Starchitect

Overview

Architects and building surveyors are experts in buildings, not software. Small practices tend to run each job from an inbox, a phone's camera roll and a spreadsheet of stages. None of those tools were made for the work, and every workaround asks for technical knowledge the team doesn't have and shouldn't need. That lack of technical know-how kept getting in their way, and it was the main source of frustration in their day-to-day work.

Starchitect replaces that patchwork with one place for each project: the photos from site, the stages of the RIBA Plan of Work, and a progress report for the client that keeps itself up to date.

The 20 MB problem

One architect couldn't send his client the photos from a site visit, because his email provider rejects anything over 20 MB. He didn't know what a megabyte was. With Starchitect he never has to.

Mail Delivery System Undeliverable: Rowan House, site visit photos

Your message to Priya Marsh couldn't be delivered because it's too large.

Message size

186 MB

Limit

20 MB

020 MB limit186 MB

47 attachments: IMG_3961.HEIC, IMG_3962.HEIC, IMG_3963.HEIC … IMG_4007.HEIC

From site to client

1. Capture On site, the architect takes photos as normal in the Starchitect app. Each one uploads at full size, filed under the right project and stage.
2. Manage In the office, each project follows the RIBA Plan of Work. Tasks get ticked off and stages move on, with nothing left to memory.
3. Share At home, the client opens one link to a living progress report that updates itself as the work happens.

Backend

Laravel 8 on PHP 8, MySQL, Redis

Dashboard

Vue 2, Vuex and Tailwind CSS

Site app

Flutter, for Android and iOS

Tenancy

A subdomain and a database for each practice

Workflow

RIBA Plan of Work 2020, stored as an editable template

Storage

S3-compatible object storage, MinIO in development

Started

2021

Status

In development

The dashboard

The dashboard is where the architect runs each project. Every practice works on its own subdomain, such as hollinswebb.starchitect.app. A new project gets a workflow copied from the practice's template, which starts out as the RIBA Plan of Work 2020: eight stages, each with its RIBA tasks. The architect ticks tasks off as they happen, and photos from the site app arrive already filed against the project and stage.

The working model in the hero opens on a house extension in stage 5, with building work under way. Ticking a task there updates the client's report further down this page.

The RIBA stages

The template holds all 52 RIBA tasks. The client never sees RIBA's terms: each stage also has a plain name, and that's what appears in the client's report.

The client report

Clients get one link in place of an email thread. The report is a living document: it shows the current stage, the architect's latest note, new photos from site and anything the client needs to decide. It changes as the architect works, so there's nothing to put together or send.

The report is branded for the practice and lives on its subdomain. The client signs in with a read-only role, so they can see everything about their own project and change nothing except their answers to decisions.

hollinswebb.starchitect.app/report/rowan-house

HWHollins & Webb Architects Updated Thu 23 Oct, 11:40

Rowan House

Progress report for Priya and Tom Marsh · Rear extension and loft conversion

Where we are

Building work

Latest note

EW

Ellen Webb, your architect · Thu 23 Oct

A good week. The steel beam over the new rear opening went in on Tuesday and building control were happy with it. The loft floor joists are all in too.

The roofers start on the extension on Monday, so expect some noise from 8am.

Your decision neededby Fri 6 Nov

Kitchen floor finish

Choose one so the screed can be ordered in time. Samples of both are in the site office.

Polished concrete Oak boards

This week on site

Coming up

• w/c 2 NovExtension roof goes on
• Fri 6 NovYour choice of kitchen floor finish
• Thu 12 NovBuilding control inspection of the roof structure

Earlier

1. Tue 21 OctSteel beam fitted over the new rear opening and signed off by building control.
2. Fri 17 OctLoft floor joists in. Scaffold up at the back of the house.
3. Mon 6 OctBuilders started on site.Building work began
4. Fri 5 SepBuilding regulations approval received.Construction drawings finished
5. Tue 2 JunPlanning permission granted.Detailed designs finished

This report updates by itself as work goes on. Questions? Reply to any update from Ellen, or call the studio.

The site app

Under the hood

Starchitect is a multi-tenant Laravel application. Each practice gets its own subdomain and its own database, so one practice's projects, clients and photos never share tables with another's. The dashboard, the client report and the site app all talk to the same API.

Tenancy

Tenancy is handled by stancl/tenancy. Registering a practice queues jobs that create its database, its subdomain, its first admin user and an OAuth client for the site app.

The RIBA plan as data

The Plan of Work 2020 is stored centrally as a template of stages and tasks. A practice can copy and edit it into templates of its own, such as a shorter one for measured surveys, and each project gets its own workflow that can change without touching the template.

// database/seeders/RIBA2020Seeder.php
$template = [
    "title" => "RIBA Plan of Work 2020",
    "stages" => [
        [
            "title" => "Strategic Definition",
            "description" => "Determine the best means of achieving the client's requirements.",
            "tasks" => [
                ["title" => "Prepare client requirements"],
                ["title" => "Review project risks"],
                // …
            ],
        ],
        // … seven more stages, 52 tasks in all
    ],
];

Roles and permissions

Permissions use spatie/laravel-permission behind a thin wrapper. On login the dashboard asks the API for the user's permissions and only shows what they can do, so a client can read a report but never edit a stage.

Small actions, thin controllers

Business logic lives in invokable action classes such as CreateProject, UpdateStage and InviteUsers. Controllers stay thin and hand over to them, so the same logic can be used from the API, from queued jobs and from tests.

// app/Actions/UpdateTask.php
class UpdateTask
{
    public function __invoke(array $data): Task
    {
        $task = Task::findOrFail($data['id']);
        $task->fill($data)->save();
        return $task;
    }
}

Testing and local development

Each API resource (projects, stages, tasks, roles, permissions, users and workflow templates) has PHPUnit feature tests covering its endpoints, run by GitHub Actions on pushes and pull requests. Locally, Docker Compose runs nginx, PHP, MySQL, Redis, MinIO for S3-compatible storage, and Mailhog to catch invite and verification emails.

Limitations

Starchitect is still being built. The foundations are in place, and the parts that architects and clients would use day to day are designed but not finished:

• The stage dashboard, the client report and the site app on this page are working models of the design, not the finished product.
• Photos don't upload yet. The pipeline for uploads, thumbnails and signed delivery is still to be built.
• The plain names for each stage are part of the design and aren't stored in the workflow templates yet.
• There's no billing, so practices can't subscribe yet.

What's built

• Practice sign-up, with a subdomain and a database created for each one.
• Login, email verification, password reset and invitations to join a practice.
• Roles and permissions, with an endpoint for the current user's permissions.
• A REST API for projects, workflows, stages, tasks and workflow templates.
• The RIBA Plan of Work 2020 as a seeded template.
• A project list in the Vue dashboard, with each project's progress and paging.
• A feature test suite that runs in CI.

Next steps

• The stage dashboard and task tracking, as in the working model.
• The client's living progress report, with decisions the client can answer.
• The Flutter site app, with its offline upload queue.
• Notifications for clients when the report changes, so they don't need to check it.
• Subscription billing for practices.

The practice, people and project in the working models are made up.