Your reports, in your own words, in twenty minutes.

A report writer built from your own past reports, so the first draft already sounds like you. £100, and it's yours for good. Then, once you've got your evenings back, I fill them — with a Google profile that ranks and a clerk that never forgets a quote.

Get Quill built — £100 See what it did for one practice or ring 07893 941669 · WhatsApp

£100 once, not a subscription. Don't like it? Your money back, and you keep it anyway. One practice per area — currently working with one, looking for the next five.

  1. On site
    Your notes, as you already take them
    Typed or dictated. Nothing new to learn.
  2. Quill
    Built from your own past reports
    Your phrasing, your caveats, your sign-off.
  3. Twenty minutes later
    A first draft that sounds like you
    You read it, correct it, sign it. Your name, your judgement.
164
Google reviews at Coastline Building Surveys
4.9
Average rating across all of them
3/mo
New reviews, arriving steadily without being chased
19%
Of people who saw the profile in August did something about it
★★★★★
An excellent survey, well written, delivered faster than first suggested and easy to understand too. This was especially helpful as the property needed a lot of renovation so it was great to be fully aware of the things we hadn’t spotted during our viewings.
SR
Sara RobinsonJune 2026 · on Google
★★★★★
Communication was clear throughout, everything was handled efficiently, and the report was thorough and easy to understand. Would definitely use again.
LP
Lilian PurkessMarch 2026 · on Google
★★★★★
I got quotes from 3 surveyors including Coastline Building Surveys and they were by far the best for getting it done as soon as possible. The survey was thorough, informative and included a list of contractors in the area we could call to have things investigated further.
MM
Mike MorantJuly 2026 · on Google

Three of the 164, quoted as written. Two are missing a sentence for space; not a word has been changed.

Real figures from a real practice in Worthing, taken from its Google profile. You can check every one of them yourself in about ten seconds.

The time

You get the best part of two working days back a week

The inspection was never the problem. The write-up is what takes your evenings.

The arithmetic

In the practice I work with, a Level 3 report that took five hours to write now takes about twenty minutes to check and correct, because the first draft arrives already written in your own words from the notes taken on site. At four or five surveys a week that's somewhere near eighteen hours per surveyor — the best part of two working days each, every week. In a practice of three, that's most of a full-time post you were never going to advertise for.

What happens next is the interesting bit, and it depends entirely on what you actually want.

If you want to grow

Those hours become surveys

Two more a week is roughly twelve hundred pounds. And the reason the profile work and the report writer are sold together is that neither is much use alone: free up the time without filling the diary and you've just gained an afternoon off; fill the diary without freeing the time and you're typing until midnight. Do both and the practice actually gets bigger.

If you don't

Those hours become Saturday

Plenty of good practices don't want to be bigger. They want the same number of surveys and their weekends back. That's an entirely respectable answer, and the system doesn't care which one you pick — it hands you the hours either way. You trained for years to survey buildings. The typing was never the part you wanted more of.

The three things I look after — and how each one actually works

Two hundred years ago, a surveying practice had a quill and a clerk. I've rebuilt them both. The whole idea is one sentence: I give you back four hours a survey, then I fill them.

A quill resting on an open ledger beside a brass inkwell
The profile

Getting found

The mechanism: the profile is managed every week, not set up once. Continuous Google Business Profile management, monthly reporting, and automatic review requests after every survey. The part that puts more hands up.

Quill

Writing the reports

The mechanism: it's built from your own past reports. Your phrasing, your caveats, your sign-off — so it writes in your voice rather than a house style. You do the inspection and the judgement; it does the typing. Yours permanently, on your own account.

Clerk

Not losing anything

The mechanism: the Carbon Copy Method. You BCC one address on quotes and invoices; it reads what it's copied on and nothing else. One short email each morning: who's enquired and not had a quote, which quotes have gone quiet, what needs chasing. Follow-ups written and waiting in your drafts. Nothing to log into.

Once you have the hours back

A survey practice loses work in the quiet

Every small practice is short of the same person. Not another surveyor — a clerk.

Where it goes

Not dramatically. Nobody storms off. An enquiry comes in on a Thursday while you're up a ladder on a Level 3, and by Monday it's four screens down your inbox. A quote goes out with your bank details on it and simply never gets answered, and you never find out why.

Every one of those is six hundred pounds, and none of them feels like a loss at the time. They just quietly don't happen. Practices used to have a clerk at the desk in the corner who knew what had gone out and what hadn't come back. That role stopped being worth a salary, and nobody replaced the function.

Software hasn't fixed it, because a CRM is a filing cabinet that asks you to do the noticing. So this is built the other way round: it reads what your practice already sends, and it does the noticing. I call it the Carbon Copy Method, because that is precisely what it is. How Clerk works, in full →

  1. You
    Send a quote, the way you always do
    To the client
    BCC one address — the clerk's
  2. Clerk
    Reads what it's copied on. Nothing else.
    Keeps the thread. Notices what's gone quiet. Never sees the mailbox.
  3. Each morning
    One short email
    Who enquired and hasn't had a quote. Which quotes have gone quiet. Follow-ups already drafted, waiting for you to press send.

The whole mechanism. Carbon paper did the same job for a hundred and fifty years, and nobody ever had to be trained to use it.

Where the needle actually moves

Everything else is downstream of your Google profile

Get the profile right and the rest is arithmetic. Get it wrong and nothing else you do can rescue it.

Why that's true

A homebuyer needs a building survey perhaps twice in a lifetime. They don't know any surveyors, they've never thought about it before, and they aren't going to research the field. They sit in the car outside the house they've just offered on and type building survey near me into a phone.

What comes back is three businesses on a map. Not a shortlist they'll research — a shortlist they'll ring. Google decides those three on how close you are, how relevant your profile is, and how prominent you look. The first you can't change. The second takes about a fortnight of proper work. The third, in practice, means reviews.

Which is why a practice with 164 reviews at 4.9 doesn't have to be more persuasive than the one with nine. It just has to appear, and then it wins on sight. And unlike advertising, reviews don't stop working when you stop paying — they accumulate, they can't be bought, and every survey you complete adds another one.

So that's the part I run continuously: the profile itself, the posts, the categories and services, the questions, and a review request that goes out automatically after every single survey without you ever having to ask a client for a favour.

Nothing changes about how you work

That is not a slogan, it's the design brief. The last thing a busy sole practitioner needs is another platform to keep updated — the software graveyard is full of them, and I've built one myself that a surveyor took one look at and refused to use. Fair enough. He was right.

So Clerk lives in your email, because you already live in your email. Quill runs on your own account, on your own machine, from the site notes you already write.

A printed survey report on a desk beside a moisture meter, a torch and reading glasses
  1. 1We build Quill for your practice — £100I take a handful of your finished reports and build a report writer that sounds like you. About a day's work. It's yours to keep permanently, with no subscription and no way for me to switch it off.
  2. 2A fortnight later, we look at your last 90 daysA review of your own enquiries and quotes, run on your machine, on your account — I never see your mailbox. It tells you how many enquiries never got quoted and what that came to. No charge, and the report is yours whether or not you show me any of it.
  3. 3If the number bothers you, we fix itThat's when the profile work and Clerk start. If it doesn't bother you, you've had a free report writer and an honest look at your own figures, and we shake hands.

Who owns what

It's your practice. This is just your equipment.

Every other supplier makes you a tenant. This makes you the owner.

Why that's more than a nicety

For forty years a small practice has had to rent software from a company and then fit itself around whatever that company decided to build. You wait for features. You queue for support. You arrange your working day to suit somebody's screen layout. And a one-man practice has no leverage at all, because it's the smallest customer of a business that was never designed for it.

What's changed is that the thing doing the work now sits on your account and gets shaped around how you already work. There's no roadmap to wait for. If you'd rather the morning note arrived at six than seven, that's a sentence, not a feature request.

Three consequences worth being blunt about. They can switch theirs off; nobody can switch yours off, because it isn't on anyone's server but yours. They hold your clients' details; you hold your clients' details, so their data-protection problem never becomes yours. They can raise the price while your reports sit inside their system; yours were never in it.

And none of that asks you to become technical. You don't need a software company and you don't need a support desk. You need one person who looks after it, and a system that works the way your practice already works.

They can switch theirs off. Nobody can switch yours off, because it isn't on anyone's server but yours.

Who's saying this

I'm not a surveyor, and I'm not an agency

I'm Adam. I've spent the last year inside one surveying practice — not consulting to it, in it. I built the report writer it uses every day, I run the Google profile that's brought it to 164 Google reviews at 4.9, and I set up the email, the domain and the search console behind it.

The reason I know this trade in any detail is that the surveyor is my brother. I got to sit and watch how a survey practice actually runs, on the days it runs badly as well as the days it doesn't — which is not access you can buy.

Before this I've spent years doing web, domain and local-search work for small businesses, and my day job is running route rates for a parcel network, which is mostly the same skill: finding the money that leaks out of an operation nobody's watching closely.

What I'm not is a marketing agency with forty clients and an account manager. It's me. That's the reason I won't work with two practices within ten miles of each other, and won't take many on overall — not scarcity marketing, just arithmetic about how many practices one person can look after properly.

Adam Humphrey, who runs Fourth Impact
Adam Humphrey. There is nobody else — that's rather the point.

One practice, and it's my brother's

Coastline Building Surveys in Worthing. RICS Level 2 and Level 3, one surveyor, five years in — and before that, years on the tools as a qualified electrician, which is why his reports catch things a graduate surveyor walks past.

164 Google reviews at 4.9. Three more arriving every month without him asking. In August, nineteen percent of the people who found his profile called, clicked through or asked for directions — which is a very high number, and it happens because a practice with that many good reviews doesn't have to persuade anybody.

And a survey report that used to take him five hours now takes about twenty minutes, because Quill writes the first draft in his own words and he corrects it rather than composing it.

That's one practice. I'm not going to dress it up as a hundred. It's my brother, he was the first, and everything here was built and tested on his business before it was offered to anybody else's.

Get Quill built — £100 Refunded if you don't like it, and you keep it either way.

What it costs

No setup fee, no tie-in beyond the first three months, and I won't take on another practice within ten miles of you — so I'm never working for you and your nearest competitor at the same time.

To start
£100

Once. Not a subscription. You pay it one time, for building Quill around your practice, and there is nothing further to pay me for it — no renewal, no licence, no annual fee. Credited against your first month if you go on to the full service, and yours to keep either way.

And if you don't like what I've built, you get the £100 back. I'll have learned something from building it regardless, so neither of us comes off worse.

Founding rate — first five practices
£400 / month

Held for twelve months. Google profile management, review generation, Clerk, and me on the end of the phone. Three-month minimum.

Standard
£600 / month

The published price once the first five founding places are taken.

One thing I'd rather you heard from me than discovered later: Quill and Clerk run on your own Claude subscription, which is around £90 a month and paid directly by you, not through me. It also means your clients' correspondence stays in your account and never touches my systems — which is the main reason it's built this way.

What the monthly actually covers

✓Your Google Business Profile, run continuouslyCategories, services, posts, photos, questions — worked on every week rather than set up once and forgotten.
✓A review request after every single surveySent automatically when you email the report out. You never have to ask a client for a favour again.
✓Clerk's morning note, every working dayWho's enquired and not had a quote, which quotes have gone quiet, what needs chasing, and follow-ups already drafted in your drafts folder.
✓Quill kept currentIncluding RICS disclosure wording and audit trail, plus any improvements I make while working with other practices.
✓A monthly report that says what actually happenedWhere you rank, what changed, how many enquiries came in, and how many Clerk caught that would otherwise have gone quiet.
✓Me, on the end of a phoneNot a ticket system and not an account manager. If something breaks you ring me and I fix it.
✓Ten miles to yourselfWhile I'm working for you I won't take on another practice within ten miles of you.
Get Quill built — £100 Or ring me on 07893 941669 and ask whatever you like.

Where I'm being careful

RICS made responsible AI use a mandatory professional standard in March. Quill is built for it: client disclosure wording, a named surveyor signing off every report, and an audit trail showing that everything in the draft traces back to what you recorded on site.

It doesn't look at your photographs and decide a roof needs replacing. It doesn't form opinions, and it never signs anything. It types what you found, in the way you'd have typed it, and then you read it top to bottom like you always did. Your name goes on it, so it stays your judgement.

Straight answers

The questions surveyors actually ask me

Is an AI writing my reports? Where does that leave me with RICS and my insurer?

No. It writes the draft, from the notes you took on site, in the phrasing you already use. It doesn't look at your photographs and decide anything, it forms no opinions, and it identifies no defects you didn't record yourself. You read it top to bottom and you sign it, exactly as you always did.

RICS made responsible AI use a mandatory standard in March 2026. It requires client disclosure before use, a named surveyor signing off, an audit trail, and due diligence on the supplier. Quill is built to satisfy all four, and I'll give you the disclosure wording for your terms of engagement. If your insurer asks, you'll have a straight answer rather than a nervous one.

Who sees my clients' emails?

Only you. Everything runs inside your own account, on your own subscription — I don't host it, I can't read it, and there's no copy of your correspondence on any system of mine. That's a deliberate design choice, not a happy accident, and it's the main reason this is built the way it is rather than as a product I'd run for you.

If something needs fixing and I have to look at your setup, I'll ask you first and tell you what I looked at.

How technical do I need to be?

Not at all. The whole design brief was that nothing about how you work changes. There's no platform to log into, no app to check, no records to keep updated. You email people, exactly as you do now, and everything happens around that.

The practice this was built for is run by a surveyor who wouldn't call himself confident with computers. He uses it every day and has never once logged into anything.

What do I actually have to do in the first week?

Send me a handful of your finished reports so Quill learns your voice, and give me half an hour to set up the connections. That's it. I'll do the rest and come back to you when it's working.

Is the Claude subscription on top of your fee?

Yes — around £90 a month, paid by you directly, not through me. I'd rather say that plainly here than have you find out in month two. It's the price of your clients' data never leaving your own account, and I think that's a fair trade.

I've already got a website, and someone doing my marketing.

Fine. This isn't a website service and I'm not trying to replace whoever you're using. The Google profile work and Clerk sit alongside anything else you've got — and if what you already have is working, the honest answer might be that you only want the £100 report writer. That's a perfectly good outcome.

I tried a CRM and never used it. Why is this different?

Because a CRM asks you to do the work of noticing, and then blames you when you stop. This reads what your practice already sends and does the noticing itself. There is nothing to keep updated, so there's nothing to fall behind on.

I know that argument sounds convenient. It's also why I'd rather show you than tell you — which is what the free review of your last ninety days is for.

Can I get out?

Three-month minimum, then monthly. No notice period games. Quill is yours permanently whatever happens — I have no way to switch it off and wouldn't want one.

I'm not anywhere near you. Does that matter?

No. I work with practices anywhere in the UK. Everything is set up remotely and there's nothing about it that needs me standing in your office — the practice I've built all this for happens to be in Sussex, but that's an accident of family rather than a service area.

The only geographic rule is the one below: I won't take on two practices within ten miles of each other.

Are you working with the practice down the road?

No, and I won't. While you're with me I won't take on another practice within ten miles of you. Postcode areas are useless for this — BN runs from Littlehampton to Eastbourne, and a practice at one end has never competed for a house at the other. Ten miles is roughly where two practices stop appearing in the same local searches, and local search is the part I actually influence. It's the only promise on this page that costs me money to keep.

How quickly does anything actually happen?

Quill inside a week. Clerk's morning note within a fortnight of starting. The Google profile work shows up more slowly — reviews accumulate and rankings move over two or three months, not two or three days. Anyone promising you faster than that on local search is guessing.

If nothing changes

Next year looks exactly like this one

Which is the actual risk

In the practice I know best, eight or nine quotes go out a week per surveyor and four or five come back. The rest aren't lost to a better practice — they simply go quiet, and because nobody follows them up, you never find out which were price, which were timing, and which were people who meant to reply and forgot. At a typical fee that's several thousand pounds of quoted work a month, for every surveyor you have, that neither converts nor gets explained. Your own figures may look better than that — the only way to know is to count them, which is what the free review does.

Meanwhile the write-ups still have to come from somewhere, and it's usually your own time. Your profile sits where it sits while the practice two towns over quietly collects reviews. And the enquiry that came in on a Thursday when you were up a ladder is still four screens down the inbox.

None of that is a crisis. That's exactly why it goes on for years — nothing about it ever becomes urgent enough to fix on a Tuesday.

Start with a fifteen-minute call

Fifteen minutes on the phone about how your practice runs, and if I don't think I can help I'll say so rather than take your money. If it goes well, you'll have a report writer that sounds like you within a week, for about the cost of one report you'd have paid someone else to type. If that's all you ever take from me, it was still worth it.

And if it isn't any good, say so and I'll send the hundred pounds back — you keep what I built anyway. I'll have learned something from doing it, you'll have lost nothing, and neither of us will have wasted the week.

What you're actually buying, if you go the whole way: your evenings back, a profile that brings people to you rather than the other way round, and the quiet certainty that nobody who asked for a survey got forgotten. Whether you spend the time on more work or on your family is entirely your business.

There are five founding places at £400 a month, held for twelve months, and I won't take on two practices within ten miles of each other. When your ten miles is spoken for it's gone — not as a sales tactic, but because I'm not going to work for you and your nearest competitor at the same time.

Get Quill built — £100 Or just ring me — 07893 941669 Or WhatsApp

Adam Humphrey · Fourth Impact · adam@fourthimpact.com · 07893 941669