How Can Contractors Find Public Sector Construction Work Before It Gets Tendered?
In this episode of the Red Review, host Jeremy Brim is joined by Matt Elliott, founder of PSC Pipeline, for a conversation about data-led capture, what the Procurement Act has (and hasn't) done for transparency, and how contractors can get in front of public sector construction opportunities long before they hit the market.
The Red Review Podcast with Matt Elliott of PSC Pipeline, brought to you by Growth Ignition and Bidscript
Matt's background is in finance and operations for a FTSE 100 company, then running a large school estate and winning millions of pounds of funding, before joining the Southern Construction Framework to help set up a brand new framework. He's still part of the senior team there, working on strategy, work winning and pre-construction delivery. In 2023 he launched PSC Pipeline to solve a problem he kept running into himself: finding early stage public sector work consistently.
Why did Matt build PSC Pipeline?
Matt's starting point was a feeling of discomfort. Even when he brought hundreds of millions of pounds of work into the framework in a few months, the contractors were always hungry for more, and some were winning far more than others.
He went looking for a silver bullet and found that most of the tools out there are built on planning data. That means they surface opportunities later in the process, and they surface the ones everyone else already knows about. What he wanted was a way to find work at RIBA Stage 0 to 2, so he could use his public sector relationships to position early.
When he couldn't find it, he built it. He ran a six month pilot in the South West, found 20 to 30 public sector schemes worth £5 million plus at the early stages, then scaled it across England in 2023 and added Wales at the start of 2024.
What does PSC Pipeline actually do?
There are two main tools:
PSC Pipeline is the main database. Matt's team finds early stage public sector opportunities and publishes them, deliberately leaving out anything that already has a planning application or is so high profile that everyone knows about it (ie: huge schemes over £400 million)
The research tool is a newer product. Put in a project name and a client name, and in about three minutes it produces a detailed report covering the client team, scope, value, funding, procurement route and planning strategy. You can even upload a screenshot of a LinkedIn post about a project and it will research it for you
Matt's tagline for the research tool is that within three minutes, you'll know more than the person who told you about the project.
What is the data showing about the construction pipeline?
Matt was careful to caveat that the business has scaled, so year on year comparisons can paint a distorted picture. When PSC Pipeline started, it was finding a few hundred opportunities a year. Last quarter it found 337 projects. That reflects a growing business, not necessarily a market boom.
A few sector themes stood out:
Education is strong. Matt knows suppliers on the DfE framework who say they've got no visibility of what's coming, when he can show them around 300 education jobs ranging from £1 million to £150 to £200 million
Health is a growing area of interest, and after a lot of refinement, it's now one of PSC Pipeline's strongest sectors
Defence is a sector clients ask about constantly, but PSC Pipeline deliberately steers clear of it for now
Is the Procurement Act making construction work more transparent?
Matt doesn't see transparency as a threat to his business, and says greater transparency just gives his team more to work with. But his experience on the ground suggests the market hasn't caught up yet.
Here's his test for anyone listening: think of a major project you've worked on, £5 million plus, then go and look for the contract award notice. Under the old regulations, clients had a lot of freedom over when to publish, and Matt regularly sees notices appearing two or three years after the work has been completed.
Under the new Procurement Act, notices are supposed to be tighter, but he hasn't seen a big increase. Transparency notices on direct awards are few and far between, even though everyone knows direct awards are happening. And while schemes over £5 million are now supposed to name unsuccessful bidders, he hasn't always seen that coming through. His view is that it's down to training rather than malice, and the market will catch up eventually.
What does data-led capture look like in practice?
Jeremy shared a story from earlier in his career, working with a Morgan Sindall business unit. Over an 18 month sprint, he did a market research exercise manually, reading master plans and committee minutes for every local authority, fire authority, ambulance service, police force, university and college in the region. It took about a month and produced a monster spreadsheet.
From that, they identified the top five clients, built a one page plan for each, then built five one page capture plans for individual projects. They won all five big schemes, and eight years later, those are still the business unit's top five clients.
Jeremy's reflection: if he'd had Matt's data back then, they'd have been faster and far more precise. He expects a data arms race ahead, with the winners being those who can use AI to work out what to do with the data they've got.
It's just data. The magic sauce is you.
Matt was refreshingly candid on this: his product is just data. The real difference is made by how people apply it, the targeting, the capture, the effort to convert the work, and the willingness to do hard things regularly and build new relationships.
He also shared a hard lesson about being a victim of your own success. A client can have a great time with you across four or five projects and then procurement says they've got to switch it up. It doesn't matter how good a job you've done. The answer is greater visibility and some redundancy across sectors and key clients, so you're ready when the droughts come.
Jeremy added a go-to-market angle. If you want to break into a new sector, such as building fire stations for the first time, use data to understand where the money is going to be, who the runners and riders are and who the consultants are upstream. Don't just hobby bid random projects you've never built before, because you'll buy yourself a problem.
Matt offered a fair counterpoint. Sometimes you do have to take on a project outside your sweet spot to get that first case study or earn a client's trust. The key is doing it deliberately, as part of a plan.
What's next for PSC Pipeline?
Matt's focus is scaling the business, and the team has recently hired a new commercial director with tier one contractor experience. The next product is Framework Explorer, a tracker for commercial frameworks and potential frameworks you could call off, with a shortlisting function so you can see which routes are available in your region. It's expected to land in January.
Quick answers
How can contractors find public sector construction opportunities earlier? Use data sources that look beyond planning applications, such as PSC Pipeline, alongside contract notice platforms, so you can position at RIBA Stage 0 to 2 rather than reacting once the tender is out.
Has the Procurement Act made construction pipeline data more transparent? Not as much as hoped yet. Matt Elliott reports that award notices can still appear years late, direct award notices are rare, and unsuccessful bidder disclosures for £5 million plus schemes aren't always coming through.
What is data-led capture? It's using pipeline and market data to work out where the money will be, with which clients, and then building focused key account and capture plans around the best fit opportunities.
Listen to the full episode
Catch the full conversation between Jeremy and Matt on the Red Review podcast, brought to you by Growth Ignition in partnership with Bidscript.
Transcript
Jeremy Brim
So welcome to the Red Review podcast with me, Jeremy Brim. Exciting episode this week in a subject that's close to my heart and I've not really had the chance to have a good conversation about. So I'm joined by my friend Matt Elliott. Hi Matt.
Matthew Elliott 24:45
Hi Jeremy, thanks for having me on.
Jeremy Brim 24:48
No problem at all, Chap. No problem at all. Good to see you. So this is exciting, actually, because we help each other out a bit behind the scenes, don't we? Because you're doing some work that nobody else is doing. And so tell me, Matt, a bit about you, first of all, and your business, and then in effect what your platforms do.
and then we'll unpack the exciting bit about how we leverage that, if that's all right. So a bit about you first of all, please, mate.
Matthew Elliott 25:16
Yeah, okay, so I'm Matthew Elliott. I founded PSC Pipeline back in 2023, I believe now. My son was around six weeks old at the time that I founded it, so my wife was absolutely fuming that I chose that moment there and then. But if you don't do these things, well,
Jeremy Brim 25:34
Haha.
Yeah.
Matthew Elliott 25:37
Well, you've got the desire and the energy, although I don't think I had too much energy at that point, then you just overlook opportunities. So I felt it was important and that was the right moment for me. But before PSC, my background has kind of been grounded in the built environment. When I started my career, I was
Jeremy Brim 25:37
Yeah.
What?
Matthew Elliott 25:57
in finance and operations for a FTSE 100 company. I've run a large school estate as an estates manager, so I was during that time I kind of was responsible for bidding work, getting SIF funding. I had a very
good record of success in that regard and won millions of pounds for that state that I was looking after. And then the next stop after that was I started to roll with Southern Construction Frameworks. So I was brought in to set up a brand new framework for them.
and I have been part of the senior team there since. So at the moment, I share my time between Southern Construction Framework.
And in that role, as well as helping to agree like the strategy for how the framework shape and all those good things, my day-to-day tends to be work winning and delivering that work in pre-construction. So I've got a lot of experience in work winning and the
and you know, how to go about that. And also about the delivery side, which I think is, yeah, somewhat an unusual mix at times. So really it was that Southern construction framework background that drove me to set up the business in 2023. In all honesty,
For FCF, we've had tier one partners predominantly over the last handful of years. We've started to do more with the tier 2 market in recent years. But if you look at the legacy, like the 20 years and the 10 billion pound plus worth of work we've done, the majority of it is with tier 1 contractors.
So I've worked in the Southwest patch predominantly.
And I have never had a feeling of I found enough work. I'm okay. I can kind of sit back on my laurels because the issue is always, it doesn't matter whether I bring 2 or 300 million pounds in within a few months. And there are times where me and my colleagues have done that.
The contractors are not all winning at the same rate. Some are more successful than others. So people are always still hungry and being completely transparent, even the ones that are winning more regularly are always hungry for more. So it was kind of that feeling.
of discomfort, if you will, that led me to thinking I need to find a silver bullet for myself. Like there must be something out there in the industry that can find me work, that I can go and convert with my public sector relationships. So I looked at the typical routes.
I'm not going to name today, but everyone will be familiar with them. A lot of those, the issue that I had was they are all based on a planning system.
Jeremy Brim 29:04
Mmh.
Matthew Elliott 29:04
So planning is later in the process. If you're, you know, if you're lucky and you're just targeting stuff that's kind of got outline or hybrids, you're going to, and using those systems, you're going to find far fewer opportunities and they're kind of the opportunities that everyone else knows about, right? So a bit tricky. So
I was really looking for a system that could find me RIBA Zero to RIBA 2 work consistently, that would allow me to leverage my relationships, position on that work and secure it for FCF. And when I couldn't find it, I just thought, I know enough about the public sector governance with my
framework background to go and find work for myself in a methodical, systematic way. So I decided to set up a test in Southwest, which is where I'm based.
And I ran that pilot for about six months and found 20, 30 schemes that were kind of of that model, 5 million pounds plus, strictly public sector, 0 to 2 and read the stage. I carried on looking at other businesses to see if there was any competitors that were doing this and to the same quality.
And I couldn't find any. So at that point, I just thought, you know what, I'm going to take plunge, I'm going to scale this up and turn it into a business. So from April 23 to the end of that year, I was scaling up across England, adding like a couple of regions at a time.
And then at the start of 24, one of my clients asked me to add Wales. So from the start of 24, we've had data for the whole of England and Wales. And this, yeah, it's been a wild ride. The product has got stronger and stronger. Like we're always iterating on it.
like it is a new product and a new way of working, to be honest, for many people. But yeah, sorry, I feel like I've just blabbed on and paused for breath.
Jeremy Brim 31:08
Mm.
No, no. Well, you know, one of the things that I really admire about you with this stuff is that you're really passionate about it. And it is game changing stuff. So just to position this, I guess, for the audience then, mostly for contractors, but, you know, consultants can take some inspiration from this depending on what they're
they're doing. But basically, one of the things that we constantly interact on LinkedIn about, for instance, Matt, is, you know, and I've had a real realisation sort of moment on this stuff, although I am aware this will be our fifth episode in this series.
And I've listening back to episodes or when I've been doing the editing, I've realised I've talked about the 80-20 thing in every episode. I've done more than 30 growth maturity benchmarking sessions with businesses or business units of contractors, consultants, all in construction. And every single one of those businesses is making 80% of their profit
with 20% of their clients. And I've talked about that in every episode. So I've done an episode on marketing stuff and it's relevant for that. I've done an episode on learning and development stuff and it's relevant for that because basically the clients where they're making their money are the ones where they have been engaged early.
They've got a head of opportunities, they've seen stuff coming, prepared for it and maybe deployed capture, if not some key account management on those clients upstream. The clients where they're actually making a loss if they accounted for cost of sale and account management effectively in the tail are the ones that they've hobby bidded
Maybe through a framework.
and they've won the deal by accident with a stranger. So they're writing, wrote a bid to a stranger and they've won it on price or programme by accident because they didn't really understand the spec or something. And so you end up in this scenario where the client didn't want you because they wanted somebody else that they'd
perhaps done some work with before, maybe an incumbent or people who had engaged them earlier, etc. The work's probably outside your sweet spot, etc, etc. So it doesn't go so well. But there are also, now we're in the biggest fight for talent ever. You know, hundreds of thousands of people are going to retire out of the construction market in the next 5 to 10 years and they won't be replaced.
So if you continue to hobby bid and win rubbish work with rubbish clients or clients you're not aligned with, your people will leave and get a job somewhere else for more money. So when, so I've kind of transitioned, I work with clients in the bidding space all the time. Now I've been reviewing bids all summer long and through September for clients.
And that's fine, but they are all waking up to the fact that there's a lot, lot more value in them working with me further up the client journey. And so maybe that's, let me see your pipeline and let's have a look at the opportunities that are six months away at first and I can help you prepare for those.
But ideally, actually, you know, when I do these growth maturity sessions, I was talking to you off camera just before we started recording that I was with a client yesterday.
And...
The thing that will unlock all of that sequence of events for them and wildly up their win rate, their profitability, their staff enjoyment of work, their clients' feedback and experience, will be looking at their geography and understanding where is the money going to be with who.
And then what of that, as I was talking with Ayo about on the episode that went out last week, if we can figure out what our perfect client looks like and what our perfect project or contract looks like, you know, i.e. the ones where we make money, our people are happy and the clients are happy, find more of those in that data pool of where the money's going to be.
and then just focus on those, you can't help but be more successful. And so the number one thing is that I tell people to subscribe to your service, actually. Yeah, very, very frankly, because they, well, because we are, we are saying we're supposed to be. Let's get your view on this.
Matthew Elliott 35:21
But.
Well, well done, you.
Jeremy Brim 35:35
So we're supposed to be sailing into a new phase of greater data access on pipeline than ever before. So we've got NISTA's pipeline as a subset of the Treasury on what over the next 10 years the government is going to spend its money on. And they're supposed to be updating that every six months.
And that's supposed to be the North Star of where the money's going to be with who at the top level. And it will hopefully one day. But at the moment, there's like one line for the whole DFE programme, 15 billion. There's one line for all of the DFEs, DIOs spend. Where is it? What is it? You know, etc. So that's a bit unhelpful. And then you tell me, Matt, how is it? So since the new procurement act,
Matthew Elliott 36:00
I.
Jeremy Brim 36:19
How's it going with the old notices that are meant to be coming out?
Matthew Elliott 36:24
We.
Jeremy Brim 36:25
Cause.
Matthew Elliott 36:26
Yes, it's interesting. I think at the moment, what's hard is there is a bit of a, well, there's definitely a legacy. Like there are a lot of frameworks that are still under the old contract regs. So clients are unsure, you know, what regulations they're following, frankly, at times.
Jeremy Brim 36:39
Mhm.
Matthew Elliott 36:46
But around contract notices, I mean, I've been asked many times before whether I see it as a threat, the transparency piece, and I don't. Actually, that's all that we're doing is to help transparency. And if there is greater transparency, we will only weaponize that further, ultimately. So
Jeremy Brim 36:53
Mm.
Yeah, yeah.
Matthew Elliott 37:04
I think where I've seen, you know, we look at a lot of data, you know, daily, and what some of the key observations that I make, and I kind of, I think there's a test that everyone could run that's listening. If you think of some major projects that you've worked on,
Jeremy Brim 37:09
Okay.
Yeah.
Matthew Elliott 37:24
Five million pound plus, let's say. Just go and type that in to find a tender and see if you can find a contract award notice after it's been built out.
I don't want to put a percentage on it because I don't think it's fair. And under the old regs, clients had a lot more freedom as to when they publish those notices. So without naming certain authorities, like sometimes I'll see things published two or three years after the fact of the project's been.
Jeremy Brim 37:44
Mm.
Matthew Elliott 37:54
complete or a consultant appointment has been undertaken, whereas the new procurement act is supposed to tighten up on that.
But I wouldn't say that I've seen more notices. Like if you just think about the transparency notice around direct awards, well, actually, I've seen few and far of, you know, there is a few and far between. Whereas we know they're going on, everyone knows that there's direct awards in the market. And then the other thing,
that I've been keeping a particular eye on is there's a requirement now for, I think it's 5 million pound plus schemes to name unsuccessful bidders on a scheme. So that essentially, if you're selling services like we are,
Jeremy Brim 38:35
Uh-huh.
Matthew Elliott 38:41
I'm looking at it because I want to go to the person that's won and say, you won this time type of thing. But did you have this Intel 2, 2 1/2 years ago? And kind of mirror that with the unsuccessful ones and say, look, you lost out this time. Do you think having information earlier would have helped you pre-position?
and put you in a better position when the bids come out. But I've, apart from the really big entities like the frameworks that are clearly like making sure they tick all those boxes at a project level, I haven't always seen that seep through. And I think at the moment,
Jeremy Brim 39:19
Mm.
Matthew Elliott 39:21
That's probably down to training and it's not out of malice or wanting to hide things. But yeah, the market will catch up eventually. And when it does, yeah, we're ready to harvest that data alongside our other sources.
Jeremy Brim 39:38
Yeah, but you'll be ahead of it. So it's really interesting. So, you know, I had a coffee a couple of weeks ago with Sean Bradley, who runs a great big swathe of Morgan Sindall, right? Incredible guy, lovely man. I was asking him for some coaching on kind of.
the next 10 years of my career and stuff. And he's just such an insightful dude. You can see how they've been so successful. Generally as a business, they've got really good leaders and things. But he was my first client. Invoice 001 went to Sean when I started Growth Ignition.
Matthew Elliott 40:35
Hey.
Jeremy Brim 40:35
years. So I did an 18 month sprint to set them up. And then a group of people went and really took that on and smashed it, leadership team. But basically what I did was a market research exercise. So where was the money going to be with who? So what I did manually, very manually, it took me like a month,
I went and read all of the master plans, committee minutes, all of that stuff for every local authority, every fire authority, ambulance, police, university, colleges, you know, what was going on with DFE at the time, etc, and created a monster spreadsheet, which then we basically
thought through of all of that stuff, that pipeline, what suits our business, the project types we can do, the teams we have coming available. And we just figured out who were the top five clients and we built a one page plan around those. What's important to them? What do they care about? How are we going to engage them? Who's going to face off to who through them and their consultants?
And then five capture plans, one page capture plans, similarly for individual projects. And I think those are, or they were until this year, they, you know, eight years later, they are their top five clients. Still, they won all five of those big schemes and they've gone on and
absolutely smashed it and created a, you know, a really sustainable, predictable business where people like to work. And I'm really proud of that. And it was fantastic to sort of get to hang out with Sean and sort of reminisce about that journey. But boy, oh boy, if I'd had your tool,
mixed with the Cambridge to Oxford Arc stuff and NISTA stuff and all of that kind of thing, we'd have been so much more precise and been at things a lot faster with a lot more insight. So I'm really excited to see where your clients
take this stuff. I think there'll be a data kind of arms race in how people engage you and then use AI to help them figure out what to do with it. I think we're going to get, oh hopefully we're going to go into kind of an exciting era, but there's so many organisations that are nowhere close to that, even the biggest PL
sees their regional businesses. I had one yesterday. Their business plan is based on their current pipeline and current clients and just what they can see with a gap to find. But what is, where's that, where's that gap coming from? Where actually, if they did a bit of research on the notices and your data stuff on RIBA 01,
Matthew Elliott 43:08
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 43:19
and to, you know, from your committee minutes and all of that kind of stuff, they could be have so much more confidence in who's engaging in what. It's a really interesting place. So what are you seeing in the construction pipeline then? What are the themes? Is there more of it, less of it, different types?
What are you seeing, Matt, in the data, like the matrix?
Matthew Elliott 43:41
Well, I think, yeah, I think it's interesting. I will caveat everything I say with, you know, as I've explained, this is kind of a developing business. So our processes are being refined all the time. So some of the data, if you looked at where we started out, we were finding
Jeremy Brim 43:49
Cry.
Matthew Elliott 44:00
you know, 3, 400 opportunities across the country or across England and Wales a year. Where we're at today, I've just released a quarterly report for our clients and published it on LinkedIn a couple of days ago. We found 337 projects last quarter.
So the business has scaled, so that can paint a bit of a distorted picture if you look solely at the data and go, oh, look, they've had a massive increase on this quarter. Life must be, you know, it's going to be booming in 12 to 18 months. I think partially, yes, that can be true, but also you've got to have that context of the journey that we're on as a business as well.
Jeremy Brim 44:41
Yeah, yeah.
Matthew Elliott 44:41
I think what we're seeing.
And again, it's to do with the refinement of our processes. When we started out in 23, we were finding an awful lot of resi work, a lot of education work, and then everything else was pockets and very regional, like Southeast, for example, was quite a lot of leisure work.
London's clearly there's a lot of development and regeneration, that type of work. But as we've moved through and the place where we're at now, the product is fairly well spread and it has key sectors like yes, the education is really good. I know people that have, you know, that have got placed on the DFE framework.
that will say to me openly, they've got no visibility of what's coming on that framework. I can flash up our system and show them 300 education jobs from a million to 150, 200 million in an instant. So I mean, as a planning tool, it's useful for that.
Jeremy Brim 45:29
Mmh.
Matthew Elliott 45:44
But in terms of the spread of work then, what I've seen an increase in is health work. Everyone seems really interested in health. And ironically, for us, it's been the hardest solution to find. So it was one of our weakest areas. They are quasi.
Jeremy Brim 45:59
Yeah.
Matthew Elliott 46:03
private in the way that they followed the procurement act and previous contract regs, as are, you know, universities. So, but now what we've done through our processes is we've refined to a point where I'd say health is one of our strongest sectors at the moment. And that's
Jeremy Brim 46:21
That's interesting. So that is, so is that beyond National Hospital Programme, which is kind of the big headline stuff, right? So people get distracted by that when that's kind of almost been and gone, hasn't it? And there's a whole market beyond that.
Matthew Elliott 46:22
That's super interesting.
Oh yeah, I don't. I've got this.
Alright.
Yeah, so I mean, I don't, as a business, we don't focus on the stuff that we believe everyone knows about. So I've got processes in place. So for health as the example, if it's a scheme that's above 400 million, then we don't track it because we know it's out there everywhere. There is no benefit to any of our clients.
Jeremy Brim 46:44
Yeah.
Mm.
Matthew Elliott 46:58
any of the supply chain consultants in us publishing that, and it just pollutes the data. And we really want our clients to engage as much as possible. And part of that is making sure that the data is stuff that is genuinely interesting and early to them, because otherwise people will just switch off if they think, oh, yeah, I know about that.
know about that. And that's kind of the feedback we've had around other systems. So it's something we've worked really hard on. But health is going to be a big sector. Defence, everyone's always on about spending defence. It takes a long time to convert anything, but there certainly seems to be
plenty of money there. As a business, we keep away from defence at the moment because we don't want to uncover anything that we're not supposed to uncover. So both of our tools, because at some point I'll have to talk about the research tool as well, but both of them are programmed.
Jeremy Brim 47:48
Mm.
Matthew Elliott 47:56
not to search for defence work. So whether we'll change that in years to come, we'll see. But at the moment, we know that's a key sector. It's a sector that we get asked a lot about for our clients.
Jeremy Brim 48:10
Interesting. So, well, since you mentioned it, what are the tools that you provide to your clients? What do they do?
Matthew Elliott 48:19
So at the moment, there's two main tools. So PSC pipeline, which is the main database, and that was the, you know, the foundational product, the flagship product, if you will. So that is the we are out there finding the opportunities for you. It goes into our database. It has to meet a certain criteria.
Jeremy Brim 48:33
What?
Matthew Elliott 48:40
like million pounds plus public sector, all types of public sector work has to be 0 to three. The cut off point is if there's a planning application for it, we won't publish it because we know it appears elsewhere. So there's not everyone's potential positioning has been eroded by that point, but we believe so.
Jeremy Brim 48:45
Oh.
Matthew Elliott 49:05
So that is the pipeline product. That is our we will find for you. We'll support your BD and find work in the regions that you're working in, whatever they look like. So everyone's got a complicated region that we've discussed a little bit earlier. And then the other one, which is a brand new product,
We've only launched it in the last few months, but it's really gone down like a stall with our clients, is the research tool. So the research tool applies the methodology of our database. So without flashing it up, what, sorry to dance around, the main projects that we're finding
Jeremy Brim 49:40
Mm.
No, you are.
Matthew Elliott 49:44
I know what's useful to people because I know what's useful to me. So it's not a one line description. This is a school in Wales. These are the work packages that are potentially going to be on it. It is who is the client? Who's the client team? Who's the associated companies? What is the scope of the scheme?
Jeremy Brim 49:49
Yeah.
Matthew Elliott 50:03
What is the value? What is the budget breakdown? What is the funding package? What is the procurement around there? Have they got preferred procurement methods? What is the planning strategy? So, I mean, it is really detailed per record.
So that is the methodology that we apply to the new research tool. So the research tool is for our clients that are out there finding schemes that we have either chosen not to publish about or haven't found ourselves, like we don't find absolutely anything. So what you're able to do is you're able to put in a project name,
and a client name and it will go and research that for you. It takes about 3 minutes and it will populate you a full report akin to what I've described is on the main product. And if you don't know the client and the name, maybe you might see a news article or a contract award notice you can put in it all.
You could be scrolling on LinkedIn, you could take a screenshot of the post that you've seen about a project and upload that and it will go and research that for you. So those are the two products, they marry up really well together. It's we will help you, we will find opportunities for you at scale and at scale that frankly,
Jeremy Brim 51:15
Mm.
Matthew Elliott 51:20
no one else could achieve through BD, if you will. And the other product is that you are finding you need to get up to speed on something really quick. It's going to take you 3 minutes. Within 3 minutes, you'll know more than the person that told you about it. That's kind of the tagline that I think about with it.
Jeremy Brim 51:39
Yeah, yeah.
That's super cool. So I think there's a, it's really interesting how you fit around the other data sources. Like you say, you kind of expect your clients to know about National Hospital Programme projects or whatever it is. But I guess for those, for the uninitiated,
I would say get Matt products, but I'd sit it alongside one of the major contract notice platforms. And you can Google what those are, I won't advertise any one, but well, Bidscript who are my partners, I do board advisory stuff for them. So they're an AI
enabled bid management, bid writing platform, but they also have bid search, which triggers off of the notices, like you say. So I'd obviously advocate clients having their platform, both of those two platforms alongside your stuff. There are other platforms that can data mine who's been paying who for what.
because all invoices in the public sector over 250 quid are technically publicly available data. Again, how perfect that is, who knows? But you can do some research on who's been paying, you know, which architects for what upstream of you or which other builders, etc. It's quite interesting.
Matthew Elliott 52:59
I mean, I find that.
I do find that a bit interesting. I've never, I've got some clients that use that technology and I equally won't name it, but I always think, do you really need it? Like we all know our regions fairly well, unless you're expanding into a new region or something like that. We all know who's working with who.
Jeremy Brim 53:07
Hmm.
Matthew Elliott 53:20
If you don't at our level, then that's a bit of a concern, really.
Jeremy Brim 53:21
Mm.
But that's the bit, so at our level, so you, we both work with the big tier, well-known tier ones quite a lot.
But actually, there is a burgeoning sector of what I wouldn't want to call tier twos, actually, you know, perfectly capable regional contractors who are excellent in their regions. They're just not big national ones with big central framework teams and data teams.
research teams, etc. Not that, I mean, to be honest with you, most of the big tier ones don't actually aren't that developed in that stuff compared to the big consultancies. You know, the big, at the moment, we're into an interview, we're going to run out of time, but we'll probably have to have a conversation another time about data enabled capture, because that's really where it
it links. But at the moment in the UK, there were a couple of job ads out for some of the big sort of tier 1 consultancies who do delivery partner roles and all that kind of stuff for capture manager jobs. And that's a fairly new thing. Most of the building contractors
don't know what capture is on average across their business, let alone doing capture enabled stuff. So I think you're exposed to people who understand this stuff better because that's why they're talking to you. But I guess in the next range of growth for your business and with people coming on board, because obviously you're scaling the business,
which is really exciting. I think you'll start to bump into more other contractors who are less mature in this and certainly tier twos or regional, really good regional contractors who don't know that. And or they can't possibly know everything about everything.
And so they're going to have gaps. And so again, you know, your products and those others just give you greater visibility and data to, you know, inform insight and then which informs better decision making.
which I think is really exciting.
Matthew Elliott 55:27
I think we kind of all need to be specialists, don't we, and know what we know and not to venture too far outside of that area of competency, because that's where businesses start to struggle and find themselves spread thin and fail in their bid rates and all of those things. We do a fair bit with tier twos.
Jeremy Brim 55:29
And.
Mm.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, that's true. That's very true.
Matthew Elliott 55:47
and smaller at times, but as you say, it's more not tutoring, but there is more training involved. Ultimately, I don't want anyone using our products that isn't geared up to get value out of them. So I don't want a central team for a tier 1 mandate in its use and then it to sit quietly in the background. We work really hard to make sure our
Jeremy Brim 55:59
Mmh.
Matthew Elliott 56:08
user base is using the data and ultimately the one thing I'll always be candid about is it is just data. The magic sauce is you and how you apply it. It's your efforts in targeting, capture, all of those things and how you convert the work that is the main.
hump to get over on the hill. And it's doing the hard things regularly that will make the difference. The data is a part of that, but doing the hard work and making yourself uncomfortable, going and seeking out new relationships, not just being, I know we talked a little bit about having key clients and building up that key client base. Well,
Jeremy Brim 56:31
So, what?
Yeah.
Matthew Elliott 56:49
I've seen that happen a lot over, you know, the south of England, and I've been a victim, as I'm sure many contractors have, of our own success, where clients will go, yeah, we've had a really good time with you for the last four or five projects, but we've got a, you know, procurement saying we've got to switch it up and, you know, whether that's a framework route or a contractor, it's like,
Jeremy Brim 57:08
Yeah, yeah, and people change, and...
Matthew Elliott 57:10
Well, it doesn't matter how good a job you do. You've got to expect that rotation to come at some point. And that's where the greater visibility, a bit of redundancy in sectors and who your key clients are is a good thing to just to help level out that playing field when the droughts come. And they certainly do come.
Jeremy Brim 57:13
Yeah.
Matthew Elliott 57:29
in this industry. So the more you can be prepared for that, the more robust and survivability you'll give your businesses.
Jeremy Brim 57:31
Yeah, me too.
Yeah, I mean, if you've got most of the time with my clients for a region of a big builder, for instance, they've probably got like the one yesterday had three real key clients and another two that were kind of growing. And so I said to them, if you want to add another 30% to your revenue, you've probably got to court.
six clients to convert two or three. And so who are those next six potentials in your region that fit your sweet spots? And I've said to them, you've got to talk to Matt about his data to help inform that.
Matthew Elliott 58:08
Well, I...
And that's interesting, is it? It kind of this contradicts something that you said earlier about...
you know, taking on work in your sweet spot, you do, but to get a foot in the door, lots of people have to do projects that aren't quite their sweet spot to get that initial case study under their belt, whether it's a new sector they want to get into, or if it's a client that you've got to take on projects to build up that trust before you perceive.
Jeremy Brim 58:31
Oh yeah, yeah.
Matthew Elliott 58:37
you'll be given a shot at one of the ones that do hit your sweet spot.
Jeremy Brim 58:42
Yeah, and I reckon, sorry, we're out of time, aren't we, mate? Because we could talk all day, but...
Actually, what that is about is a go to market strategy. So if you want to get into building fire stations and you've never built a fire station before, you need to use Matt's data and the other data to understand where the money's going to be with who in that so that you know there's a pipeline, you're not trying to do something and then it stops and you understand who the runners and riders are and what the solutions are.
and build out a proper approach to entering that market. But again, the source code to it is that data and insight and who's engaged and who are the consultants getting upstream with it. Don't just hobby bid random projects that you've never built before because you'll buy yourself a problem. You need to take a properly sort of thought through approach to doing that.
which again, the data helps with. So we'll probably have to do another episode, another time about when we catch up on whatever your next product is and whatever else is coming. So I guess what's next, Matt, in your world?
Matthew Elliott 59:46
T.
So for me, my focus is scaling the business at this point. So we've recently hired a new commercial director, so fortunate enough to, yeah, her experience is that of a tier 1 contractor. So we're really excited to have Laura on board, but we know we've got to go and get a couple more people in the next few months. So we're doing
that and then from a product perspective, the next one that I've agreed to do. And again, this kind of request by client, I only really develop our products through client requests because I want to build what the market wants and needs rather than what I think they want and need, which are two very different things. But
Jeremy Brim 1:00:24
Mm.
Matthew Elliott 1:00:28
The next product is...
Called Framework Explorer.
Jeremy Brim 1:00:34
Mm.
Matthew Elliott 1:00:34
It's the first product that will potentially have public sector application as well as private. So it's going to be essentially a tracker for all of the commercial frameworks and the potential frameworks that you could call off that are less commercially known.
and it will enable you to A, keep an eye on, you know, yes, the dates, when is it likely to be engaged and bid and all of those things. But also it's going to have like a shortlisting function on it. So if you was a consultant, you could say, oh, I want contractor A,
Jeremy Brim 1:01:07
Very good.
Matthew Elliott 1:01:12
B, C, type that in what your region is and it will give you a list of options for where they sit and then a bit of a summary about each of those routes and what their benefits are. And then equally that can apply to consultants as well. It's not just about contractors, but that's the next, developing that in the background. So
Jeremy Brim 1:01:18
You.
Matthew Elliott 1:01:32
I think, I think that's probably gonna be a January release.
Jeremy Brim 1:01:36
That is so cool. So that solves a really important business problem for my business, actually. I'll have to put your arm up your back and get some free access to that. Because trying to do that with Claude or Co-Pilot or whatever is actually really challenging. And obviously you understand how to play the games with the data and extract this stuff.
It's really quite a challenge to understand what frameworks are where and when they'll come back around and who's on them and all of that stuff. So if you crack that nut, that's incredibly powerful, mate. That's really exciting. I'll look forward to that. And maybe we'll have you back on in Jan or Feb to talk through that game and what's coming.
Matthew Elliott 1:02:14
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 1:02:16
Wonderful. Well, I really appreciate the time. Thank you. It's always great to catch up with you, mate. It's a really exciting business and it's taking a data led approach, I can't stress enough, is game changing for businesses. And so many are just getting on framework still and hobby bidding things and, you know, relying on their current clients and the pipeline they can see where actually
you know, the more visibility you have, the more predictable the business can be, the more you can get ahead of things and invest in things appropriately. And everyone just has a better time. So it's a really exciting space. I'm glad we had the chat. Thank you very much, mate. We'll see you soon.
Matthew Elliott 1:02:55
Yeah, cheers, Jeremy.