Construction Sales and Marketing Newsletter

June 2015

Welcome to this month's edition of the Construction Sales and Marketing Newsletter.

Construction market

ONS have made upward revisions to their previous UK construction output data, which now shows Q1 2015 having achieved 0.2% growth, rather than a 2.2% contraction as previously reported. New orders for the construction industry for Q1 2015 were estimated to have increased by 0.4%, compared with Q4 2014 and by 8.0% compared with Q1 2014.

The Barbour ABI Economic & Construction Market Review reports an increase of 11% in the value of construction projects awarded in April 2015, compared to April 2014. This rise gives cause for optimism with private housing continuing to perform well, accounting for 67% of new contracts awarded.

Read full report including:

ONS Output in Construction, Economic & Construction Market Review, Markit/CIPS Construction PMI, House Price Indexes.

Regulations & initiatives

Sustainability

The Green Deal energy efficiency scheme has exceeded Ł50m milestone. Yet The Independent speculates on the potential end of the Green Deal? The Building Performance Evaluation Programme by Innovate UK, a study of 48 non-residential buildings, highlights pitfalls in terms of design, installation, control and use. And the Industrial Decarbonisation and Energy Efficiency Roadmaps to 2050 have been published.

BIM

At the end of last month Barbour Product Search hosted a Twitter chat answering questions about Product Data templates. Martyn Horne of the Landscape Institute's BIM Working Group explains why getting your BIM data in order in the form of COBie is a good thing and why you should overlook the criticism. Is the industry ready to meet the Level 2 deadline? David Mycock of CIMCIG explores this in his article for RIBA Insight.

Industry updates

The Housing and Finance Institute, a new body backed by the Treasury is to launch in the next few weeks. A new edition of AD E has been published by DCLG and changes have been made to the Scottish Building Standards. The new representative organisation for the contracting supply chain, a merger between NSCC and UKCG is to be known as Build UK.

Articles

How to choose the Construction Market Research provider that's right for you

The 12 elements of research every construction marketer should know

Secret Confessions of a Telephone Researcher - Interview No.3

Value engineering - and how to avoid the pitfalls

The Golden Rules of Specification Selling

Marketing to the Construction Design Team

Marketing & sales

We are excited about our newly revised eBook: A how-to guide for market research in the construction industry. We will be presenting an overview of the guide in our webinar on Thursday 25th June at 12.30. We are also hosting another Twitter chat considering the challenges of marketing to the construction design team. Join us on Tuesday 23rd June at 12pm, simply follow #SpecStrategy.

This months marketing & sales round-up covers website marketing, benchmarking your marketing, paper versus digital communication and CPD.

Read in full

Forthcoming webinar

How to deliver construction research that informs your business strategy

Thursday 25th June 2015 - 12.30 - Ł45 incl. VAT

This webinar draws on the content in our recently updated Market Research eBook, now an extensive how-to guide for market research in the construction industry.

This webinar will provide guidance on the elements that make an effective research project, looking at: