In an industry where productivity and performance are under constant scrutiny, benchmarking remains one of the most powerful, yet underutilised tools in our digital project delivery arsenal.

At its core, benchmarking is about learning from experience, using data from past projects or market norms to set expectations, assess performance, and make better decisions. But its real value goes much deeper, particularly when applied across both component-level and enterprise-level estimating.

From my experience working within the energy sector, I would argue that benchmarking is at its most powerful when used from the business case and assurance phases of a project, to save time and money on projects and better enabling for business case approvals. Historically, I’ve seen benchmarking downgraded in importance by the industry, but taking the time to do it properly can help shape contingency and enable more confident decision making when minimal detail exists.

Component-level benchmarking grounds estimates in reality

At the micro level, benchmarking allows us to understand how much a specific component should cost based on comparable scope, scale and context. This granular insight provides an evidence base that allows estimators to challenge assumptions, spot outliers, and improve confidence in early-stage budgets. It also supports standardisation, repeatability, and ultimately cost certainty.

Enterprise-level benchmarking: driving strategic insight

When scaled across portfolios and programmes, benchmarking becomes a strategic asset. It enables organisations to identify performance patterns, regional cost variances, productivity trends, and supply chain impacts. Comparing programme delivery metrics across nuclear new build or decommissioning projects can reveal hidden inefficiencies, inform commercial strategy and support investment decisions.

For instance, analysing cost per installed megawatt across three major nuclear construction sites, each using different design approaches and delivery models, may highlight significant variation in civils productivity or contractor performance. Without a structured benchmarking approach, these learnings risk being lost or misinterpreted.

Advice for practitioners: start early, start smart

If you're a business or practitioner looking to embed benchmarking into your approach, my key piece of advice is simple: start early.

  • Begin by analysing and cleansing your historical data. Even if imperfect, it often contains valuable insight.
  • Establish common structures (WBS/CBS), standard naming conventions and data taxonomies to make data extraction and analysis repeatable.
  • Define your benchmarking strategy during the discovery or mobilisation phase of the project, don’t treat it as a retrospective activity.
  • Include a benchmark plan within your integrated project plan. This should outline what metrics will be tracked, how they’ll be measured, and how the insights will feed back into estimating, risk, and commercial decision-making.
  • Leverage modern tools like Power BI, SQL, and Power Apps to build dynamic benchmarking dashboards that update over time.

This approach ensures benchmarking is not just a box-ticking exercise, but a real driver of improvement throughout the project lifecycle.

The power of data collection

A major barrier to effective benchmarking is the lack of consistent, structured data capture. But this is changing. With the rise of digital tools, we can now aggregate, cleanse, and analyse thousands of data points from across projects. Even legacy or historical data, when structured properly, can be a goldmine. Trends in labour norms, material productivity, or procurement cycles can all be unearthed and put to work.

According to McKinsey, capital projects that embed data-driven benchmarking can reduce costs by up to 20%, while the Construction Leadership Council highlights that productivity in construction has only increased by 1% per year, benchmarking provides a clear path to accelerate this.

Breaking down silos across a global business

For global organisations like Gleeds, operating across multiple sectors, such as energy, infrastructure, and real estate, creating a centralised benchmarking database is paramount. Too often, valuable data sits in isolated systems, teams, or regions. But in truth, many of the cost drivers, delivery challenges and productivity metrics are common across sectors.

By sharing cost, labour and performance data across business units, organisations can unlock richer insights, identify repeatable success factors, and apply lessons learned more broadly. For example, insights gained from nuclear civils work can inform major infrastructure programmes, while cost data from energy retrofit projects may prove valuable in commercial real estate developments.

Eliminating data silos increases efficiency and creates a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement. A centralised platform (built in tools like SQL or Azure, with front-end access via Power BI) ensures data is accessible, structured and usable across all parts of the business.

From insight to impact

Benchmarking is not just a reporting tool. It’s a mindset, a commitment to learning, improving, and making data-driven decisions. In an industry where margins are tight and pressures are high, those who harness their data, and compare wisely, are best positioned to deliver better outcomes, which is part of our benchmarking offering here at Gleeds. Let’s make benchmarking part of business as usual.