If two things have become particular FoMo (fear-of-missing out) issues in AEC social-media space these days, here they are.

Not a day goes by without a post on LinkedIn asking for ISO 9001 accredited recommendations, and posts about ‘unlocking R&D tax credits’ seem to be everywhere too.

Maintaining your ISO 9001

ISO 9001 accreditation is a big deal if a construction company wants to work on any public sector projects. For most clients, it is an absolute requirement.

About a year ago, one of our clients started asking lots of different questions relating to the way we store data, how it is accessed and the audit processes we had in place. When we asked about the need for the information, the client told us they were using BuilderStorm to help manage their ISO 9001 accreditation and satisfy many points relating to good record keeping, audit histories and being able to retrieve evidence reliably and quickly should a review be required.

Once we realised that our product was incredibly helpful in allowing this client to achieve and maintain their ISO 9001 accreditation, we set about working to help even more.

This blog post was my first thought nearly a year ago, but without us also having ISO 9001, I felt it would be a bit rich for us to be preaching about it. So having achieved our own ISO 9001 standards using the very product we sell to our clients, we set about making sure that all the existing clients are doing the very same.

So, if you are looking to gain this much-needed certification, or you want to be able to manage it better than you currently do, let us show you how BuilderStorm is making many lives so much easier.

Claiming R&D tax credits

The next topic is the slightly misunderstood area of R&D tax credits. R&D tax credits first came to our attention when we were looking to file our R&D claim. I think most people would expect that a software company like BuilderStorm would easily qualify for Research and Development tax credits.

The majority of our spend is R&D. We have made successful claims every year we have been trading for vast sums of money and, without fail, get a cheque every year. What we often find, though, is that our clients are carrying out lots of activity that also qualifies as R&D. It became apparent that the capital cost of deploying a product such as BuilderStorm is also an R&D expense.

Don’t miss out

We have partnered with ForrestBrown Ltd, the UK’s largest specialist R&D tax credit consultancy. Last year, they helped their clients claim more than £100m via the R&D tax credit incentive. They have found that the construction industry as a whole is not making use of this valuable source of funding.

In fact, despite the clear benefits of R&D tax credits, just 3% of all claims made by UK businesses come from the construction sector. In 2016-17, the average SME claim was worth £53,876 and RDEC (the equivalent scheme for businesses with 500+ headcount), £272,881. Yet construction claims have been worth considerably less – £48,246 on average for SME and just £166,666 for RDEC. This despite the considerable amount of R&D that occurs daily within construction.

This document details the stats for 2016-2017 claims, showing construction as one of the most under-claimed industries, with clients thinking they do not fall under HMRC’s broad definition of R&D.

ForrestBrown has a 100% success rate in applying for R&D tax credits, with over 1,000 successful requests already. So if you are looking to release the tax credits available to your company and you want someone to handle the entire process and submit the claim on your behalf, get in touch with ForrestBrown Ltd who will guide you through the whole process.