BCIS at 65: independent cost and carbon intelligence for a changing industry

BCIS at 65: independent cost and carbon intelligence for a changing industry

In 2026, built environment businesses are operating in a more data-intensive landscape than ever before. Cost intelligence is increasingly delivered through digital platforms, carbon assessments are embedded in mainstream project planning and structured cost data is applied across multiple sectors, from insurance and asset management to sustainability and investment decision-making.

As digital tools continue to develop, expectations are rising around the quality, consistency and transparency of the information used to support commercial decisions. From BIM-enabled workflows to improved data capture and analytics, the industry is placing greater emphasis on evidence, not assumption.

It is a fitting year for BCIS to mark its 65th anniversary.

For more than six decades, BCIS has supported consistent cost planning and benchmarking, long before digitalisation became a central industry priority.

Since 1961, BCIS has collected and analysed project cost information in elemental form, enabling surveyors and other built environment professionals to develop early budgets more consistently, test assumptions and benchmark costs using structured evidence.

Over time, this work has expanded into a broad portfolio of cost and price indices, location and adjustment factors, and economic forecasts. These tools continue to support decision-making across construction and the wider built environment.

The purpose of BCIS has remained consistent. Our role is to provide reliable, independent data that helps professionals to make and validate their decisions with greater confidence, particularly when market conditions are uncertain.

Pioneering in post-war Britain

BCIS was shaped by the work of James Nisbet, a leading quantity surveyor whose thinking helped establish elemental cost planning as a structured approach to cost control in the UK.

His approach supported a wider recognition within the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) that the profession needed cost information to be collected and shared in a consistent format. This led to the establishment of BCIS as a central resource for collecting and exchanging cost data in elemental form.

BCIS emerged at a time when Great Britain was still responding to the legacy of the Second World War. Housing and infrastructure required rebuilding, investment pressures were high and the construction industry faced strong demand for productivity and change.

Elemental cost planning offered a more systematic way to manage early-stage cost decisions. It supported the principle of designing to a cost rather than costing a completed design, improving consistency and strengthening the basis for benchmarking and cost advice.

“To understand where BCIS began, and the role it has played in supporting cost planning for more than six decades, is a reminder of how essential reliable data is to the industry. BCIS has become part of the core infrastructure that underpins effective decision-making in the built environment.”

~  Richard Linstead, CEO, BCIS

From floppy discs to a growing data mix

Since its inception, BCIS has evolved alongside changes in technology and the way industry information is stored and shared.

In the 1970s, the introduction of BCIS’s first computer, a Northstar Horizon with twin 150Kb floppy disc drives and 48K of RAM, enabled early subscribers using CP/M microcomputers to access BCIS data digitally for the first time.

This was later replaced by a MicroVAX, followed by newer hardware and the development of application programme interfaces in the early 2000s. These updates enabled subscribers’ own systems to query the BCIS database directly.

Today, BCIS maintains a database comprising more than 30,000 analysed projects, over 2,000 published index series and more than 380,000 published individual index figures.

This growth reflects decades of commitment from BCIS data teams, alongside continual investment in systems and in the consistent structure of cost information.

An anchor in a fast-changing landscape

The pace of change across the built environment has accelerated. New technologies are reshaping how projects are planned, delivered and evaluated as well as increasing the volume of cost and performance data available to decision-makers.

In construction, this is supporting stronger planning, cost control and benchmarking. In insurance, it is reinforcing the need for reliable evidence to inform reinstatement cost assessments, identify risk exposure and meet rising regulatory expectations.

In this context, BCIS continues to play an important role.

As the UK’s largest independent source of built environment cost data, BCIS provides a platform where professionals across construction, insurance and facilities management can access up-to-date cost intelligence and benchmarking information.

 “Data quality and visibility are fundamental to the future of both the built environment and insurance. Economic, regulatory and environmental pressures can be better managed when we collectively improve how we share and use data.

 “Technology has changed dramatically over the past six decades, but the value of reliable information has not. That is why BCIS’ mission remains the same: to drive cost and carbon confidence across the built environment.”

 ~ Richard Linstead, CEO, BCIS