At a glance
- Client: Durham Lifting, Middlesbrough, Teesside.
- What they do: testing, inspection and certification of lifting equipment.
- What we built: an inspection and certification planner: scheduling, certificates and job packs in one place, with every renewal flagged before it lapses.
- When: live March 2025.
- Result: about £42,000 a year saved in admin hours and inspections that are no longer missed. The department grew 30% in the twelve months after go-live.
The problem
Every piece of lifting equipment a customer owns has to be inspected on a schedule, certified when it passes, and the paperwork has to be ready before an engineer sets off. At Durham Lifting those were three separate jobs, held in three separate places and joined up by hand. A renewal that slipped through meant a customer with equipment they could not legally use, and the first anyone knew about it was the phone call.
What we built
One planner that holds the customer, the equipment, the inspection schedule and the certificate history together. The system raises the next inspection the moment the last one is signed off, flags every renewal before it lapses, and builds the job pack for the engineer from what it already knows. Nothing is typed twice and nothing waits on a person remembering.
Samuel Gardiner, now a Seahorse co-founder, was Durham Lifting's service manager at the time and knew the paperwork first-hand, which is why the planner fits the job rather than the other way round. It went live in March 2025.
What changed
The business puts the saving at about £42,000 a year, in admin hours no longer spent and in inspections that are no longer missed. In the twelve months after the planner went live the department grew by 30%.
Could this work for you?
If your scheduling, certification or paperwork live in separate places and depend on someone remembering, the free scoping call is where we start. Twenty minutes, one job walked through from enquiry to invoice, and a written plan within two working days.