Our Experience
Market Intelligence
This confidential Life Sciences owner was planning a large investment in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina — one of the most active life sciences clusters in the United States. As part of its decision-making process, the client needed a clear and grounded understanding of the competing projects likely to be active in the market at the same time, and the constraints these might create for their own program.
Specifically, the client required an assessment of the availability of trade contractors and skilled labour, alongside an analysis of the local and national economic forces that could impact the cost or availability of a supply chain capable of supporting the project. Our role was to deliver that market intelligence — quantitatively grounded, contextually relevant, and actionable.
The main challenge with market studies is making them genuinely relevant to the client's specific problems — not only identifying and quantifying issues, but providing a clear understanding of what they mean for the client's plans and how to address them. The risk with market intelligence work is producing a report that describes the market without actually answering the questions that matter.
A key challenge was therefore not to simply regurgitate publicly or commercially available data, but to dissect it, identify what was relevant for our client's context, and deliver an analysis that provided real answers to their questions and concerns.
A further challenge was gaining insights on information and intelligence that is not publicly available. Understanding the latest market developments requires establishing genuine working relationships with key suppliers and stakeholders in the local market — people who can provide the context that transforms data into meaningful intelligence.
We analysed extensive publicly available, commercial, and proprietary datasets to provide a quantitative assessment of project demand, the volume of work anticipated in the local market, and the trades and skills likely to be in highest demand during our client's project window. A combination of data-driven market analysis with our deep understanding of megaproject dynamics gave us the ability to model how supply and demand interact — and to identify where problems are most likely to emerge.
We also undertook an extensive soft market consultation with key members of the supply chain, gaining direct insight into issues of particular relevance to our client's requirements and timelines.
The output gave our client full visibility of the competitive landscape and a clear picture of how their project strategy may need to be shaped — both to mitigate the risks identified in the available supply chain, and to capitalise on the opportunities that our analysis also surfaced.