Fine-Tune New Building Technologies
Helping ensure successful market deployment of new products & systems
Our ability to provide comprehensive new technology assessments ensures that new products make a big (and positive) splash when they enter the residential market. Our expertise in residential construction and long-standing relationships with builders across the country allow us to conduct evaluations, both in our lab and in the field, where we perform product performance evaluation under real-world conditions by real product users, and provide analysis of predicted market viability. These assessments can provide an early indicator of potential problems before launching a new product.
With our analysis of product features – from usability to installation to code acceptance – you can have greater confidence in the market viability of your products.
Installation Analysis
Our experts analyze how a new technology installation compares with standard practices to characterize the ease of implementation. The analysis also investigates details included in installation instructions to ensure proper installation.
Field Evaluation
It's important to have a product perform well in computer models or in a laboratory setting – it's also important to know how it will perform in real homes, under real-world conditions. Our field evaluations of building products and systems across the country and in every geographic and climatic region can significantly enhance the way your company designs and markets your products.
Time & Motion Studies
We go on-site to compare the installation time for a new product or technology against the installation time required for a previous product alternative. This kind of research allows us to quantify the benefits of a new technology, identify opportunities to improve upon the installation process and instructions, and decrease the eventual learning curve for builders and contractors who implement the new product or practices.
Costs & Cost-Benefit Analysis
Our product assessment includes benchmarking both initial costs and operational costs to help address placement and pricing for the product in the marketplace. We can also run a cost-benefit analysis for a new technology that evaluates any cost premium relative to offered benefits – such as offsetting a higher initial cost with installation efficiencies. We help you identify and market the right mix of the affordability, energy efficiency, quality, durability, environmental performance, and safety elements of a product that will appeal to your specific target audiences.
Code Acceptance
We can tell you how new technologies align with residential building codes, or propose strategies for achieving code compliance for innovative solutions not covered prescriptively by the building code and for obtaining code approvals for proprietary systems and products. With extensive code experience and relationships with code developing bodies, we can walk you through the code approval process.