Construction companies and individuals are being urged to sign up for a free LinkedIn style social media platform based around profiles of building projects.
Honest Buildings has been running successfully in the US for a year and aims to connect clients and decision makers with the most suitable building specialists and professionals via its searchable database of more than 9,500 commercial buildings in the UK.
Profiles can be created for buildings that are either planned, under construction or already completed. The building’s owners, consultants, contractors and other service providers can then associate themselves with the profile.
Clients can then search out the expertise of companies and individuals they want to work with. Property giants including Aviva Investors, British Land and Henderson Global Investors have already signed up. Design firms including Arup, WSP and Buro Happold also have profiles on the network.
But as well as the free search function, clients and decision makers will also have access to the Honest Buildings “match-making” service, where the Honest Buildings team will help them source, qualify and select consultants and other service providers.
Any firm eventually awarded a contract through the service must pay Honest Buildings a fee worth 5% of the contract sum for contracts up to £650,000, or a lower percentage if the contract is worth more than that.
Honest Buildings has been running in the US
Nick Katz, head of market development in Europe for Honest Buildings, told CM: “If an owner or occupier needs a fit-out contractor for a specific job, for example, we will take that request to the market, list their requirements and say if you have this type of experience, in this type of area, then please upload your information to the building profiles in Honest Buildings. We then run an algorithm to determine the relevance of their work to the job in question. It means an owner or decision maker doesn’t have to spend hours meeting 20 different firms when only four are relevant.”
Explaining the site’s potential appeal, he added: “Up until now it has been very difficult to understand, when you look at a building, who financed it, who designed it, who put the lights, or carpets in etc, which is amazing when you consider that construction is such a super capital-intensive industry. We are helping people involved in the supply chain to showcase buildings they have delivered and make their projects and services discoverable in an open database.”
Boosting awareness of sustainability is also a major focus for the website and BRE Global has agreed to allow it to display the environmental performance certifications of thousands of buildings certified under the BREEAM standard.
“Our aims on sustainability are much higher level than just providing environmental certification data,” said Katz. “It’s really about creating a more transparent market that enables decision makers to see who’s doing what and where and to make much faster decisions on their projects. We hope this will accelerate the country’s building energy performance faster than ever before.”
The BRE Global partnership echoes relationships in the US, where Honest Buildings has worked with state governments to power their online platforms for building and energy efficiency initiatives. For instance, the company powers a platform for New York state’s Build Smart NY initiative, which aims for a 20% reduction in energy use across its property portfolio by 2020.
“We would love to deliver similar platforms for the Greater London Authority and its retrofit programme, or for the Green Deal, to help increase private sector demand and interest in these types of public sector initiatives,” said Katz.
