Construction Products Reform: Why Product Data is Now Central to Building Safety

It’s almost nine years since the events at Grenfell — and I don’t think anyone in construction needs reminding of the human cost of getting building safety wrong.

In light of the government’s Construction Products Reform White Paper, we’ve moved into a new phase: a newly formed regulator, new bodies, and a clearer view of what “good” looks like in practice. The conversation is no longer abstract; it’s about what information exists, whether it’s accurate, who can access it, and who is accountable for it.

Everybody wants to do the right thing — the challenge is how

I don’t buy the idea that the industry is broadly dragging its feet. Most organisations I speak to want to embrace new legislation and standards. The challenge is doing it at scale without creating delay and friction.

Better product data shouldn’t be “another requirement” that slows everything down. Done properly, it should speed things up. The cost and delay show up when information isn’t readily available and people have to scramble to find it — fetching it, recreating it, chasing it.

The supply chain reality: the same standard of information must apply to everything

The hard part is the supply chain as it actually operates. Products come from across the world, through multiple hands, into complex projects. And yet the direction implied in the Construction Products Reform White Paper is simple to say and hard to deliver: the same level of detailed product information is going to be expected for everything.

That forces a change in operating model. It’s no longer enough to “have a product”; you need to understand its background, its source, and the information needed for safe use. For merchants and distributors, that’s particularly significant: if you’re supplying a product — or putting it into the market via your channel — you need to have the same level of product information on hand as if you were the manufacturer.

Product data is an asset

I’ll admit it: I’m a broken record on this. But it’s the only way to make sense of what’s happening:

Treat your product data as an asset to the business — with a value — because it will have a value in every transaction.

Product data stops being something that sits quietly in the background and becomes something that enables specification, procurement, installation, compliance, and eventually maintenance and remediation. If you have it, you move faster and with more confidence. If you don’t, you pay for it — in rework, delays, and the effort required to piece together what you should have had in the first place.

Truthfulness and quality aren’t just about “marketing” — they’re about trust

A strong theme in the Construction Products Reform White Paper is truthfulness and quality in product information — including marketing. This isn’t about “marketing vs technical”. Product information can’t just be persuasive. It has to be accurate, clear, and grounded in what the product actually is.

There were damning discoveries reported post-Grenfell about misleading information. The uncomfortable question is how we prevent that repeating. It’s one thing to say everyone has to provide and maintain better product information. It’s another thing to answer the operational question: who checks the data, and who makes sure it’s valid?

The implication is that this becomes a responsibility for the Building Safety Regulator — with consequences where there are breaches. But it’s still a new area, and it’s not yet fully described how validation manifests day-to-day. That’s why businesses shouldn’t treat this as a last-minute scramble.

Digital product information and structured data: this won’t be the last change

The Construction Products Reform White Paper talks explicitly about digital product information as a first step in the wider digitalisation of the built environment. If you’ve been watching other regulation, you’ll recognise the direction: better product data, made digitally available.

This is where Digital Product Passports come into the conversation. DPPs sit under European legislation (the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation). They matter — but they’re also part of a bigger pattern. My expectation is that there will be more coming down the track: construction products, packaging, sustainability and more, all pushing toward reliable product data that can be accessed digitally.

So don’t treat the plans laid out in the Construction Products Reform White Paper as an isolated change. Treat it as part of a wider shift toward regulated, digital product information — with increasing expectations around traceability, standardisation, and accessibility.

The thing that will slow us down: we don’t yet share a common language

One of the less glamorous, but most critical, challenges is standardisation — a shared language for product information. A simple example: we don’t have a common way of describing the thermal properties of a pane of glass in a window frame. If we can’t standardise that, scaling standardised product data across thousands of product categories is always going to be difficult.

That lack of common language creates delay — not just “new rules”. Without structure and shared definitions, interoperability is a wish, not a reality.

Is ERP enough? Usually not

A practical question I’m asked a lot is: can we just do this in ERP? In my view, it’s unlikely that your average ERP system will give you the flexibility, configurability, and reporting you’ll need to keep up — especially when it’s not one regulation, but many.

That’s why a product information management platform matters. It’s designed to manage product information as a governed asset: structured, maintained, controlled, and accessible in the formats and channels you need.

Final thought

For years, product information has been treated as something you deal with after the “real work” is done. The Construction Products Reform White Paper is another marker that those days are over.

Respond well and the upside is huge: less rework caused by missing information, faster decision-making, and a supply chain that can trust what it’s using.

And yes — I’ll keep saying it: product data is an asset. Treat it like one.