Built for the people who
own the margin.
You own the margin. Your spreadsheets don't.
You're spot-checking variations across five to twenty live jobs. The forecast is a week stale. Approvals happen in your inbox. By the time the cost report lands on your desk, the PM has already committed to the next thing. Deep Space was built by construction experts who've lived this exact pain, and it gives you one live view of every project, with the approval trail, the retention schedule, and the margin call all sitting in one register.
What your day actually looks like
You're not running the calculation. You're spot-checking the calculation, approving the recoverable, and answering to the MD about the portfolio margin.
sure they're working, not drowning
You sit between the MD and the operational commercial team. In larger mid-tier builders, CAs and QSs report into you. In founder-led businesses, you are the founder. Either way, the buck stops at your desk when the final account is short.
"We've got two different health and safety systems, our cost tool, our project tool, accounting, the list goes on. If your platform can consolidate even one or two of those, that's a real step forward."
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What you're dealing with
Mid-tier commercial builders have never had a commercial platform built for the way the role actually runs. Too senior for what JobPac and Cheops were designed for. Too lean for the enterprise stack. You sit in the gap.
The budget register lives in Excel. The variations live in someone's inbox. By the time the forecast pulls them all together, three of your jobs have already moved against you. You're managing exposure with last month's numbers.
A PM signs off a forty thousand dollar variation in Outlook. A QS adjusts a retention rule in a sheet. You find out three weeks later when the claim doesn't reconcile. There's no register that says who approved what, against what evidence.
To look across fifteen jobs you open fifteen spreadsheets. The numbers don't agree because the templates have drifted. You're not running a portfolio, you're running fifteen islands.
Cheops for cost. Procore for documents. HammerTech for safety. CAT Projects on its way out. Three different sync layers, none of them clean. Your CAs spend half their week moving data between systems instead of certifying claims.
How Deep Space helps Commercial Managers
One platform, one register, one approval trail. Margin defended in real time, not reconstructed atmonth-end.
Budget Register and Forecasting
Cost-only register, connected to the head contract revenue side, with the margin calculated and visible across every project in your portfolio.
Set project markup and margin defaults at the workspace level, inherited by every new job- Budget Adjustments as the sole audited mechanism for budget movements, with full history
- Forecasting and Final Account view that pulls actuals, commitments, and variations into one cost-to-complete
- Portfolio view across every active job, ranked by margin position
- Sliding retention schedules (10 percent, 5 percent, 1.75 percent) handled at the head contract level
Cheops, JobPac, CAT Projects, Excel cost plans, manual monthly forecasts assembled by hand.
Approvals Engine
Approval routing by role, configured at the org level. The single audited path for every variation, sub award, and claim above threshold.
- Set approval thresholds by role and by amount, applied across every project
- Variations above your threshold route to you. Below it, route to the PM
- Full audit trail showing who approved what, when, against what evidence
- Approval history exportable to defend a final account dispute
- Replaces the inbox as the authoritative record of who said yes
Approval-by-email chains, signed PDFs filed in folders, the question "who approved this" with no good answer.
Head Contract setup and Variations
Revenue-only Head Contract Register. Sub variations link to the head contract VO they came from, so recoverable work is visible the moment it's logged.
- Head contract terms, retention rules, and payment terms set per project, then locked
- Client variations tracked from instruction through to claim, with status visible
- Sub VOs flagged against the HC VO they roll into. Recoverable position calculated automatically
- EOT and claim notice tracking against contractual timeframes
- Bank Guarantee management against retention alternatives
Disconnected variation registers in Excel, head contract PDFs in Dropbox, the recoverable position calculated in your head.
Subcontract awards and management
From tender selection through to final account. Every subcontract sits inside the cost code structure, with claims, variations, and retentions hanging off it.
- Award flows directly from the tender quote comparison, no re-keying
- Sub claims certified against actuals, with the audit trail attached
- Retention register that knows your PC and DLP dates per contract
- Final account close-out with the full claim and variation history
Manual subcontract templates, retention spreadsheets, final account reconciliation done by hand.
Portfolio Reporting and Cashflow
Live reporting built on real project activity. No exports, no Excel re-keying, no board pack assembled the weekend before the meeting.
- Live portfolio dashboard across every active project, ranked by exposure
- Cashflow forecast pulling commitments, claims, and payment terms in real time
- Cost-to-complete and projected final margin per project
- Audit-ready reports for the board pack, generated from live data
- Cross-project comparison so you can see which PM is running tight and which is drifting
Excel board packs, late-night month-end reconciliation, the gap between what the report says and what the job is actually doing.
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Used by Commercial Managers running 5 to 20 jobs at a time.
Mid-tier commercial builders. Contracts between half a million and a hundred million. Too big for JobPac and Cheops. Too lean for the enterprise stack. The gap Deep Space was built for.
Commercial Director, ANZ mid-tier builder
Commercial Manager, mid-tier ANZ builder
Commercial Manager, NZ commercial builder
Go from chaos, to clarity.
Thirty minutes, no install, no commitment. We'll walk through a workspace configured for a builder your size, with the commercial register, the approval engine, and the portfolio view actually running.
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