sector Digital Estate Working Group. As AI develops at pace, they have provided reliable advice and are a trusted delivery partner.”
From plans checking to BSR compliance reporting, Skirr AI works across every workflow where private building control professionals in England lose time to tasks that AI can handle better and faster.
We spend a week mapping your real workflows — how your registered building inspectors work on site across England, how your office processes applications, how you communicate with clients, and how you report to the Building Safety Regulator. We identify where time is lost to tasks AI can handle and produce a prioritised, costed roadmap. We built the Scottish Government's building control app. We are not learning your sector on your budget.
No. The professional judgement, site presence, and regulatory accountability of a registered building inspector operating under the RBCA regime in England cannot be replaced by AI. What AI handles is the administrative work around that judgement — drafting reports, retrieving the right Approved Document clause, notifying clients, logging compliance data. Your RBIs spend more time inspecting and less time on paperwork.
Yes, when implemented correctly. Every building control firm in England operates under strict BSR conduct rules and professional liability requirements. Our approach is built around AI augmenting professional decisions, not making them. The RBI signs off every inspection outcome. AI drafts the report — the RBI approves it. AI retrieves the Approved Document clause — the RBI applies the judgement. We include a compliance review in every audit.
Especially relevant. Larger building control firms have more headroom to absorb inefficiency. For a firm with five to twenty registered building inspectors operating across England, recovering three to five hours per surveyor per week is the difference between comfortable margins and a cashflow problem. Smaller firms also move faster — no procurement committee, no IT department to consult. We have worked with teams of every size.
Most registered building control approvers in England use Barnbrook AIP for case management, combined with email and shared drives for everything else. It is reliable case management software but it has no AI capability, no mobile-first offline tools for use on site, and no built-in automation for BSR reporting or client communication. That gap is what Skirr addresses.
The Building Safety Act introduced the RBCA regime in England, replacing Approved Inspectors from April 2024. With it came increased compliance obligations — BSR registration maintenance, operational standards reporting, RBI competency tracking, and greater documentation requirements across all building control projects. Every one of these compliance tasks is an administrative burden that AI can reduce significantly without touching the professional judgement at the core of building control work.
You get a written report and a readout call. There is no obligation to do anything further. If the report identifies strong opportunities and you want to implement them, we scope that separately and only when you are ready. Many building control firms find the audit identifies tools they are already paying for but not using — which means immediate savings before any new spend at all.
One week. Fixed price. A clear picture of where your time goes and what AI can do about it. No jargon, no overhaul, no obligation to proceed.
Book a free scoping call →Or email Paul directly at paul@skirrai.com — no forms, no waiting.
Skirr AI — AI for Building Control in England · paul@skirrai.com · skirrai.com · Microsoft for Startups Partner · Crown Commercial Service Supplier
