Team Tales – May 2025
This month we’re spotlighting Amelia Parsons, our talented Implementation Consultant. From custom FastDraft solutions to Power BI magic, she’s all about turning ideas into reality. Want to know what fuels her (besides coffee) and her unexpected take on contracts? Check out our latest Team Tales feature.
Can you describe yourself in 10 words?
Good with people, better with dogs, best at beer gardens.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your work background?
I live in Cheshire with my partner and our oversized pup, Otis. I started my software journey fresh out of university and worked in the pharmaceutical and automotive industry before I landed in the construction space. I’m strange enough to enjoy bureaucracy so naturally went into a H&S company before finding BI.
How long have you been with Built Intelligence?
I’ve just had my one-year anniversary this week.
So, can you tell us what your role entails at BI and what a ‘day in the life of’ looks like!
I do a bit of everything, really—mainly turning a customer’s vision into something real in FastDraft. That means meeting with clients, getting a handle on their expectations, reviewing contracts, and tweaking our templates to fit. I also help out on the pre-sales side, design bespoke solutions, configure custom contracts, and keep their Power BI dashboards ticking over.
What’s the best thing about your role?
I’d love to say the people but given my nosey nature I actually really enjoy reading the contracts.
What has been your finest moment at BI – what achievement have you been most proud of?
Being able to wear the hats that I do in the relatively short time that I’ve been with BI.
Tell us a little something about the person behind the role?!
Fuelled by coffee and occasionally motivated by the promise of a pint. Stubborn enough to keep watching horror films, even though they stress me out. Big fan of sleep—which I’m savouring while I still can, with baby number one on the way.
Final thoughts or tips?
Answering these questions has made me realise I need a thrill-seeking hobby to brag about, so my advice is to do that ahead of being asked to assess your life.
NEC Contract Guide: NEC Contracts Explained
NEC is a standard form of contract widely used on UK construction and infrastructure projects, now in its fourth edition, NEC4. For anyone working under one for the first time, the language and structure take some getting used to. This guide sets out what that means in practice: how NEC4 differs from NEC3, what the main contract types and options are for, and what to get right in the first few weeks so the contract works the way it's designed to. What is an NEC Contract? The New Engineering Contract, or NEC, is not one single contract but a family of standard contracts used across UK construction and infrastructure projects. That's why the question comes up in two forms: what is an NEC contract, and what are NEC contracts. Both are asking about the same suite of related...
Get more from FastDraft: 3 features to stay ahead of deadlines and follow the contract trail
Contract deadlines compete with meetings, project commitments and everything else demanding your attention. At the same time, a single contractual issue can generate a chain of instructions, notices, replies and follow-up actions across several FastDraft workflows. These three features help you keep deadlines visible, connect related communications and quickly understand how a contractual matter has developed. 1. Put FastDraft actions in your calendar You should not have to keep returning to a separate system to check what is due. FastDraft lets you synchronise outstanding actions with Outlook, Google Calendar and other compatible calendar applications. Your contract deadlines then appear alongside your meetings and other project commitments. You can choose: The date range you...
Configuration Risk in NEC Management: Lessons from United Utilities v Northstone
Contract management software should reduce risk, not create new arguments about what the contract requires. A recent Technology and Construction Court decision, United Utilities Water Ltd v Northstone (NI) Ltd t/a Farrans Construction [2026] EWHC 1057 (TCC), is a useful reminder of a practical problem many NEC users will recognise: what happens when the contract is amended, but the contract management platform is not updated to match? The case did not decide that an automatically generated platform date invalidated a payment notice. Nor did it decide that the platform caused the dispute. But it does highlight a wider risk pattern: if the live contract, system configuration and project team practice diverge, parties may later find themselves arguing about dates, notices, permissions,...