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Brittany Harris, CEO and Co-Founder of efficiency platform Qflow, says there is a data quality crisis that is threatening to unravel the Golden Thread.

From safety risks to missed sustainability targets and financial inefficiencies, a Qflow survey has found the sector is unnecessarily haemorrhaging resources due to bad information management. By reviewing more than six years of data from more than one million documented deliveries and waste removals, it found that a shocking 91% of construction-related documentation continually fails to meet basic quality standards.

Particularly, this problem has a profound negative effect on achieving increasingly strict sustainability goals. The report found that only 34% of material records are accurate enough to support embodied carbon calculations, leaving most emissions reporting across the sector incomplete or unreliable.

It comes as little surprise when the data analysed found 95% of product delivery records contain significant data issues, ranging from missing weights and invalid locations to inconsistent supplier IDs.

It is a concerning figure when the ‘Golden Thread’ specifically requires precise, verified data to achieve net-zero carbon targets. These deficiencies not only obscure carbon performance, but are a huge non-compliance risk.

Safety at risk

It is this mention of the Golden Thread that shows poor data has real-world consequences. One of the critical findings of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry was the lack of vital information about the materials used in the refurbishment of the tower. The inquiry found that the absence of this information significantly hampered the effectiveness of emergency strategies on the night of the fire. Incident commanders were not fully aware of the building’s composition, making it difficult to assess the fire’s spread and direct firefighting efforts efficiently.

It’s why the Building Safety Regulator is requesting information data on materials to ensure that they comply with the requirements within Approved Document B – Vol 1. Contractors need to provide accurate, complete data to successfully pass Gateway 3 of the Building Safety Act.

The research also showed 80% of contractors said they don’t have a structured way of tackling delivery data. This is problematic as the current average time lag between physical deliveries or disposals and digital record availability routinely exceeds four weeks. During that time, project teams operate without verified figures, risking procurement misalignment, safety non-compliance and financial misreporting.

Given that materials account for more than 40% of total capital expenditure on a typical construction project and poor materials management alone contributes to 5-11% budget wastage, the financial inefficiency tied to these data issues is substantial.

Improving data quality is a fundamental requirement. We’re seeing project after project burdened by bad data that undermines compliance, inflates costs and introduces unacceptable levels of risk. It is no longer sufficient for construction firms to collect data passively; we must now move to a system of ‘curate, verify and operationalise’ data to meet the regulatory and societal demands of the next decade.

Qflow conducted research between March 2018 and October 2024. It draws on real-world activity from 445 construction projects, including both new builds and refurbishments, across England, Wales, Scotland and Australia. Download the State of Data Quality in Construction report: b.link/Qflow_report

Key findings

91% of product and waste documentation needs to have data enriched in some way in order to make the data valuable for onward analysis
78% of documented delivery movements tracked had enough data to calculate construction stage transportation carbon emissions (Module A4 of a whole life carbon assessment)
63% of all waste removal documents could be used to contribute towards calculations of carbon emissions during all construction processes up to completion (Module A5 of a whole life carbon assessment)
34% of all construction materials could be used for effectively calculating product-stage carbon emissions (Modules A1-A3 of a whole life carbon assessment)

Image credit | Noun Project