Construction Sales and Marketing Newsletter

February 2014

Welcome to this month's edition of the Construction Sales and Marketing Newsletter. There is more optimistic news demonstrating continuing growth in the construction sector, with the housing market continuing to lead the way. The focus remains on housing with a UN report highlighting the need for more affordable homes and discussions about how to deliver energy efficient homes. BIM is also high on the agenda and I recently presented on BIMs role in managing specification strategy. As the market recovers remember to keep focused on measuring customer satisfaction and strength of brand, see our client interview on this.

Finally, we would ask you to vote for us in the Best Construction Blog competition. Despite being run for the North American market we came 7th last year and we would like to improve on that in 2014!

Construction market activity

The Construction Products Association has released its latest Construction Trade Survey. This survey shows that in Q4 2013 Construction activity rose by a substantial amount, making it the first time in 5 years the industry has seen growth over 3 consecutive quarters. In contrast to this GDP figures released by the ONS show the UK economy grew by 0.7% in Q4 2013, but construction declined by 0.3% in the same quarter.

To further re-enforce the recovery of the construction industry, Markit/CIPS released their PMI data for January. The Construction Purchasing Managers Index showed the sharpest rise in construction output since August 2007, reporting that the PMI was 64.6 in January 2014 having increased from 62.1 in December 2013. This remains above the neutral value of 50.0 for the 9th consecutive month.

The Nationwide House Price Index has reported that house prices increased by 0.7% in January 2014, making them 8.8% higher than in January 2013. However house prices are still 4% below the peak of 2007. Also reported is that London is still leading annual price growth, reaching nearly 14% in Q4 2013, with the North remaining the poorest performing region for growth.

The Halifax House Price Index reported that house prices increased by 1.1% in January 2014 following a fall of 0.5% in December 2013. Also they reported that house prices in the 3 months to January 2014 were 7.3% higher than the same 3 months a year earlier.

With the housing industry showing signs of recovery at the end of 2013, Barratt Homes released a trading update ahead of their interim results announcement later this month. They have announced that during the 6 month period ending 31 December 2013 they saw a rise in total housing completions of 19.3%, compared to the previous year. They also say that the governments Help to Buy Scheme has had, and continues to have a positive impact on demand for new homes with 29% of their total completions having utilised this scheme.

Managing your specification strategy - Getting to know the design team

BIM is allowing the complete building to be reviewed at the design stage, identifying areas of design conflict and allowing them to be resolved before construction begins. In this blog I take a look at the changing dynamics of the design team and what this means for the product manufacturer.

Read the full blog article

The Advantages of Benchmarking your Brand - An interview with Jenny Smith-Andrews from H+H

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a loyalty metric developed by Fred Reichheld. In his book 'The Ultimate Question', NPS is presented as the most important metric for business. Developed for consumer marketing, the Net Promoter Score tracks how customers represent a company to their friends and associates.

Working with some of our clients, Competitive Advantage has developed a process which uses the Net Promoter Score concept to measure specifiers' loyalty to leading brands.

One of the brands we measure is Celcon Blocks, a masonry building block made from aircrete and manufactured by H+H. We recently talked to Jenny Smith-Andrews about how regular research and the Net Promoter Score benefit their decision making.

Read the full blog article here

Regulations & initiatives - a quick update

The United Nations report on UK Housing has been released. The report concludes that we are facing a critical situation in terms of availability, affordability and access to adequate housing. No great surprise, yet it is hoped the report will act as a wake-up call for politicians.

The Homes and Communities Agency has launched their latest Affordable Homes Programme with �1.7 billion investment. They also held a Construction Forum on 4 February and the presentation slides can be downloaded. The government announced the axing of windows and doors regulations, to get Britain building houses. And Greg Barker has announced the availability of �10 million for SMEs that provide energy efficient products.

The energy bill revolution had its cold homes week at the beginning of February. They are calling on the government to use the money it gets from carbon taxes to help make homes super-energy efficient.

One year on from the launch of the Green Deal there are still calls for the Government to step in to bolster the scheme. Paul King, from the UK Green Building Council claims that the Green Deal should have the same priority as HS2".

A new report into the cost of meeting the zero carbon standard has been released by the Zero Carbon Hub. Findings indicate costs have declined significantly since 2011, and are expected to continue to fall as we approach 2020.

The Green Construction Board "has had its two year anniversary and announced they will continue to work towards low carbon construction for another two years.

The European Parliament recently voted for the adoption of new procurement rules, which includes clauses designed to encourage all European countries to recommend the use of electronic tools, including BIM, on public works contracts. A recent RIBA Insight briefing provides a number of useful BIM resources. Further reading can be found on the Construction Industry Council blog, where Louise Dawes reviews how BIM can be used on smaller construction projects. And I presented at a recent Construction Products Association seminar on what architects need from product manufacturers, referencing our recent research into the Adoption of BIM by Architects. As part of the CPA's support for the BIM Task Group work, they are launching BIM4M2 on the morning of Friday,28 March at the BIS Conference Centre in London.

The Royal Academy of Engineering has awarded eight Enterprise Fellowships, these provide funding and support to outstanding entrepreneurial engineering researchers, working at a UK University. One of these has been provided to Dr David Heesom at the University of Wolverhampton to look into incorporating features found in computer gaming into BIM technologies.

What's being said - a round-up of useful marketing items

Pauley Creative has release their latest review of Social Media use by the Construction Industry, which provides a critic of how many of the large contractors are utilising social media. Hubspot have issued a report into inbound marketing across Europe, a summary of which is provided in their blog 9 Revealing European Content Marketing Trends to Watch. For a global take on marketing then consider downloading the report by ExactTarget 2014 State of Marketing

The Specifiedby Blog talks through the process for writing a building project specification. They are also converting all of the Building Regulation Documents into HTML format, or webpages and making them free to access. And their SocialSpec Supplier Network looks to provide free, qualified leads to building product manufacturers.

Last but not least we have released our latest eBook: Creating Awareness and Relationships with CPD

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