Hobfolk
Department 06 · Compliance

The agreement out
before the drawing is.

Risk assessments and method statements, COSHH, CDM information, O&M manuals, handover packs and confidentiality agreements — written to the job you are actually doing, and produced while the job still remembers itself rather than in the week after it ended.

Start a conversationSee the whole crew
You go home. It doesn't.Every promise gets a row and a due dateAnswered the same day, not the next working dayA drawing before the quoteUnverifiable is never a passNine desks, one address eachNothing is sent that a human cannot read backThe folder exists before you price itYou go home. It doesn't.Every promise gets a row and a due dateAnswered the same day, not the next working dayA drawing before the quoteUnverifiable is never a passNine desks, one address eachNothing is sent that a human cannot read backThe folder exists before you price it
The case for it

Compliance, documents & contracts

Words are free. Pictures are not.

Compliance documents have a particular failure mode: they are produced late, by whoever is free, from memory. A RAMS is a template with somebody else’s logo swapped out. An O&M manual is reconstructed in the week after practical completion, which is exactly why so many of them are wrong. An NDA is remembered after the drawing has already gone.

None of that is a knowledge problem. It is an attention problem, the same one as everything else on this site — the document is genuinely urgent for about four hours, on a day when nobody has four hours.

So this desk works to the job’s clock rather than the deadline’s. The pack is assembled as the work happens. The confidentiality agreement goes out the moment a new supplier appears and drawings are held until it comes back signed — while the price enquiry, which needs no cover at all, goes out immediately. Dimension, quantity, material and finish are free to travel. Your drawing, your model and your client’s name are not.

It seats home — the pack finished with the job, not after it
It seats home — the pack finished with the job, not after it
What the desk does

Six things, every day, without being asked

Take the whole desk or one line of it. Everything below is included in the department retainer — there is no menu underneath the menu.
01

Risk assessments and method statements

Task-specific RAMS for the work you actually do, not a template with your logo on it. Re-issued when the method changes, and kept where the site team can reach them on a phone at seven in the morning.
02

COSHH, CDM and the site paperwork

COSHH assessments for the resins, solvents, adhesives and coatings a fabrication floor actually uses. CDM duty-holder information in and out, so the question of who is principal designer is answered before somebody needs it to be.
03

O&M manuals and handover packs

As-builts, product data, warranties, care instructions, spares and lead times. Assembled through the job rather than reconstructed in a panic the week after practical completion.
04

Confidentiality before drawings

A one-page mutual agreement out to any new supplier, tracked to signature, and drawings held until it comes back. A request for a price is never blocked by it, and we never ask for one you already hold.
05

Contracts and terms, read properly

Client terms, supplier terms, subcontract conditions and the schedules people skip: who owns the tooling, who owns the drawing, what the liability cap actually says, and what you have agreed to indemnify.
06

A compliance calendar that arrives early

Insurance renewals, certifications, filings and registrations, with the reminder arriving early enough to be useful rather than the week it expires.
Depth

What this desk actually knows

The documents that let work proceed, and the agreements that decide what can leave the building. Both are only worth anything if they exist before they are needed.

Safety documentation

  • Task-specific risk assessments and method statements written to the job, not a template with a logo dropped on it.
  • COSHH assessments for the resins, solvents, adhesives and coatings a fabrication floor actually uses.
  • CDM 2015 duty-holder awareness — who is the client, who is the principal designer, who is the principal contractor, and what each of them owes at what point.
  • Pre-construction information in, health-and-safety file out.

Agreements

  • 🔴 No drawing, model, visual or client identity goes to a supplier until a confidentiality agreement is signed and recorded. Dimension, quantity, material and finish can go out uncovered, so an RFQ is never held up by it.
  • Three states checked before anything is sent, every time: covered, sent-and-not-returned, or nothing — and we never ask for an agreement we already hold.
  • One page, mutual, no non-compete. A four-page unilateral NDA to a fabricator gets ignored, which is worse than not sending one.
  • Tooling and IP ownership settled in the document, before the tool is cut. Who owns the mould is a question with two confident answers and one of them is wrong.

Handover

  • O&M manuals assembled through the job — as-builts, product data, warranties, care and cleaning, spares and lead times.
  • Assembled as the work happens rather than reconstructed in a panic in the week after practical completion, which is when handover packs are normally written and why they are normally wrong.

Quality management

  • Run to the shape of ISO 9001 — document control and revision status, nonconformance raised and closed, corrective action with a root cause rather than a shrug, internal audit on a cycle, management review that produces decisions.
  • 🔴 We are not ISO registered and we do not claim to be. We build the discipline; certification is yours to pursue if you want the badge, and we will prepare you for it.

The rule underneath all of it is the cheap one to state and the expensive one to learn: the document has to exist before the moment it is needed, because the moment it is needed is never a moment anybody has four spare hours.

The run of it

How a job moves through

  1. A new counterparty appears

    Checked against what we already hold — covered, sent-and-not-returned, or nothing.

  2. The agreement goes out

    One page, mutual, no non-compete. The price enquiry goes at the same time, uncovered.

  3. The drawings are held

    Until it comes back signed. Words travel; pictures wait.

  4. The job’s documents are written

    RAMS and COSHH to the actual method, issued before the work starts.

  5. The pack builds as it goes

    Every certificate, as-built and deviation filed against the job the day it happens.

  6. Handover is a formality

    Because the pack was assembled through the job instead of written about it afterwards.

The limits

What this desk will not do

Every department has a written boundary. A service that claims no limits has simply not found its own yet, and you will find it for them.

Where this desk stops

  • It is not a substitute for a qualified safety adviser where your sector requires one, or for a competent person’s sign-off on regulated work. It prepares the information; the competent person signs it.
  • It does not sign documents. A signature from something that is not a person is not a signature, and the defect surfaces years later, in the one meeting where it matters.
  • It is not your solicitor. It reads contracts, flags what you have agreed to, and drafts the ordinary ones. Anything genuinely contested goes to a lawyer, and we say so rather than have a go.
  • 🔴 We are not ISO registered and we do not claim to be. We build the discipline — document control, nonconformance, corrective action with a root cause, audit on a cycle — and we will prepare you for certification if you want the badge. The badge is yours to earn.
Questions

Asked before, answered here

Are the RAMS legally sufficient?
They are task-specific and competently written, and where your sector requires a qualified adviser to review or sign, that review is arranged rather than skipped. We prepare the information; the competent person signs it.
Does the NDA hold up an enquiry to a new supplier?
No, and that is the point of the rule. Dimension, quantity, material and finish go out immediately — a price is never blocked. Only the drawing, the model, the visual and your client’s identity wait for the signature.
Who writes the O&M manual — us or you?
The desk assembles it through the job from what actually happened: as-builts, product data, certificates, warranties and the deviations from drawing that normally get written down nowhere. Your people supply the facts as they occur; nobody reconstructs a pack from memory afterwards.
Are you ISO 9001 certified?
No, and we never imply it. We run the discipline the standard describes — document control and revision status, nonconformance raised and closed, corrective action with a root cause, internal audit on a cycle — and we will prepare you for certification if you want it. The badge is yours to earn, not ours to lend.
Can you review our client contracts?
Yes — read them, flag what you have actually agreed to, and draft the ordinary ones. Anything genuinely contested goes to a solicitor and we will say so rather than have a go at it.
What about GDPR?
Data is processed under a written agreement, scoped per department, and the privacy notice sets out recipient categories and transfers. See the privacy notice for the detail.
Next department

Assurance & verification

Then the desk whose only job is to disbelieve all of it.

Open Assurance

Which of the nine is costing you the most this month?

That is the one to start with. Tell us and we will tell you plainly whether we are the right shape for it.

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