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Material selection, takeoff creation, and delivery scheduling made easy.

The processes required for new-home construction are opaque, fragmented, and almost entirely manual. BuildMate is a digital platform designed to give builders, GCs, subcontractors, procurement teams, and homebuyers a shared, real-time view to build trust.

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01The objective

After over 100 acquisitions since being founded in 2009, [Redacted National Building Materials Distributor] realized it lacked a clear understanding of its brands’ customers and their needs.

They tasked us to research the needs of architects, builders, GCs, and sub-contractors across their national footprint to identify key segments, distinct journey maps, and where shared pain points create new opportunities for new digital platforms.

Our challenge: How might we better understand the needs and behaviors of customers to reimagine the new home building journey and strengthen [Redacted National Building Materials Distributor]'s competitive advantage? With definitions of customers, reimagine, new home building journey, and competitive advantage.
01Our challenge — the “how might we” statement that framed the work, with what each key term meant for [Redacted National Building Materials Distributor].
02What we did

We ran 77 qualitative interviews in the Northeast, Midwest, and Southeast spanning builders, architects, procurement leads, GCs, and subcontractors across custom-semi-custom, multi-family, and production builds. After validating our findings with a 1,200-participant nationwide survey, we mapped distinct archetypes, personas, and journey maps through the 12+ month build cycle.

Research footprint. Sprint 1: 77 customer interviews across the West (30), Midwest (21), and Southeast (26), mapped by state; 39 existing and 38 non-[Redacted National Building Materials Distributor] customers; build types 18 custom, 6 semi-custom, 19 multi-family, 33 production; roles including 13 GC owners, 9 architects, 15 building executives, 16 procurement executives, 9 GCs employed by builders, and 15 subcontractors. Sprint 2: research objectives and activities — a nationwide survey of 1,200 customers and concept testing with 8 repeat customers.
02Research footprint — 77 customer interviews across regions, build types, and roles in Sprint 1, followed by a nationwide survey and concept testing in Sprint 2.
We took a multi-pronged approach to understand [Redacted National Building Materials Distributor] customers: market landscape, customer journey, personas, and opportunity areas — each shown with thumbnails of the work.
03Research deliverables — market landscape, customer journey, personas, and opportunity areas.
Opportunity Area and Pain Point Overview: six opportunity areas across planning, contracting and buying, constructing, and billing — creating shared understanding with customers; direct and transparent procurement; more accurate planning; visibility around project schedules; availability of quality labor; and optimizing back-office processes — each with the pain points it addresses.
04Opportunity areas and pain points — six areas mapped to the build journey, with the three most direct to [Redacted National Building Materials Distributor]'s core business in the middle.
Suppliers tend to prioritize bigger/national accounts. Mid-size builders don't have visibility into supply availability.
Production, Superintendent at Adam Homes

We conducted a robust synthesis to outline key pain points and opportunity areas. From here, we facilitated a full-day workshop with clients based on the 6 opportunity areas cited above. This resulted in more than 100 ideas to address the needs of [Redacted National Building Materials Distributor]’s customers, which we ultimately narrowed to 5 concepts that we built out and tested at a higher fidelity.

We developed 5 solutions: Takeoff360, a whole-home takeoffs generator; Material ID, a platform to view, compare and select materials; SmartSchedule, real-time tracking and updates for job stakeholders; PreBuilt, pre-assembled components in high-margin categories; and SkillBuilders, a stage-gated training program to grow the labor force.
05The five concepts — Takeoff360, Material ID, SmartSchedule, PreBuilt, and SkillBuilders.

After testing these concepts with customers, we narrowed in on Material ID, Takeoff 360, and SmartSchedule — ultimately combining these products into a super-app for full service. We then conducted a competitive scan that plotted players in the building-materials industry, in order to identify where differentiation is defensible.

According to customers, the industry needs a comprehensive solution: a feature comparison of [Redacted], Builders FirstSource Paradigm and myBLDR, 84 Lumber, ABC Supply, and Beacon versus BuildMate, which covers all ten features across Material ID, Takeoff360, and SmartSchedule.
06Competitive landscape — no existing player covers the full set of features customers asked for; BuildMate does.
03My role
  • Developed research plan for discovery in 3 key US markets, encompassing 77 customers across segments
  • Oversaw facilitation and synthesis of qualitative interviews, and developed quantitative survey based on these findings
  • Developed and led an ideation workshop with our clients, resulting in over 100 ideas
  • Led concept and feature development for BuildMate, including our pitch content for executives and our testing roll-out
  • Challenged the team to explore concepts that push “expected” boundaries by creating transparency between providers and customers in a traditionally opaque industry
04The solution

The concept landed as three connected solution pillars covering the moments where the build most often breaks down. Material ID turns sales teams’ knowledge of products and substitutions into a searchable, point-and-place tool. Takeoff 360 aggregates whole-home material lists and value-engineering options so estimates are faster, more accurate, and collaborative. Smart Schedule connects delivery workflows to jobsites with live communication and a delivery tracker that customers can actually see.

Each pillar was sequenced into a crawl-walk-run roadmap — starting with manual and lightly-tooled versions that can be adopted by [Redacted National Building Materials Distributor] today, then layering in MDM migration, ERP integrations, and a logistics backend to unlock analytics, recommendations, and automation tiers at scale.

BuildMate: a digitally-enabled set of services that simplify the building material procurement process. Three pillars — Material ID for material searching, selection, and alternative product identification; Takeoff360 for whole-home takeoffs with visualization and alerts; and SmartSchedule for seamless scheduling, delivery, and returns.
07BuildMate — one digitally-enabled service bringing Material ID, Takeoff360, and SmartSchedule together to simplify building material procurement end to end.
Crawl-walk-run roadmap for BuildMate's three pillars — Material ID, Takeoff 360, and Smart Schedule — showing each feature by stage, with tech leverage points for MDM migration, core ERP integrations, and a logistics and inventory backend.
08Crawl-walk-run roadmap — each solution pillar sequenced by stage, with the tech leverage points that unlock the next step.

Results

At concept handoff
Estimated Incremental Revenue ~$150m

For Material ID.

Estimated Incremental Revenue ~$160m

For Takeoff 360.

Estimated Incremental Revenue ~$275m

For SmartSchedule.

Next Step 3

Concepts approved for internal build at [Redacted National Building Materials Distributor].

09Rough POC demo for Material ID — a searchable material database across manufacturers, to ease sales and enable transparent dialogue with customers.