Most contractors describe their process. This page describes our controls — the specific mechanisms that make our work verifiable rather than merely asserted.
In most projects, work is either “done” or “not done.” We hold four separate states, because they mean four different things and collapsing them is how defects survive to handover.
The crew has finished it.
An authorised inspector has examined it against a defined acceptance criterion.
It passed, with no open blocking non-conformance.
Every supporting record exists: certificates, test results, traceability, dossier.
A structure can be complete and not inspected. It can be inspected and not accepted. It can be accepted and still lack the evidence to prove compliance five years later, when it matters most.
We track all four, separately, for every element.
Before work begins, each work type has a published Inspection and Test Plan defining what is checked, when, against which criterion, by whom, and what record is produced.
Some points are surveillance — monitored while work continues. Some are witness points — a notified party may attend. And some are hold points, where work stops until an authorised party releases it.
A hold point in our system is not a status on a dashboard. It withholds authorisation for the next stage of work.
| Stage | Acceptance criterion | Point type |
|---|---|---|
| Rebar receipt | Mill certificate, heat number logged, dimensional check | Hold |
| Reinforcement | Diameter, count, spacing, lap length, cover, stirrups per approved drawing | HOLD |
| Embedded items | Position, orientation, fixing | Hold |
| Formwork | Alignment, plumb, dimensions, tightness | HOLD |
| Pre-pour | All prior holds released, pour card approved | HOLD |
| Placement | Layer thickness, compaction, continuity | Surveillance |
| Cube results | 7-day interim, 28-day final acceptance | Hold |
A seven-day cube result is an interim indication. It is never recorded as final acceptance. Where required evidence does not yet exist, the result is indeterminate — it is not forced to pass.
For steel, rebar, cement, structural bolts and welding consumables, we maintain an unbroken chain:
This runs in both directions. Given an installed column, we can produce its certificate. Given a certificate later found defective, we can identify every element it went into.
Without traceability, the answer to a questioned certificate is to open the structure. With it, the answer is a query.
Material that is unapproved, uncertified or quarantined is physically segregated and cannot be issued to work.
Where a governed life-safety condition is unsatisfied, work does not proceed. Not “should not” — does not. No schedule authority, commercial authority, client instruction or management direction can reinterpret an unsatisfied safety condition as satisfied.
There is no override facility in any of our systems. The only route to proceeding is to restore the control and verify it.
Every person on a Ferrum site may stop work on a safety concern and requires no permission to do so.
We measure leading indicators, not just outcomes. A project reporting zero injuries while critical control verification is overdue is not safe — it is unmeasured. We record potential severity alongside actual severity, so a two-kilogram object falling thirty metres and hitting no one is investigated as what it could have been.
When work does not meet requirement, we raise a non-conformance stating the requirement, its source clause, the observed condition and the measured gap. Not “work is unsatisfactory” — the specific deviation, evidenced.
Correction fixes the defect. Corrective action removes the cause so it does not recur. We do both, and we verify the second.
A non-conformance that has entered the record is never erased because the work was repaired.
The chronology — non-conforming, corrected, re-inspected, accepted — is preserved permanently. The failure is knowledge, not embarrassment.
The completion dossier is assembled progressively from the first day of work, never scrambled together at the end. It contains:
Completeness is checked against a manifest before handover. A dossier that cannot be produced in full is not ready for handover, regardless of physical completion.
Ferrum is governed by a constitutional charter that binds every company in the Group and every person in it, including the founders.
Three provisions are absolute and cannot be overridden by anyone at any level:
Most contractors ask you to trust their judgement. We would rather show you the rules we cannot break.