Real estate and construction
Construction
Physically building what has been designed.
Construction firms build what somebody else designed, on terms somebody else set, for a client who chose from a list. Two of these trades are picked by tender and prequalification. Two are picked by an occupier or an owner who searches first, asks what it costs, then asks who did the same job nearby. The opening is different in each.
Where the answer is being lost
The terms are settled before you are invited.
A workplace lead signs a lease and has to give finance a fit-out figure before there is a scope to price or a contractor to ask. She takes the figure from a brokerage report. A concessionaire's team works out how an annuity package is structured from a ratings note and a law firm's explainer. In both cases the work is being explained by people who do not do the work, and the firms that do arrive after the budget, the programme and the evaluation criteria are fixed. The invitation, when it comes, is an invitation to price somebody else's assumptions.
How we win this
The programme for construction
Price it in public
Two of these trades lose control of the number before the first meeting, because the buyer needs one long before there is anything to quote against. We put a defensible range where they look: cost per square foot by fit-out grade, cost per square metre by waterproofing system, and the variables that move each. An engine will repeat a figure that arrives with its conditions attached. Today it repeats one with nothing attached at all.
Catch the re-award moment
Tendered work has one moment of genuine search. A contractor defaults, a package is re-let, a programme has to be recovered. The owner is looking for someone who can take over half-built work, and almost nothing is written for him. We write the takeover material, novation, survey, retention, mobilisation, because that is where a new name can still enter.
Get the record out of the PDF
Prequalification runs on facts: registration class, turnover, plant owned, completed scope, applicator approvals, safety record. Most firms hold all of it, in a profile deck a buyer has to request and a machine cannot open. Schema puts the same facts where an engine can state them, and registry work makes your name, class and address agree wherever they appear. It will not make you eligible for anything you were not eligible for. It decides whether you are named when someone asks who does this work.
Reach past the main contractor
A specialist trade sells to the tier above it and is specified by the tier above that. You never meet the consultant drafting the remedial spec, but he reads. Blogs and answer-pages at system depth put your firm in front of the person writing the specification, long before procurement asks the main contractor for three quotes.
The mix that carries it
Content
Answer and comparison pages
Cost, process, eligibility and comparison pages built for direct extraction, not for a reader who scrolls.
Foundation
Entity and schema engineering
Structured data and entity definition so engines know exactly what you are, where you operate, and what you are credible in.
Content
GEO blogs and authority content
The definitive written answer to the questions your buyers put to an engine, structured so it can be lifted and attributed.
Authority
Digital public outreach
Earned mentions, trade coverage and third-party citations — the corroboration a model checks before it names you.
Authority
Original data and benchmarks
Proprietary numbers, surveys and benchmarks — the most-cited asset class there is, because nobody else has them.
Authority
Directories and profile consistency
Every listing, registry and profile saying the same thing, so the entity resolves to one business instead of three.
The constraint we work inside
Two of these four trades are bought through procurement, not discovery. Public tendering fixes eligibility by class, turnover and completed scope, and no published page changes that. Content works before the list exists, and after a defect appears. We will not claim it wins you a tender.
Specialisations
4 total
The pitch is different for each one, because the buyer, the trigger and the rules on what may be published are different for each one. Open the one that is yours.
A contractor walks off a half-finished site, and the developer's projects head now has weeks, not months, to find a replacement he can defend to his board.
The question deciding this today
“How do you evaluate a general contractor before awarding a project”
- Who they sell to
- Owners needing overall responsibility for delivering a build
- Who signs
- Project owner, developer's projects head
- What starts it
- Project award, contractor failure, tender cycle, design finalisation
- Cost of staying invisible
- Cost and time overruns that were visible from the start
Prequalification and the balance sheet settle most awards, and nothing published moves either. What is still open is who gets onto the list. That list comes out of recall, and recall is now assembled somewhere you are not. The same projects head asks 'How do you evaluate a general contractor before awarding a project' while he is drafting his own criteria, reads a page written by people who have never run a site, and carries a few names out of it. A regional builder who has handed over across that city is not among them, because he has never written down what he handed over.
What we would run
- 01Answer and comparison pages
A prequalification page written the way an owner's checklist reads: turnover and bonding capacity, plant owned against plant hired, safety record, defect liability terms, and what a fair variation clause looks like on a fixed-price contract.
He is drafting evaluation criteria in the same week. A page that supplies the criteria gets used, and the firm that supplied them is already familiar when the list is drawn.
- 02Entity and schema engineering
Structured entries for every completed project: contract type, built-up area, sector, location, client class and completion date, tied to the firm entity so an engine can state what you have actually delivered.
Prequalification is a question of facts. An engine holding your delivery record as data can answer it. One holding a brochure cannot see it at all.
- 03GEO blogs and authority content
Takeover writing: how an owner novates a stalled contract, what a fresh contractor surveys before quoting on someone else's structure, how retention and defect liability transfer when the first builder defaults.
Contractor failure is the one moment in this trade when an owner searches instead of shortlisting. Nobody writes for it, because nobody wants to name the situation.
- 04Directories and profile consistency
Registration and registry consistency: contractor class and category with every state and central body you hold, association membership, legal entity name, CIN and registered address, identical wherever they are published.
A firm whose name, class and address disagree across four registers resolves as two firms or as none. The committee verifying your shortlist entry runs that same check by hand, and finds the same mess.
What we would not recommend
- Reviews and testimonials. A build of this size has no public reviewer. The owner rings two other owners, and a page of testimonials reads to a projects head as something a marketing team assembled.
- Original data and benchmarks. Your cost and programme numbers sit inside contracts with clients who expect them to stay there. A benchmark redacted until it is safe to publish says nothing worth citing.
- X. Every step of an award here has to be defended in writing to a board. Nothing posted as a thread can be attached to a prequalification file, and this buyer carries nothing into that room he cannot cite.
What a lead looks like
A developer's projects head, three weeks into a stalled tower, who has already read your takeover page and your completed-project data. He wants to talk about surveying the existing structure, what he can hold back from the previous contractor, and whether you can mobilise before the monsoon.
What we measure
- Present in contractor evaluation answers
- Delivery record retrievable as data
- Inclusion on takeover and re-award prompts
- Registry details agreeing everywhere
- Enquiries naming a specific project
What changes
The enquiry list changes composition. A workplace lead calls with a budget she built from your cost bands and asks whether her handover date survives the landlord's conditions. A project manager on a live leak asks for a survey rather than a rate. A projects head re-letting a stalled package already knows what you have delivered and wants to talk about mobilising. A concessionaire's team asks whether you would take the EPC scope on a package they have won. None of this makes you eligible for work you could not already bid. It decides which name is familiar when the list is drawn.
Start here
See who gets named in construction today
We put your buyers' real questions to the live models and come back with the businesses they name, the sources behind those answers, and the gap between that list and yours.