Operational intelligence for commercial fit-out

You know what happened.
You rarely know why.

Fit-out runs across four or five companies who don't share a system. The work gets done. The account of the work never exists — until a unit slips, and everyone reconstructs March from WhatsApp in July.

Floorplate · live126 units · 0 in fit-out
Handed overIn fit-outDesign clearedOn holdNot started
Hover a unit.
GF-14 — ageingDesign cleared 22 days ago. Execution not started. No mail on this unit for 11 days.
The work gets done. The record doesn't exist.

Fit-out runs on memory. Memory is not evidence.

Seven stages — FOL, drawings, approval, execution, audits, SPAD, operational — running across companies that each keep their own version of the truth. When a unit slips, the answer gets assembled days later, and it's settled by whoever remembers most confidently.

~$18K–24K
Lost per unit, per month of delay
85%
Of projects tracked in WhatsApp groups and shared Excel
7 stages
Every one a place the chain can stop without anyone noticing

The deadline everyone watches is the opening date.
The deadline that governs is RCD.

What we make

It starts with one corner of one industry. Look at the shape of it.

The first product · live

VIGIL

Expansion should be growth — not firefighting.

An intelligence layer for complex fit-outs and expansions — where the thing that costs you is always the thing nobody saw in time. It understands the operation, and tells you what needs you. You keep the calls.

Enter Vigil
Four seats at the same table

Everyone builds for the landlord. Three seats are empty.

The PMC, the contractor and the architect sit in the same chain. They feel the same delays, carry more of the blame, and have nobody building for them. Same chain — pick your seat and see how it reads.

You know where every unit is. You don't know which ones stopped moving.

Your progress report is assembled by hand every morning — accurate, and silent. It won't tell you that 144 units have design cleared and haven't started, or that the two units on hold are three times the size of an average one. Vigil generates that report in your own stage names, and adds what a snapshot can't hold: what moved since yesterday, and what's ageing against its date.

Portfolio · Property 1 of 6
Handed overIn fit-outDesign clearedOn holdNot started
Landlord
FOL issued
11d silence
Architect
Drawings · rev 1–4
MEP
Services layout
Contractor
Execution
You
Accountable, end to end
MarAprMayJunJul
Total slip 19 days
11d
5d
3d
Waiting on others — 16 daysYours — 3 days
04 AprDrawing pack submitted for approval
08 AprFollow-up sent. No reply.+4d
15 AprSecond follow-up. No reply.+11d
18 AprApproval received with comments+5d
12 MayExecution started — your mobilisation+3d
REV 07Issued 02 Jun · held by You, Landlord, MEPCurrent
REV 04Issued 11 Apr · held by Contractor — building from thisDrift · 52 days
REV 06Superseded 02 JunSuperseded
REV 05Superseded 21 MaySuperseded
Hover a unit.
You own the gates. What you don't own is knowing which unit went quiet.
01

The cleared-but-idle gap

Design received against in fit-out. The difference is the largest number on the page and the only one without a bar of its own.

02

On hold, weighted

“2 on hold” reads as trivial. Two large-format units can be three times an average unit and a tenth of the leasable area.

03

Movement

A daily report with no delta is a photograph. Nothing in it tells you what changed, or what hasn't changed in eleven days.

Before

  • Assembled by hand every morning, brand names retyped
  • Counts and areas, no movement against yesterday
  • Ageing invisible until the date passes
  • Escalation based on who shouted loudest this week

After

  • Generated daily in your own stage names
  • Every stage shown against yesterday and last week
  • Units flagged while there's still time to recover
  • Escalation ordered by area at risk and days lost
The paper writes itself. You just sign it.

Same operation. Different record.

Before

  • Progress report assembled by hand, every morning
  • A milestone is done when someone says it is
  • Delay surfaces on the day the date passes
  • Approval silence is never logged, so it never counts
  • Revisions live in four separate inboxes
  • March gets reconstructed in July from scrollback

After

  • Report generates itself, daily, in your stage names
  • Every milestone dated against RCD, not opening
  • A unit that stopped moving is flagged while it's still recoverable
  • Silence is a tracked event, with a clock running on it
  • Every document versioned, with its full history
  • The chronology is already written when someone asks

Nobody changes how they work. Vigil is configured to the chain and the stage names already in use — rename a stage and the date math follows it.

A lens, not a fix

It tells you. It doesn't do it for you.

Vigil doesn't run your tender, price your BOQ, certify a bill or approve a drawing. Those are your decisions, in your systems. Vigil holds what was agreed, notices when what comes back doesn't match, and says so.

This is what the BOQ said.
This is what was agreed.
Here's the difference — check it.

Vigil observes, then suggests. A person confirms. Nothing changes status on its own, because in this work a wrong match costs more than no match.

It understands. You decide.
Month one is useful. Month six is different.

A person's memory has a limit. The record doesn't.

Every operation runs on one rare person who holds it all in their head — the state of everything, the rules, what a delay really costs. It works, right up until they get busy, or leave.

Month one

Useful.

Mail files itself to the right unit. The daily report generates instead of being assembled. Hours come back. Nothing you couldn't have described in advance.

Month six

Different.

Every approval cycle, every silence, every revision and every slip is retained and comparable. Have we seen this before — yes, here's what it cost last time, and which vendor it was. That part can't be bought late.

Built by an operator, not a software company

Seven years on site before a line of code.

DLFBharti Real EstateRahejaFivDADP

B.Arch and M.Arch. Currently reading Project Management (Complex Systems) at the University of Adelaide.

Vigil encodes how the job is actually done — that RCD outranks the opening date, that a landlord's silence functions as approval, that a wrong match costs more than no match. None of that is in a requirements document. It takes years on site to learn, which is why a general-purpose platform hasn't built it.

"You solve site problems over coffee — you invite people in, talk it through, get it done. No fuss."

Someone said that to me once. My mind jumped: coffee beans over concrete beams. He had no idea what I meant. I barely did either — but it stuck, because it's true.

The warmth of a good conversation, and the structure you build from it. I ran these operations for years, drowned in them, and built the first version of this by hand out of desperation. Beans-n-Beams is what I wish I'd had.

— Sanchit Satia, founder
How to start

One property. Six weeks. No rollout.

Unit list only to begin — no tenant drawings, no lease terms, no correspondence until you choose to connect a mailbox. Nobody on your team changes how they work.

01
Identify

One live property, and the report your team already builds by hand.

02
Measure

How long that report takes today, and how late a slip currently surfaces.

03
Run

Unit list imported, chain configured to your stage names, report generating daily.

04
Validate

Hours returned per week, and days of warning gained on real slips.

05
Decide

More properties — or stop, and the workspace is deleted.

Start a pilotvigil@beansnbeams.com
Let's talk

Building something, or curious what we're making next?

We'd like to hear from you — send a message and we'll get back to you.