Camley runs business development for commercial and specialist trade contractors. We open conversations with developers, main contractors and facilities teams early, so you are on the list before anyone starts pricing.
Four-week pilot, $400. No management fee until it works.
Commercial and specialist trade contractors between 20 and 250 staff rarely describe themselves as having a new-business problem. The order book looks fine until a main contractor quietly redraws its enquiry list, a framework runs its last call-off, or a two-stage job you had effectively won is shelved before it clears pre-construction. The issue is not that you cannot win work. It is that nearly every route into work is opened by someone else, on their timetable.
Enquiries arrive from main contractor buyers and QS teams who settled the invitation list before you heard of the scheme. Frameworks are worse in one respect: once you are on a lot, you wait for the mini-competition rather than cause it. Nothing in that model lets you decide to be busier in, say, healthcare refurbishment next spring. You can only be available and hope the phone behaves.
Every unsolicited enquiry costs estimator days: take-off, subbie prices, prelims, programme. Constructing Excellence's bid cost survey put the all-in cost of bidding at 0.57% of project value across winning and losing bids. On an unmanaged enquiry flow you are funding three priced jobs for each one you convert, and you are doing it on work you did not target.
Two or three main contractors carrying most of your turnover is normal in this trade and dangerous in this market, because your cash sits inside their solvency. The Construction Leadership Council estimates £4bn to £6bn of retentions are held across the industry at any one time, with around £223m a year lost to insolvency. A replacement client takes months to cultivate. Retention takes longer to recover than that.
Construction has led every UK industry for insolvencies four years running, and specialised construction activities, the M&E, fit-out, roofing, facades and finishing firms, account for the clear majority of them. New-build commercial starts are thinner: 152 office contracts were awarded in the first five months of 2026 against 185 in the same period of 2025. What has not thinned is refurbishment. Lettings in new or comprehensively refurbished offices took 77% of space acquired in 2025, landlords are upgrading rather than developing, and Knight Frank's Spring 2026 cost guide still puts central London Cat B construction and M&E at roughly £75 to £140 per square foot. The work exists. It is being procured by asset managers, occupiers and pre-construction teams who are not necessarily holding your name.
Sources: Insolvency Service company insolvency statistics for England and Wales, as reported in construction trade press, August 2026; Construction Leadership Council retentions estimates; Constructing Excellence bid cost survey; office contract award data reported by BE News, 2026; JLL UK office market insights, 2025; Knight Frank Occupier Fit Out Cost Guide, Spring 2026; ONS construction statistics for Great Britain.
We build and run the whole outbound operation: domains, mailboxes, data, copy, sending and same-day reply handling. You keep estimating and commercial where they are.
We build a named list, not a contractor directory pull. Development and asset managers with schemes recently consented, heads of property and facilities directors with lease events and dilapidations liability landing in the next 18 months, pre-construction and supply chain managers at main contractors you have never worked for, and estates teams in the building types where you already have referenceable completions. Sourced from planning portals, Find a Tender award notices, Companies House and agent letting activity, then verified by hand.
Separate sending domains so nothing touches your main mailbox, authentication set up properly, inboxes warmed. The copy says one specific thing: the package you self-deliver, the building type you have done eleven of, the programme you held when the main contractor needed it held. Not "we are an M&E contractor covering the South East", which is what every other approach in their inbox says.
Typically four run in parallel: early pre-construction input before the contractor is appointed; the single-package capability pitch to main contractor buyers; the lease event and dilapidations angle to occupiers; and a framework lot angle where you are already appointed but not being called off. We measure which segment and which angle replies, not just open rates.
Replies are answered within working hours, not batched. Before anything reaches your diary we capture scope, value band, programme, procurement route and whether it is single-stage, two-stage or a call-off. Enquiries that are really a free price request get handled as such. Your estimators see qualified conversations, not inbox traffic.
We review by angle and by segment and cut the dead ones. In this sector a reply often means feasibility stage, so the useful measure after a pilot is the quality and stage of the pipeline created, not contracts signed. Suppression of current clients, live tender contacts and anyone your commercial team names is maintained throughout.
It changes who starts the conversation. Two groups are reachable by name and are not reachable by waiting: client-side buyers (development managers, heads of property, facilities directors) who still hold preference before the main contractor is appointed, and pre-construction teams at main contractors whose enquiry lists you are not on. Neither is behind a portal. Both answer email.
Prequalification is permission to be asked. PPN 03/24 pushed public buyers towards the Common Assessment Standard and the large main contractors filter on it, so without it you are excluded. With it you are merely eligible, alongside everyone else in your lot. It removes a reason to leave you out. It does not create a reason to bring you in.
Because the enquiries you turn down are not the ones you would have chosen. Targeting by building type, value band, procurement route and travel distance means what arrives is closer to the work you price well and self-deliver. If capacity is genuinely the constraint we narrow the campaign rather than widen it, and the right response is usually a higher value band, not more volume.
Not a signed subcontract, and we will not suggest otherwise. A pilot proves the mechanics: that the mail lands, that named buyers in your segment reply, and what they say when they do. In this trade a good reply frequently reads "nothing now, we are at feasibility on a scheme for next year". That is the asset. It is also exactly the conversation you cannot have by waiting for an invitation to tender.
No. A suppression list is built before anything sends and covers current clients, live tender contacts, main contractors you have work in progress with, anyone with retention outstanding to you, and any name your commercial director adds. You see every list and every sequence before it goes out, and you can veto any of it.
One client per niche per region, so if we are running a London M&E contractor we will not take another. On proof, we will be straight with you: Camley has no contractor case studies and will not invent one. The engine was built and run as the client acquisition channel for the founder's own consultancy before it was offered to anyone. The £300 pilot exists precisely so you can test it on your own list rather than take a reference on trust.
You sell on results, so it would be strange to ask you to buy on promises. The pilot exists so that your maximum exposure is a known number before anything begins.
The $400 covers hard costs only, the domains and mailboxes built in your name that stay with you whatever happens next. The management fee is the part at risk: miss the meeting target we agreed and you do not pay it. A meeting counts only when the other side actually turns up, and no-shows are ours to rebook rather than yours to absorb.
Book twenty minutes. I will bring a sample list of hiring companies in your specialism and the exact messages I would send them. If the research is not better than what you would do yourself, do not hire us.
Book a 20-minute call →Or simply reply to the email that brought you here.
