Where available, we use data provided by the manufacturer and validated by our team. This included Type II and Type II Environmental Product Declarations, self-declare Type II 'environmental labels and baseline pricing and Operational Life.

We supplement this data with additional information from our proprietary internal sources and a number of publically available online sources such as LCA databases, merchant databases and online services. Where data is Self-certificed or assumed, we always clearly display this against the data.

We benchmark how this cost, carbon and Operational Life data compares to similar product types in the same product category and with the new specific ]data points if provided and generalised data points if not. This allows us to provide more accurate results whilst allowing more granular and accurate comparisons.

If a manufacturer does not provide this data, we will apply an average data (e.g. cost) based on the product type with an average retail cost from at least six sources. This data is used in baseline comparisons against similar products only.  The cost and other data provided are never shown on the platform, and the manufacturer can always update this price to specific.

We are excited, and we wanted to push this live so we can give our manufacturers the tools and functionality to upload, promote and understand the full Lifecycle of the product against real-world benchmarks.  We also wanted to allow our specifiers to start to interact and get feedback on the feature.

However, this feature and its accuracy are reliant on manufacturers updating and providing certain data and information to increase accuracy, watching and learning, and adjusting as needed.  Without this additional data, we utilise baseline datasets, and the comparison is locked to Uniclass categorisation. As our manufacturers provide this data in the upcoming weeks, it will unlock it from this restriction and allow a more granular and dynamic baseline for all three items, allowing comparison based on more than "What the product is" to a data schema that considers performance-based criteria like lifecycle costs, embodied carbon, or return on investment.

This type of information is better suited for increasing accuracy and comparison based on  Cost, Carbon, and Operational Life. 
We are working with our manufacturers in a phased approach to introduce, onboard their data to, and unlock these benefits. While we do this, we have badged this feature as Beta, allowing us to watch, tweak, and roll it out as needed with minimum disruption.