Repeat commission
A facade assessment method, bought again five years later
A digital quality-assessment method for building facades was developed for one owner, delivered, and then commissioned again by the same organisation in 2025 for a further building. Nothing markets a method as well as the client who already used it asking for it a second time. The second engagement is the strongest evidence I have that the first one actually worked in service, not just in the report.
same client, second commissionadoption evidence
Account growth
Three separate contracts with one client on recycled materials
Work on construction-waste recycling for road maintenance ran as three distinct signed engagements with the same client rather than one large project. Each was scoped from what the previous one found. That progression — a small first contract that earns the right to a larger second one — is how applied research groups actually grow an account.
three contractsscope earned, not bid
Productisation
The same method sold to four clients in ten weeks
Once a monitoring and assessment method had been proved on one asset, it was taken to four different clients inside ten weeks. The engineering was no longer the constraint; packaging and positioning were. Turning a bespoke piece of research into something that can be sold repeatedly without being rebuilt each time is a different skill from doing the research, and it is the one that decides whether a research platform pays for itself.
four clientsten weeks
Business development
A lecture in January, a signed contract in July
A technical lecture given to a large listed construction company in January 2022 became a signed research contract with that company six months later. I include it because it is the clearest example of how this work is actually won: not through a bid portal, but by being the person in the room who can explain what the method does and what it cannot do, and being believed.
lecture to contractsix months