Datum Forge Ltd is a UK engineering firm that builds business systems its clients own, with AI where a system needs it, in place of the rented tools and rekeying a growing company ends up running on. It was incorporated on 20 July 2026 (Companies House 17350432) by three founders, Alex Fielder, Michael Colling-Tuck and Mark Barrett, who own it in equal shares. It is an independent company and is not part of any group.
The short version, which you are welcome to pass on: we take a pile of subscriptions that do not join up and the rekeying that holds them together, and build one system in their place that the company owns and runs.
A datum, in engineering and surveying, is the fixed reference point from which every measurement is taken: the thing you trust so you can be precise about everything else. A forge is where raw material is shaped into something durable and load-bearing, by skill and by heat. Put together: find the fixed point of truth in a business, the problem that costs the most, measured honestly, and forge the system that fixes it, outward from there.
Alex has spent his career writing production code across traditional software and web systems: a working developer with the depth to look at a business problem and know which parts should be code, which parts should be a model, and which parts should not be built at all. He owns every architectural decision that gets past the design stage. He is the reason what we hand over is built to last.
Michael has held the same problem-diagnosis role from all three sides of the table: operator inside companies, external consultant alongside them, supplier delivering to them. Having held all three, he can tell the parts a business genuinely does not know from the parts it has decided not to look at. He owns the diagnosis and the commercial conversation that sits around it, including whether the engagement is worth doing at all.
Mark has spent two decades in digital marketing across client-side, agency-side and independent consulting. He has been building websites since 2012 and running a wide range of software platforms across the same span. In the last year he has taken up AI in a deliberate order: as a tool inside his own delivery work, then a tool for client work, then building systems for himself, then building systems for clients. He owns delivery, the platform layer and operations. He is the reason we know how to run a live system, not just build one.
Datum Forge itself is new. What sits behind it is not.
Every system is designed around the business it serves, not one size made to fit everyone, and built from standard parts we have already hardened.
Real code, hardened in use and maintained, not a no-code flow that breaks when something underneath changes.
We will tell you if AI is not the answer, on the free call, before you have spent anything.
You own your system; we own the software it runs on. No lock-in to our bill, no subscription trap, and you can leave with your data any day.
The obvious question a careful buyer asks about a new firm is: what happens if you disappear? It is a fair question, and we have a specific answer. Your finished system runs on accounts in your name: the hosting, the database, email sending and the AI provider, paid on your card. Your data and your content sit in those accounts, and anything we build only for you is yours. The software it runs on is licensed to you, and the licence for the version you have does not expire. If Datum Forge ceased trading tomorrow, the system would keep running exactly as it is, on your accounts, with your data in it, and the build agreement sets the terms for the software itself. New firms are risky when they hold your accounts and your data; once your system is live, we hold neither.
Datum Forge is a new company. We do not have five years of Datum Forge case studies on this page, and we are not going to invent them. What we can show you is real: the founding team’s individual work, described above; our method, made visible on the How we work page, which is exactly what any client would experience if they engaged us tomorrow; and the systems below, already in use, described by the work each one took off someone’s desk. None of the businesses is named, because none has yet agreed to be. The first named case study lands here the moment one does. There is no logo wall on this site, and there will not be one: work the three of us have done for other employers and firms belongs to them, not to Datum Forge.
A service that reads a set of competitors’ web pages on a schedule, sets aside the noise, and reports what changed and how much it matters, so nobody has to read them by hand. Running since July 2026, as a service Datum Forge runs for one business rather than a system that business owns.
Staff walk the stores with a phone and say what they see; the system turns what they say into a count. A pilot, in the hands of the business it was designed with since September 2026.
Hard eligibility checks run before any AI reads an application, then every applicant is scored on the same scale, so a hundred and twenty applications are compared like for like instead of read one by one from an inbox.
Datum Forge Ltd. Registered in England and Wales, company number 17350432, incorporated 20 July 2026. Registered office: Basement Flat, 8 Saville Place, Bristol BS8 4EJ. Email: hello@datum-forge.com.
