Digital Product Passports in Construction: What the Sector Knows, And What It Doesn’t

Almost nobody in UK construction can claim they did not see the Digital Product Passport coming. In research among 80 senior decision-makers at UK builders’ merchants and building materials manufacturers, 95% are familiar with DPP. Familiarity is not the problem.

Only 22% are completely confident they have the infrastructure, tools and processes to support it (asked of the 76 respondents who answered on DPP). For the Code for Construction Product Information the pattern repeats: 96% familiar, 29% ready.

That gap now gets plenty of coverage. What gets less attention is the detail inside it. The readiness problem does not fall evenly across the sector, what the law actually requires is narrower and further out than most people assume, and the fix is not a compliance project. Here is what the sector has understood, and the three things it mostly hasn’t.

The figures here come from The State of Product Data in UK Construction 2026. MRA Research conducted it for Pimberly, in the field during April and May 2026. Download the full report.

What construction knows about Digital Product Passports

It knows something is coming, and the expectation is already shaping how people talk about product data. The interviews are blunt about the mood.

“You’re going to have to do the digital product passport… and by what date? No quibbles. You’ve got to have it.”

Head of Specification & Product Data, manufacturer

One merchant’s expectation is also a reasonable read of how the requirement will probably arrive in practice. Not as a single deadline applied to everyone at once, but through the contracts that matter first.

“It’s probably going to start with government contracts asking for it, but then it’ll filter down to the housebuilders.”

Assistant Branch Manager/Buyer, merchant

And it knows this sits alongside everything else already in flight. 48% name regulatory and compliance requirements among the challenges having the greatest impact on their business, rising to 53% among manufacturers.

None of that is the blind spot. The awareness is real and the intent is real.

What it doesn’t know: who actually carries the work

The assumption in most conversations is that DPP is a manufacturer’s problem. Manufacturers make the product, so manufacturers hold the data.

Tim Bodill, VP of Digital Product Passports at Pimberly, reads it differently after discussions with both types of business. His view is that this creates work for merchants more than for manufacturers. Manufacturers generally know the information they need to provide in order to comply. Merchants have to find it, bear the brunt of the responsibility, and are more likely to be hurt by the consequences of non-compliance.

The research supports the read. On CCPI readiness, 36% of manufacturers are completely confident against 21% of merchants. Merchants also run product data across multiple systems far more often: 70% against 45% of manufacturers. If your compliance evidence sits across four systems and dozens of supplier spreadsheets, “are you ready” is not a question you can answer quickly.

For merchants, DPP is less a data-authoring problem than a data-collection and governance problem. That is a different piece of work with a different owner.

What it doesn’t know: what the law actually requires, and when

People state this part wrongly most often, in both directions. DPP is not currently a legal requirement in the UK. It reaches UK businesses through the revised EU Construction Products Regulation (2024/3110), which applies to manufacturers selling into the EU. For construction products, the delegated act that sets the detail should land in Q2 2027 on current indications, and manufacturers then get around 18 months from the point it enters into force. GS1 UK’s own research says the same thing: DPPs are not yet a legal requirement here.

That cuts both ways. It explains why readiness is low, and it removes the false urgency that makes people stop listening. It also means anyone selling into Europe has a real date to work back from, and the merchants and distributors supplying those manufacturers will feel it earlier than the headline timeline suggests, because the data requests arrive well before the deadline does.

The requirement is also still moving, and that is a genuine reason readiness has stalled rather than an excuse. As Bodill puts it, implementation is key to a regulation’s success and speed of adoption, and with ESPR, EUDR and BSR it has been somewhat chaotic, leaving too many excuses open for organisations to deprioritise this until they know more. Over-engineering the requirements, which he argues is happening now, will deter many and push the work further down the list.

People on the ground describe the same fog:

“It’s us being future proofed enough to know this regulation is coming… I’ve got that across seven or eight different incoming regulations, and they all have a slightly different requirement.”

Product Compliance & Data Manager, manufacturer

The practical conclusion is not to wait for the deadline. Seven or eight slightly different requirements against the same products is a data structure problem, not a compliance workload problem, and a business that treats it that way is ready for whichever version lands.

What it doesn’t know: readiness is a data capability, not a compliance project

The third gap is the one that costs money now rather than later. 41% already name meeting regulatory data requirements among their biggest product data challenges, and 31% have hit compliance or regulatory risks as a direct result of poor product data. That is not a future exposure. It has already happened to roughly a third of the sector.

Run compliance as its own workstream and you build something that satisfies one regulation on one date. Hold certificates, BS and IP ratings, EPDs, datasheets and provenance against each product alongside everything else, and compliance becomes an output you can generate in whatever format the regulation or the customer asks for. Bodill makes the structural point in the report:

“Compliance is about gathering product data, enriching it and then outputting it in a compliant format. These are the key functions of a PIM system and, managed correctly, will provide the required compliance capability, regardless of what that is.”

That same underlying work also carries a commercial return, well before any regulator asks. The research puts the cost of poor product data at 26 hours a week and a third of businesses losing sales, which we covered in the real cost of poor construction product data.

Amanda Long, CEO of Construction Product Information Ltd, frames what the sector now faces:

“The regulatory landscape and expectations of customers are changing. Manufacturers and other economic operators will be increasingly required to provide clear, accurate, up-to-date, accessible, and unambiguous product information and marketing. It is a crucial building block of the overall Government reform programme and supports delivery of the key objectives for the industry in relation to safety, growth and innovation and accountability.”

One correction worth making

95% of respondents see compliance readiness as an emerging differentiator. That is the one finding in this area worth arguing with.

Compliance is table stakes. Being DPP-ready keeps you in the market, qualifies you for the contracts that will start asking, and protects you from the risk a third of the sector has already met. It does not win you a customer, because every business you compete with will have to clear the same bar. Steve Collinge reaches the same conclusion in episode three of our podcast, where he also describes what a working product passport looks like. The wider evidence says most of the sector is still short of it: GS1 UK and Barbour ABI’s 2026 research found that of construction professionals aware of Digital Product Passports, 35% call themselves completely or quite ready, and just 7% completely ready.

The advantage sits in what a business does beyond the minimum, using the same underlying product data. That is also why the sector’s own investment ranking reads correctly, with DPP at 60% and CCPI at 44% sitting below e-commerce (80%) and product information management (73%). Get the product data right for commercial reasons and compliance largely comes with it. Build for compliance alone and you have spent the money without moving the business.

Where to start

Pick one product in your range and try to assemble its complete compliance evidence, current, in one place, this afternoon. How long that takes, and how many people you have to ask, is your readiness score. The 22% can do it. Most cannot.