Pragma Build

Most people who can code have never run a plant. Most people who have run a plant can’t code.

That gap is the whole reason this company exists.

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Two weathered hands adjusting the worn control panel of an older machine, a handwritten label taped beside one switch.

Thirty years in industrial manufacturing, food processing, machining, fabrication and agriculture. Started sweeping floors at sixteen. Became COO of a fifty million dollar manufacturer. Owned or held equity in operations across all of those industries, and took them from startup to exit and from acquisition to exit.

So when you describe your operation, you are not explaining it to a developer. You are talking to someone who has run the floor, built the schedule, chased the late order, sat through the safety meeting, and lived with the consequences of a system that was wrong.

What that changes

No discovery phase spent teaching us your industry. You do not pay for us to learn what a work order is, why that machine is the constraint, or what happens when the shipper is short one part.

We find the process problem before we build software around it. Automating a broken process just makes it break faster. Half of what we do is fixing the flow first.

The system matches how the work actually happens. Not how the org chart says it happens, and not how the software vendor wishes it happened. Your people already have workarounds. We build around the reason those workarounds exist.

The short version

We understand your process, what triggers what, where the flow breaks, and why your people work around it. And we can build it.

Built so far

Different industries. Same shape.

Somebody was counting on paper, or in their head, and now they are not. Client names left out on purpose.

  • Oil and gas · asset recovery

    A yard full of equipment nobody had catalogued.

    Was

    A buyer took over a bankrupt facility and inherited the contents. No list, no values, no idea what still ran.

    Now

    Photograph a machine on a walk round. It identifies it, finds the original vendor, checks rebuild or used market, and files it. Purchasing ends up with every part, where to get it, and a reliability rating.

  • Construction · flooring at building scale

    Twenty floors, thirty units each, measured by hand.

    Was

    Somebody counting square footage off drawings, then guessing the waste factor and chasing installers for what they actually used.

    Now

    Upload the drawings. It works out the area per unit, splits carpet, hardwood, floor tile, bathroom tile and backsplash, adds the waste factor, assigns installers, tracks booked against used, and runs to job costing. Matching floor plans are grouped so the same crew repeats the same layout.

  • Spring water · order to cash

    Orders, routes, stock and invoices in four places.

    Was

    Customers rang when they had already run out. Delivery, billing and inventory never agreed with each other.

    Now

    One system from order through route and delivery to payment, inventory underneath it, and a customer app on top so people reorder before the tank is empty.

  • Warehouse and distribution

    The back office runs itself.

    Was

    Every order, payment, onboarding pack and training email handled by a person, one at a time.

    Now

    Orders come in, the system answers them, takes the payment, sends the training and keeps the records. The owner approves anything that sends money or leaves the building, and that approval can be switched off once he trusts it.

  • Personal · not a product

    An app I built to manage my own type 1 diabetes.

    Was

    Carbohydrates counted by eye, three times a day, every day, for years.

    Now

    It reads a photograph of the meal, works out the carbohydrates, and tracks what is already on board against live readings. Nobody else uses it. It is here because it is the reason I know what it takes to build something a person has to rely on every single day without thinking about it.

Pragma

Pragma is Greek. It means a thing done. A deed. Something carried through to the end.

Most automation work does not get carried through to the end. It ends as a document. A study, a roadmap, a recommendation, an invoice for the thinking. Somebody presents it, everybody nods, and the spreadsheet is still there in eighteen months.

That is the whole reason for the name. You do not get a report. You get a system running on your floor, with your people using it.

It is also why there is no reveal at the end. You see working pieces every week, because a thing done is the only thing worth paying for.

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