Construction Resource Management System: getting a contractor’s jobs out of group chats
A pool and remodel contractor running multiple live jobs, with crews, subcontractors and homeowners all needing different slices of the same information — and none of it in one place.
What this needed to solve
On a live construction job the status lives in four places at once: a group chat, a spreadsheet, somebody’s camera roll and somebody else’s memory. The office cannot answer “where are we on that one” without a phone call, and the question gets asked many times a day.
Photos are the sharpest version of the problem. Crews take them constantly, but a half-finished excavation reaching a homeowner unprompted creates a conversation nobody wanted. The office needs to decide what the customer sees and when — without that decision becoming a full-time job.
There is also an access problem. A subcontractor should see their own jobs and nothing else. A homeowner should see one job, read-only. The office should see everything. Most tools treat this as an afterthought.
What the build includes
A single operations hub, with every screen built around who is waiting on whom.
- A job directory searchable by homeowner, address, city or project type, filtered by current, active, on hold, pending, completed or warranty
- Per-job tabs for Information, Site Log, Selections, Documents, Messages and Quotes
- A “Needs You” action list gathering everything on a live job waiting on the office, the crew or the homeowner
- On-site check-in and check-out, where an open check-in means nobody pressed check out — it is never assumed
- Issue tracking that persists across visit dates until somebody picks it up and resolves it
- A photo review queue: share with homeowner, keep internal, release for handover, or bulk-share a job
- A homeowner portal giving one job, read-only, plus their own uploads and messages
- Five roles — admin, office, in-house crew, contractor, homeowner — set per contractor
- A Who’s Online presence view that reports an open browser tab and nothing more
- Location requested once at check-in and nowhere else; nobody is tracked through the day
- English and Spanish throughout, each person choosing their own language
What it runs on
Confirmed by inspecting the deployed application.
- Next.js and React — server-rendered pages with an interactive client, confirmed from the deployed build
- Authenticated access — the application sits behind a sign-in wall; nothing is readable without an account
- Mobile browser first — crews use it from site with no app install, in light or dark mode
What ZuluLab did
ZuluLab built and operates Construction Resource Management System. It is in daily production use at Tad’s Construction, managing live pool, spa and remodel jobs.
The screenshots on this page come from the live system with every homeowner name and street address permanently removed before publishing. The application itself sits behind authentication, so there is no public link to open — if you want to see it working, we will walk you through it.
No time savings, cost reductions or adoption figures are claimed here. We have not asked our client for permission to publish their operational data.