The following blog assesses how building material manufacturers can get their specification leads matched with leading construction project intelligence.
You’ve been specified – now what?
It’s a familiar picture for building material manufacturers managing specification leads: you get a notification that your product, brand, or company has been specified on a construction project. You go to review the specification, but the information is limited. You might only see the company name rather than the individual specifier, while project names, timelines, and locations are often incomplete or unclear. What can a specification team do with that lack of information?
When manufacturers are using specification tracking tools, they often need another source of information to fill in the gaps like:
- Project name
- Direct contact details of architects, designers, planners, and even contractors
- Project timelines
- Location
This data is critical to reaching the right decision makers at the right time to start securing specification. Without it, your direct competitors who do have this data could race ahead to influence design decisions.
In essence: you’ve won the initial specification, but if you can’t find the project then you can’t win the contract. Many building material manufacturers struggle to turn specification leads into actionable sales opportunities because project information is often incomplete.
What if I don’t know where I’ve been specified?
For some manufacturers, the challenge goes even further. They may not even know when or where their products have been specified due to zero third-party data or tracking tools.
We work with manufacturing businesses of all sizes, goals, and specification requirements. Whether you work within the building envelope, interiors, structural and foundation, or MEP (Mechanical, Electrical, & Plumbing), we understand you might not have access to services that notify specification opportunities.
Building material manufacturers can still get access to projects that have specified them by using our Product Specification tool found on our platform.
In three easy steps, our manufacturing clients can get started tracking their specifications that our research team has picked up from planning documents. Click the link in the previous sentence to find out how.
Why is tracking specification so hard in the UK?
The UK construction supply chain is in no way obligated to provide full visibility of projects to building material manufacturers.
Since there are so many factors, roles, companies, contracts, and regulations at play, it’s nearly impossible for a manufacturer to know what’s happening to projects throughout its whole lifetime.
Manufacturers have a very unique challenge in the industry: They are not invited to the design tables, not able to formally tender, not handed designs, and are often never told when their products are going to be value engineered out of a project.
When they do know where they’ve been specified, they must try to influence and safeguard specification from the earliest point possible, all the way to installation.
The disconnect between architects and manufacturers:
Architects famously reach for the products they’ve worked with in the past. It goes back to that simple saying: If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. Unless manufacturers can persuade them otherwise before the design phase, unknown products rarely make the shortlist. This is especially true under time pressure, where specifying something unfamiliar carries real reputational risk if it fails on site.
Another major problem is that most manufacturers don’t hear about a project until planning is granted or tender is released well past the point where they could have influenced anything. Getting a direct line to architects on target projects, early enough to book a CPD, make a connection, or simply get your product in front of the right person at the right time, is what separates manufacturers who win specifications from those who find out they lost them.
Here’s what that looks like in practice ⬇️
In the last 2 years, Poly-Pac’s turnover has trebled, and they have presented CPDs to over 300 individuals in the design and architecture industry. Their specification network is now 10 times what it was 2 years ago, and Barbour ABI has been crucial in achieving these targets.
To summarise, the relationship between an architect and a building material manufacturer can be very one-sided. The manufacturer wants to influence, change minds, and educate, while architects are safeguarding their choices to ensure project success.
The data gap: What manufacturers have VS what they need
To showcase the difference between a specification notification, and what a specification could look like with enriched data, we’ve highlighted the below:
Why specification notifications alone are not enough
| What manufacturers typically know when specified | What data they need to win the specification |
|---|---|
| Rough project location | Full project address with postcodes |
| Specifier firm name | Named architect contact with direct email and phone details |
| Project Name (sometimes) | Exact project name, value, stage, and expected start date |
| That they’ve been specified | Which product has been specified |
| Static statement of specification | Links to the live projects to track progression |
Having the full project information with direct contact details, timelines, updates, and locations can be the difference between knowing about a specification and winning the actual sale.
What manufacturers need to win the specification lies within:
- The Who: Named decision makers such as: architects, structural engineers, M&E consultants, contractors with verified direct contact data (name, job title, email, phone)
- The What: Project name, details, value, updates
- The Where: Full project location, site address, planning authority
- The When: Project stage (planning, pre-tender, tender, contract awarded), expected start date, completion timeline
- The Link: Direct URL to the full project record on the Barbour ABI Construction Project Leads Platform for ongoing monitoring
Can Barbour ABI supply the data I need to action my specification leads?
Yes. Thanks to the UK’s largest in-house construction project research team, we’re able to fill in the gaps of your specification leads.
When updating and adding projects onto our platform, our team members pick up products that were submitted in the designs as part of the planning applications.
Alongside product and material tracking, we update project details that you need to enrich your specification leads. We update contact details, company details and addresses, project updates, links to plans and designs, relationship data that outlines who works with who, and so much more.
This data closes the gaps between what you know and what you need to make the sale.
Does Barbour ABI have accurate and up-to-date architect contact data?
“We know the company that specified us, I can just reach out to their head office.”
While this seems like a logical approach, major architecture firms could have dozens of architects working on various projects throughout the UK. Calling head office to confirm who’s specified your curtain walling systems is inefficient, impersonal, and can put your company miles behind your competitors.
For every project we publish, we directly find which architect is assigned to the project, which means you can count on reaching the right decision maker who has the power to specify your products.
Every year Barbour ABI adds over 22,000 new architect contacts on the Construction Project Leads Platform. These contacts are GDPR compliant and can be used in sales and marketing outreach.
This isn’t a static list. We update our platform every single day with new projects opportunities, refresh existing projects as they progress, and answer any questions our clients have about any project at any stage.
How the specification lead matching service works
Step 1: Tell Barbour ABI where you know your products or brand have been specified.
Step 2: We take this information and find direct matches on our platform. We gather project names, details, contacts, architect or contractor names, location and links to the projects on our platform.
Step 3: You receive enriched project intelligence to power your specification management team’s outreach.
Step 4: Track the projects’ progression, roles added, and other updates to safeguard specification from start to finish.
If you’re interested in our specification matching service, please get in touch today. This offer is a part of our Construction Project Leads Platform subscription. Subscribers receive this service free of charge.
Ready to get started?
For building material manufacturers, specification leads are only valuable when they can be tracked, verified, and converted into sales opportunities. Discover how Barbour ABI can match your specification leads with live construction project intelligence, direct decision-maker contacts, and ongoing project tracking.
Contents
You’ve been specified – Now what?
What if I don’t know where I’ve been specified?
Why is tracking specification so hard in the UK?
The disconnect between architects and manufacturers
The data gap – what manufacturers have VS what they need
Can Barbour ABI supply the data I need?
Barbour ABI architect contact data
