Digital Systems.Business Development.Sales Consultancy.
Real-world experience. Modern technology. Practical solutions. Approximately 39 years of commercial experience, combined with digital systems and AI-assisted development. Not just advice — solutions built around the way your business works.
Carl works with Pennine across sales, design, business development and digital systems. Alongside hands-on home improvement work, he is developing tools to improve quotation, surveying, product specification, sales, lead management, customer journeys and management visibility. CWB Consulting is Carl's own consultancy brand, not the owner of Pennine.
Windows & doors · Conservatories · Warm roof conversions · Extensions · Flat roof systems
A process that wastes time. An enquiry that goes cold. An idea that never gets off the page. Start with the problem — then bring the right commercial experience and technology to solve it.
Practical systems built around the people doing the work. Carl identifies operational problems, maps what needs to happen and turns that knowledge into a working tool. Technology serves the job — never the other way around.
Explore the systems →Find the commercial opportunity, make the process better and build what comes next. Practical support connecting business ideas to the systems, services and customer journeys needed to make them work.
Discuss an opportunity →Approximately 39 years of hands-on sales, management and leadership in UK home improvement and construction. Advice grounded in real enquiries, real quotations and real customers — not textbook theory.
Improve your sales process →Not simply advice. Experience that builds solutions.
Talk to CarlThe strongest evidence isn't a promise. It's a working system. From commercial sales tools to platforms serving Northumberland Freemasonry, each project starts with a problem Carl understands first-hand.
The PGLN Communications Hub is a live central communications platform for the Province of Northumberland. It helps registered users submit and manage stories and news, supporting Craft, Royal Arch and other Orders across the wider Masonic community.
Digital learning · Personal rehearsal
Byker & Wallsend · Meetings & dining
Home improvement · Sales · Specification
Specialist tools and digital concepts, including Pennine Flat Roof Pro, developed around practical home improvement sales and product problems.
Separate membership-management project · Not yet live
Being developed to improve how membership enquiries are managed and progressed across the Province. Testing is ongoing; this is not a deployed platform.
The problem: Traditional home-improvement enquiries and quotations can be difficult for customers to navigate.
The solution: Clarity is one of Carl's digital projects, built around simplifying the home-improvement customer journey and quotation process. It is another example of recognising a familiar sales problem and developing a practical digital solution around it.
External link unverified — owner review required. The current destination could not be verified.
Clarity website · Unverified link ↗When enquiries are scattered and follow-up is inconsistent, opportunities are easily missed. Lead Control brings Carl's sales experience to enquiry management, follow-up systems and practical sales-process development for UK home improvement businesses.
Talk about lead management →Care providers face a detailed registration process. CQC Clarity offers step-by-step registration support, organising the journey into a more understandable digital service. It remains part of Carl's wider product portfolio.
Explore CQC Clarity ↗If I can build this to solve their problems,
what could I build for your business?
I'm Carl Birkenshaw. I've spent approximately 39 years inside UK home improvement and construction — not watching from the sidelines, but selling, running sales teams, managing businesses and solving the practical problems that come with them.
My career has taken in sales management, company leadership, business development and design. I was previously a director and shareholder at Pennine Home Improvements; today I work with Pennine across sales, design, business development and digital systems.
I didn't start out as a software developer. Modern AI and no-code / low-code development gave me a way to turn decades of operational knowledge into working digital products. The tools are new. The understanding of what a business actually needs isn't.
I'm also a Freemason, a Deputy Communications Officer for the Province of Northumberland, and a published musician. The through-line across all of it is the same: see a problem clearly, then do something about it.
Carl was initiated into Freemasonry in 2010. His mother lodge is Tyne Lodge No. 991. He served as Worshipful Master in 2018.
His involvement in Provincial Communications began in 2020, and he became Deputy Communications Officer for the Province of Northumberland in 2025. He has also served as Director of Wallsend Masonic Hall since around 2017, with approximately nine years' involvement in the management and operation of the Hall.
His contribution extends beyond lodge membership into communications, administration and digital innovation. The digital work is a contribution to the community, not a commercial sales pitch: membership systems, communications, ritual learning and hall tools, built to help the people doing the work.
The Northumberland Freemasons podcast
Carl is a co-host of Squarely Speaking, bringing conversations from Northumberland Freemasonry to the microphone. It is part of his wider communications work: helping people share their stories and bringing the community closer together.
Explore the podcast ↗Away from the systems and sales, there is another kind of making. Carl is a published musician, with music available on Spotify and other platforms. A personal part of the story — and a different way to put experience into words.
Have a business problem, sales process or idea you want to discuss? Send me a message below and I’ll get back to you.
Prefer to talk?
Call Carl: 07974 333 573