A century ago, a young American entrepreneur rode his bicycle through the streets of Boston, jotting down notes on construction sites and then selling little paper bulletins with this information to subcontractors looking for work. It was the birth of a specialist business called ‘project leads service’ – today a US$500 million business globally.

In 1998, BCI Asia was the first to introduce this service to several Southeast Asian countries: Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines and Malaysia. In the following years additional countries were added to BCI Asia’s portfolio: Thailand, Hong Kong and Vietnam. In 2002, a sister company - BCI Australia Pty Ltd - was founded to cover the Australian market.

The BCI Group has emerged as the region’s leading construction media group with 14 offices and 250 staff, providing important data daily to thousands of companies involved in the building and construction industry.

In essence, BCI bridges the information gap between design consultants seeking to specify products for their projects and suppliers seeking to inform them about building products and new construction technologies. In doing so, BCI Asia conducts more than 250,000 face-to-face and phone interviews with architects, developers, engineers and contractors every year, reporting on approximately US$400 billion worth of projects.