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Kelvo · for contractors with staff

Stop being the office
everyone rings.

“Where’s the RAMS template?” “What’s our rate for a tower?” “Who do I ring about the skip?” Every one of those is a call to you, and you’re on site. Kelvo answers them for your staff — from your own documents, in your own words — and brings you only the questions nobody has answered yet.

Kelvo is an office assistant for a building firm’s own staff. The owner loads the firm’s documents and approves the answers; signed-in staff ask about procedures, RAMS, site rules, templates and prices and get answers only from that approved material. Anything it can’t answer goes to the owner’s queue to answer once. Quoted per firm.

Ask for a quote How it works →

The firm’s knowledge lives in the owner’s head. That’s the bottleneck.

The same questions, every week

New starters, subbies, the lad who’s been with you two years and still rings. The questions don’t change; the person answering them is always you.

Documents nobody can find

The procedure exists. It’s in a folder, on a laptop, in an email from 2023. So they ring instead — or worse, they guess.

Cards and tickets that lapse

A CSCS card expires on a Tuesday and nobody notices until the site manager turns someone away. Kelvo keeps your renewals list — names and dates, never card numbers or scans.

How it works

You approve. Staff ask. Gaps come back to you once.

  1. 01

    You load what the firm runs on. Procedures, RAMS templates, site rules, price lists, supplier details, the induction pack — PDF, Word, Excel or plain text. Kelvo reads each one and proposes answers from it. You approve, edit or bin each proposal. Nothing reaches staff until you’ve said yes.

  2. 02

    Staff sign in and ask. With their work email, on their phone, on site or in the office. They get the approved answer, and where it came from a document they can open the original — if their role is allowed to see it.

  3. 03

    Anything it can’t answer comes to you. The question goes into your queue — just the question, not who asked. You answer it once, typed or as a voice note, approve the wording, and it’s answered for everyone from then on.

  4. 04

    Prices stay exactly as you wrote them. Kelvo gives a figure word for word with what it covers, and never totals, converts or works out a price for a job. A quote is still a person’s job at your firm.

Deliberately

What Kelvo won’t do

Decide whether a job is safe to go ahead

It tells staff what your procedure says. Whether the job in front of them is safe is a judgement for the person on site and their supervisor, and Kelvo points them there.

Hand out personal details

It’s told never to draw answers from documents about one named person — payslips, contracts, disciplinaries, absence or accident reports — and to refuse anything that looks like a password or access code before it’s stored.

Keep a log of who asked what

Conversations aren’t stored. An unanswered question is recorded as the question alone. People ask the real question when they know it isn’t going on a record with their name on.

Answer from the internet

No general knowledge, no “AI thinks”. If it isn’t in your approved material, the honest answer is “that’s not written down yet” — and the question goes to you.

Built the right way

Your staff, your documents, your data. Treated like it.

  • Its own database, file store, sign-in and AI account — shared with nothing else
  • Stored data held in the EU; files never public, never shareable by link
  • Owner, office and site roles checked on the server on every request
  • More than 3,000 automated tests run on every change before it can go live
  • A written data processing agreement and a staff privacy notice you can paste into your handbook
Read the build standard →

Also from Kernow.ai

Front of house too?

Kelvo is for your own staff. Foredesk is the customer-facing side: it answers your website, WhatsApp and missed calls and texts you every enquiry. Same engine, same standard, two different doors.

Foredesk by trade →

Straight answers

What does Kelvo cost?
It’s quoted per firm. A five-person groundworks outfit and a thirty-person main contractor load very different amounts of material and have different numbers of staff signing in, so one price would be wrong for both. You get a fixed figure before anything starts — a setup fee and a flat monthly, no per-question charges.
Where does it get its answers from?
Only from what you’ve approved. You upload your documents — procedures, RAMS templates, site rules, price lists — and Kelvo proposes answers from them for you to approve, edit or reject. Staff only ever see approved answers. Nothing is answered from the open internet or from a general AI model’s own ideas.
What happens when it doesn’t know?
It says so, and the question goes into your queue. You answer it once — typed, or spoken as a voice note of up to two minutes — approve the wording, and from then on everyone gets that answer. Your firm’s knowledge builds up instead of living in your head.
Will it quote or price a job for staff?
No, deliberately. It will give a price exactly as you’ve written it — “a skip is £240 plus VAT a week” — but it never adds, totals, converts or works out a price for a job. Working out a quote is for a person at your firm, and Kelvo says so.
Can site staff see everything?
No. There are three roles — owner, office and site — and each document sits in a drawer that you assign to roles. Site staff reach only the drawers meant for them. That’s enforced on the server, not just by hiding buttons.
Does it record what my staff ask?
It doesn’t keep conversations, and when a question goes into your queue it records the question only — not who asked it. Nobody at the firm can see who asked what. That’s on purpose: people don’t ask the question they need to ask if they think it’s being logged against their name.
Is our data safe?
Kelvo runs as its own service, with its own database, file store, sign-in and AI account — it shares nothing with Foredesk or any other product. Stored data is held in the EU. Files are never public and never shareable by link. Every change to the code runs through more than 3,000 automated tests before it can go live. There’s a written data processing agreement that sets all of this out, and I’ll tell you plainly what isn’t in place as well as what is.
Is this running anywhere yet?
It’s built on the same engine as Foredesk, which is live for several firms, and Kelvo has been running with real documents in testing. I’m straight about that: I’m looking for the first Cornish firms to run it properly, and the price reflects it.

Using AI in your firm

Worth reading first

Can AI write my RAMS and method statements?

It can draft them. It can’t make them site-specific, and it can’t be the competent person who signs. What to check before an AI-drafted RAMS goes to site.

A one-page staff AI policy you can actually use

Free template. What staff may and may not put into AI tools, which tools are approved, who checks the output. Prevents most incidents before they happen.

Using ChatGPT for quotes and customer emails: what never goes in

Names and addresses, key-safe codes, photos of someone’s kitchen. What a trade can safely paste into an AI tool, what it can’t, and the ten-minute fix.

Free tools

Calculators for the job

CIS calculator

Construction Industry Scheme deductions on subcontractor payments.

Scaffold calculator

Tube and board quantities for a job before you price it.

Free, no catch. I built these at TradeCalcs, my calculator site for UK trades.

Tell me what your staff keep ringing you about

Twenty minutes, in person or on the phone. I’ll tell you straight whether Kelvo fits your firm and give you a fixed quote before anything starts.

Ask for a quote