When the average web surfer needs to consult the Internet, a few big names come to mind ”” Google, Amazon, Bing ”” but when construction businesses think about search technology, one name comes to mind: The Blue Book Building & Construction Network.
The 102-year-old Blue Book ”” provided by the Jefferson Valley-based Contractors Register Inc. ”” once a hard-copy directory, is keeping pace with its younger, Silicon Valley-based counterparts with innovative tools grounded in its founding concept of connecting construction businesses.
This year, Blue Book added two search engines, BidScope, to which contractors submit their best price for a database of pending projects, and BPM Select for companies specializing in certain materials like flue liner masonry, for use by its national network of users.
Blue Book”™s website, thebluebook.com, has 400,000 unique visitors per month, running the gamut in the construction industry: architects, engineers, contractors, property managers, manufacturers and government agencies looking for project bidders.
The database”™s technology evolution means taking Blue Book”™s growing, century-old database directory and applying that to search engine tools that are quick, cross-referencing, easy-to-use and current.
Mark Griswold, Contractors Register Inc.”™s vice president, said the company”™s newest search engine technology is “based on how people have been trained to search.”
“You”™re not just looking for a painting contractor, you”™re looking for a painting contractor who maybe has the qualifications to paint above 30 stories,” Griswold said.
Blue Book has designed its products to be similar to Amazon or Google in that the tool can learn to predict what the user is looking for by using algorithms and applying them to the company portfolios in Blue Book”™s database.
“We actually not only index names, addresses and phone numbers, we index the actual projects these contractors and suppliers work on so it allows them to create the portfolio or to represent their body of work,” Griswold said.
Once entered in the database, company portfolios become keyword searchable in Blue Book”™s tools.
Since the launch of the new search engine technology and improvement in the interface, Blue Book”™s mobile adoption, which was co-developed with the White Plains-based marketing and consulting firm Berlin Productions, has increased 30 percent.
Veteran employees like Griswold, who has worked at Blue Book for 28 years, have witnessed the transition of the company”™s product from an iconic physical directory to a variety of digital-only platforms with pride.
“Our story is really a pretty awesome one when you think about a 102-year-old brick and mortar gone Internet startup,” Griswold said.
Joseph O”™Malley and his nephew Walter F. O”™Malley ”” the former once the president of The Society of the Allied Buildings Trades Inc., the latter an owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers ”” joined forces in 1913 to create a registry of free construction listings with advertising dollars as the only revenue source. That has been the business model for the company for most of its history.
To some extent, it still is. The company driver still uses an advertising and exposure model, Griswold said, but now the directory data is compiled in online databases working together to guess the needs of the user.
The evolution of the company has not changed the mission of the company, which Griswold said is “to help the industry find, qualify and connect with each other.”
