The project lifecycle, end to end
The eight stages every job moves through, why the sequence is one-way, and where your work sits.
Every project at Scratch travels the same road. It starts as a conversation with a client and ends as a closed-out folder in the archive. In between are eight named stages, and the system holds the project at exactly one of them at any time.
The eight stages
ENQUIRY → PROPOSAL → TENDER → AWARDED → EXECUTION → HANDOVER_TOP → DLP → ARCHIVED
| Stage | What it means |
|---|---|
| Enquiry | First contact. The client is exploring. No contract yet. |
| Proposal | You've sent a priced quote. Awaiting the client's decision. |
| Tender | A formal, competitive tender is in progress. |
| Awarded | Contract signed and deposit in. Works haven't started. |
| Execution | Site is live. This is where most of your day goes. |
| Handover / TOP | Works complete, Temporary Occupation Permit obtained, retention clock starts. |
| DLP | Defects Liability Period — monitoring and rectifications. |
| Archived | The job is fully closed. |
The sequence only runs forwards
You can advance a project to the next stage, but you can never move it backwards. Once a job is in EXECUTION it cannot return to AWARDED. Every stage change is written to the audit log.
If you advance a stage by mistake, you cannot undo it yourself. Contact your Admin — only they can correct a project's status.
Where you fit
As a PM you'll touch every stage, but your centre of gravity is Execution: daily site capture, RFIs, variation orders, progress claims and reports all live there. The earlier stages (Enquiry → Awarded) are about winning and setting up the job; the later ones (Handover → Archived) are about closing it cleanly and getting the retention back.
To advance a stage: open the project, tap the status badge at the top, and pick the next stage. There's no skipping — each step is taken one at a time.
How a job is born
Most projects start life as a quotation. When a client accepts a quote, an AWARDED project can be created straight from it — the contract value, payment terms and retention rate carry across automatically, so you're not re-keying numbers. From there you set commencement and completion dates, assign the team, and the site work begins.