NexBilt: Turning 40 Hours of Quoting Work Into 1–3 Hours for Trades and Property Managers

Brief

Stephen Sutherland had a clear vision for NexBilt – a platform that could take trades and property managers from a site walkthrough straight through to a finished quote, compliance document, or report – but the early build needed to go from a promising prototype into something production-ready, so we audited and rebuilt the backend, stood up proper Azure infrastructure, added authentication, refined the AI prompting, and optimised it for mobile, taking the quoting workflow from around 40 hours of work down to 1 to 3, with the platform now live and handling real jobs for Western Maintenance and many more construction companies.

“AI Advancements have been outstanding to work with from start to finish. James worked closely with us throughout the entire development process and his communication, responsiveness and ability to understand what we were trying to achieve were excellent. James never tried to force a typical ‘developer’s way’ of doing things. Instead, he gave me the freedom to be heavily involved in the front-end design and development, listened carefully to what I was trying to create, and then worked alongside me to turn that vision into a finished product… The end result has exceeded what I originally had in mind. The product is polished, works exceptionally well, and is something we’re genuinely proud of.”

Stephen SutherlandFounder, NexBilt / Western Maintenance

Problem

Quoting a trade job properly means walking the site, working out scope, pricing every line item, checking compliance requirements, and getting a professional document in front of the client – and doing it fast enough to win the work before a competitor beats you to it. For trades and the managers who oversee them, that process traditionally eats the better part of a day or more per job, long before any actual work begins. Stephen’s original vision for NexBilt was to compress all of that into minutes, not hours, but turning that vision into something reliable enough for real businesses to depend on meant more than just having the idea. It meant an application that could handle real data securely, scale beyond a prototype, and hold up under everyday use by people who aren’t developers.

Solution

A tradie or manager records a walkthrough – video, photos, voice notes, or existing scope documents – and NexBilt’s AI generates a full scope of work, exclusions and assumptions, pricing based on a location-aware price book, and trade assignment, exportable as a branded PDF or CSV and automatically emailed to the relevant trades.

• Built for two distinct users – a Tradie tier for trades running their own quoting and compliance, and a Manager tier for enterprises overseeing contractor networks, project timelines, and variations.
• Handles the messy, real-world inputs tradies actually have – narrated video, photos, voice recordings, not just clean typed data entry.
• Compliance built in, not bolted on – SWMS documents are generated automatically from a won quote, with risks and controls tailored to the specific trade.
• A genuine collaborative rebuild – we audited and rebuilt the backend on FastAPI, stood up proper Azure infrastructure, added full authentication with role-based access, and refined the AI prompting, while keeping Stephen closely involved in every front-end decision.
• Ready for real money, not just a demo – Stripe is now integrated, and the platform is live handling real jobs.

For a full run through of the application and its other features or to try it out for yourself view the live application: NexBilt – Quoting has never been easier

Result

NexBilt is live and in active use by Western Maintenance today with many more companies on the waitlist keen to sign up. The impact on the quoting workflow has been dramatic – work that used to take roughly 40 hours now takes 1 to 3, freeing trades and managers to spend that time on the job itself rather than the paperwork around it. Stephen has described the finished product as exceeding what he originally had in mind, crediting the closely collaborative build process for getting there.

Under the Hood