Case Study: How MAKE Helped Shape Capsa

This was no ordinary new-build house. The existing dwelling was demolished and the site’s topography extensively reshaped. In its place rose a home of striking complexity. Instead of one large mass of building, the design was broken into distinct blocks to resemble a traditional farmstead that had evolved over time.

Almost every element was bespoke. The centrepiece was a three-storey glass lift, wrapped with a curved staircase. The façade featured a custom ceramic faience cladding system, prototyped and developed specifically for this project. Internally, the level of finishes and joinery was extraordinary — each element designed and made to measure. Significant landscaping, complex building services, and extensive glazing made it one of the most information-heavy projects MAKE had delivered.

With a complex brief and a large volume of specialist inputs, the challenge wasn’t just building the house — it was keeping control of the information behind it.

Projects like this tested Capsa in the real world. And the lessons were immediate. Some features that looked clever in theory only slowed the team down in practice. Those didn’t last.

What proved essential was version control, simple access, and one place where the latest document could always be trusted.

As Matt, a Founder at MAKE, puts it:

“We didn’t need more software. We just needed to stop wasting time and resource. So we worked with Capsa to build something that kept us in control. Without it, the job would’ve been impossible to manage.”

And the site team put it more bluntly:

“Printing thousands of drawings for site distribution was a non-starter. Shared folders would have been tedious. Emailing them? Carnage.”

MAKE’s feedback shaped the platform. Capsa was stripped back to the essentials, refined feature by feature, until it matched the reality of managing a complex build on site.

Using Capsa on projects of this scale taught a few simple truths:

• Clarity beats features. What matters most isn’t bells and whistles, but certainty about which drawing is current.
• History matters. With thousands of revisions, seeing what changed — and when — protects against costly mistakes.
• Simplicity wins. If a subcontractor has to ask how the system works, it’s already too complicated.

And with so many moving parts, Capsa became the one source on the job everyone could rely on to keep the story straight.

By the end of the project, MAKE were saving an average of 31 hours a week across their team. Every revision sat in sequence, every drawing was accessible in one place, and each trade could find the information they needed without digging through endless folders.

At handover, MAKE held the full story of the project — every revision in order — a record that’s proved invaluable both for managing this project and as a reference point for planning future ones.

And while Capsa didn’t lay the bricks or polish the joinery, it did play a part. By keeping control of the information, it freed MAKE to focus on what they do best: delivering an extraordinary building. From the three-storey glass lift to the bespoke ceramic façade, the quality of the finished project speaks for itself. Capsa’s role was quiet but important — ensuring the information behind that craftsmanship stayed clear and reliable.

Capsa wasn’t perfect at the start. But through use on real projects — with MAKE and others — it was sharpened until it was right, and only then made available to the wider market.