Blog · Coverage and territory · Construction
How a distributor that buys building permit or project data turns it into a branch prospect list: matching the contractor named on a permit to a trade account, listing active projects in the branch's area with no supplying account, valuing each at the project's size, and keeping the overlay separate from the ledger measures it sits beside.
A building materials distributor's branch knows the contractors who walk through the door. It does not know the contractor who won the sixty-home scheme two miles away and is buying lumber from a competitor's branch. Building permit data knows. This guide sets out the overlay that matches project records to trade accounts and turns the difference into a prospect list.
Per branch:
Active projects in the branch's area, each matched to a trade account or marked unmatched, with the account's purchases since the project started
Three kinds of line:
| Line | Meaning | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Matched, buying | The contractor has an account and is buying | None, or a category check |
| Matched, not buying | The contractor has an account and has not bought since the project started | A call from the rep |
| Unmatched | No account for this contractor | A new account visit |
The report shows the confidence per line and never merges automatically.
Each project at a rate for its type and size: a share of construction value that typically goes to materials of the distributor's kind. The rate is the distributor's own judgment, written down, applied everywhere, and shown on the list.
One branch, this month, top of the list.
| Project | Contractor | Match | Account | Since start | Value at rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 60 homes, Northfield | Kestrel Homes Ltd | High | ACC-2210 | $0 in 9 weeks | $84,000 |
| School extension | Bright Build | Medium | ACC-1187 | $3,100 | $22,000 |
| Warehouse, Unit 4 | Ardent Construction | Unmatched | $41,000 |
Line one is a contractor with an account who has bought nothing since winning the scheme. Line three is a contractor the branch has never met. Both are worth more than most of the branch's active accounts, and neither would appear in any ledger-based report.
Overlay mixed into the ledger measures. When the feed lapses, category share and lapsed accounts should not change. Keep the overlay separate.
Auto-merging matches. Two firms called Bright Build in one region. List; confirm.
Stale project status. A project that completed last year stays on the list. Carry the status and the last-updated date from the feed.
Value at construction value. A $10m project is not $10m of materials from one distributor. Use the rate.
Mapped once, the project feed, the account master and the ledger produce the overlay per branch every month, beside the ledger measures and never inside them. Covirage builds this from the exports as they are. The construction page describes the setup, and the contractor share guide covers the ledger measures the overlay sits beside.
Building permit records from city and county permit offices, or commercial project databases such as Dodge Construction Network or ConstructConnect in the US and Glenigan or Barbour ABI in the UK. Whichever the distributor buys, the fields that matter are contractor, address, project type, value and start date.
Good on name plus address, weak on name alone. The report shows the match confidence and lists unmatched projects, and the branch confirms the ones it wants to pursue. A wrong match wastes a call; an unmatched project is a missed one.
Because the ledger measures, category share and lapsed accounts, are computed from the distributor's own data and hold whatever happens. The overlay depends on a purchased feed. If the subscription lapses, the overlay disappears and nothing else does.