They're on site Monday. The RAMS aren't in.
Obtainr chases subcontractors and suppliers for the compliance documents a site needs — from your own mailbox, in your name — and checks each reply against your requirements before you let anyone through the gate.
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What you're actually waiting on
The programme doesn't slip because the work is slow. It slips because a subcontractor who was due on Monday hasn't sent the paperwork that lets them start:
- RAMS for the specific task, not a generic method statement with someone else's site name on it
- Public liability and employer's liability certificates, in date on the day they're on site
- CSCS cards for every operative actually turning up, not the three named last time
- CIS registration and UTR details before anyone can be paid
- Competency and training records — IPAF, PASMA, asbestos awareness, whatever the task needs
- Product data sheets, warranties and O&M manuals for handover, chased six months after fit-out
- Signed subcontract documents and order acknowledgements
It's a compliance problem with a commercial consequence: no paperwork means no access, no access means a day lost, and a day lost on a critical path is not recoverable by anyone shouting about it afterwards.
Your subcontractors will not use your system. Ever.
This is the sector where the portal argument is least arguable. A two-man groundworks firm is on four sites for four main contractors, each with a different compliance portal, each demanding a login. They will not use yours. They will reply to an email — usually from a phone, usually at seven in the morning, usually with a photograph.
Obtainr meets them there. An ordinary email, from your ordinary address, with a QR code that opens a page asking for exactly the documents you need.
The subcontractor
On several sites for several contractors, each with a different portal. Email and a phone camera are the common denominator.
Their operatives
The cards you need belong to people who don't read the main contractor's emails at all.
Suppliers
For data sheets, warranties and O&M content at handover, months after the invoice was paid.
The client's own team
Wanting the handover file complete, on a date agreed before any of this started.
Obtainr sends an ordinary email from your ordinary mailbox. It works on anyone with an email address, whether or not they've ever heard of us. There is nothing for them to join.
How it runs on your work
Describe the chase the way you'd brief a junior
“Get task-specific RAMS, current PL and EL certificates and CSCS cards for the four operatives from Kelsall Groundworks, before Monday.” Obtainr asks what the RAMS must cover, what minimum cover you require, and how many operatives — then holds every reply to that.
It goes out from your mailbox
Gmail or Outlook, connected once with OAuth. Your address, your signature, your existing thread. Replies land in your inbox where you'd expect them. Nothing is relayed through a third-party sending domain, and there's no "sent on behalf of" header.
They get a link and a QR code
Each chase carries an upload link and a QR code. A subcontractor photographs four CSCS cards on a tailgate and sends them in a minute, with no account and no app. This is the only collection method that reliably works in this trade, and it's the default.
The reply comes back, and gets read
If the RAMS arrive but the insurance certificate has expired, Obtainr says so and asks for the current one. If three cards arrive and you asked for four, it names the operative still missing. You find out on Thursday rather than at the gate on Monday.
A case, end to end
A groundworks subcontractor is due on site Monday. On Thursday they send a RAMS document and a photograph of an insurance certificate.
Obtainr checks against the requirements — task-specific RAMS, in-date PL and EL, four CSCS cards. The RAMS names a different site. The certificate is employer's liability only and expires in nine days. No cards have arrived.
It replies the same afternoon naming all three problems specifically, and the subcontractor sends corrected documents on Friday morning. The alternative version of that story is a gang standing at the gate on Monday while somebody phones the office.
Where it stops, plainly
Where it stops, plainly. Obtainr is reply-driven. When a reply arrives it reads it and, if your requirements aren't met, sends the next chase. It does not yet follow up on a timer against total silence — if someone never responds at all, the chase waits and you make the call. That's a real limitation and it's on the roadmap. Everything else it doesn't do.
A subcontractor who ignores you entirely is a commercial conversation, not a chasing problem, and you'll want to have it by phone. What Obtainr prevents is the far more common failure: paperwork that arrived, looked complete, and turns out on Monday morning to have been the wrong site, the wrong cover or the wrong three men.
Questions contractors ask
Does it check whether a certificate is actually valid?
It checks the reply against the requirements you wrote, and it's good at spotting that a document is missing, is the wrong type, or is the wrong one of several. It reads what a document says, including dates, and will tell you when something looks out of date or doesn't match what you asked for. It is not an accreditation service and it does not verify a certificate with the issuer — the final judgement on whether a document is acceptable stays with you.
We already use a compliance portal like a CHAS or an Alcumus system. Why this?
Those verify companies at the company level, periodically. They don't chase this subcontractor for this site's task-specific RAMS by Monday. That gap — project-level, task-level, deadline-driven document collection from firms who resent portals — is where the days get lost, and it's what Obtainr is for.
Can it chase for O&M and handover documents?
Yes, and it's one of the better uses. Handover chasing happens months after anyone is motivated, across suppliers who have already been paid, and it's usually done by whoever has the least leverage. A chase with a clear requirements list and automatic follow-up on incomplete replies is worth more there than almost anywhere else.
Will it work if the subcontractor only has a phone?
That's the assumed case. The QR code in the email opens the upload page directly, they photograph the documents, and they're done. No account, no password, no app, no portal — nothing that requires them to be at a desk or to remember anything.
Honest numbers
Small numbers, and real ones. There are no client logos on this page because we haven't earned any yet — here's the full data set.
Obtainr is used for the same problem elsewhere
The document changes. The shape doesn't: you need something from a person who doesn't work for you, and no portal will make them log in.
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Try it on next week's subcontractor
14 days free, no card. Pick the firm due on site on Monday and let Obtainr ask for their paperwork properly.
£49 per user per month, with 100 chases included. Billed to the business.
14 days free · no card · cancel any time