In a normal market, a price book published in January is still roughly accurate in December. Construction material prices in the UK haven’t been in a normal market for several years.
Since 2021, timber has swung up and down by 30–40%. Steel reinforcement hit record highs and then corrected. Insulation saw shortages that pushed prices up 25% in some regions, then came back down as supply normalised. Plasterboard, copper pipe, and imported products have all experienced similar volatility.
The pattern hasn’t settled. Price instability is now the baseline — and it has serious implications for anyone pricing construction work.
The problem with price books
A printed price book is, by definition, out of date. It captures prices at a single point in time — typically six to twelve months before publication — and treats them as static.
The more frequently updated version is a spreadsheet individual contractors maintain themselves, checking supplier websites or calling merchants periodically. This is better than a printed book, but it’s labour-intensive and still typically updated monthly at best.
Even monthly updating creates a vulnerability. If insulation prices spike in week two and you’re pricing a job in week three, your spreadsheet is already wrong.
What “live prices” actually means
When PricingPro describes its pricing database as live, it means something specific: prices are pulled from actual merchant feeds and websites multiple times per day — not weekly or monthly.
The process works like this: merchant pricing — from direct API feeds where merchants provide them, and from automated data collection where they don’t — is processed, verified, and normalised into a consistent format. A Kingspan K112 100mm slab at Jewson is the same product as the same insulation at SIG or Buildbase, even if the product codes differ.
When you generate an estimate, the prices used are the prices available at that moment. Not yesterday’s prices. Not last week’s. The actual current price from your region.
Regional differences are significant
Pricing a job in London versus pricing the same job in Yorkshire isn’t just about different wage rates. Material prices vary by region too — sometimes significantly.
London and the South East consistently run 10–25% higher on key materials: higher delivery costs, a different local merchant market, and different supply chain dynamics all contribute.
A price book published nationally can’t account for this. A live pricing database that includes regional merchants can — and does. PricingPro applies regional pricing based on where the job is located. A bathroom refurb in Liverpool uses North West merchant prices; the same job in Bristol uses South West prices. The difference in materials cost can be several hundred pounds on a mid-size project.
The impact on your margin
Here’s the practical implication.
If you’re using prices from three months ago and materials have moved 5% upward in that time, your estimates are 5% short on materials before you’ve even accounted for scope gaps or labour estimation errors.
On a £15,000 job with £8,000 in materials, that’s £400 left on the table. Multiply that across your annual workload and the number becomes significant.
The reverse is also true: if prices have dropped and you’re still estimating at old rates, your quotes may be uncompetitively high — and you’re losing jobs you could have won.
Live pricing means your estimates reflect the actual market at the time of quotation — neither artificially high nor artificially low.
What to look for in a pricing system
If you’re evaluating tools or approaches, these are the questions that matter:
How often are prices updated? “Regularly” isn’t an answer. Daily is the minimum; multiple times per day is better.
How many suppliers are covered? A tool covering only three national merchants will miss regional pricing variation. Look for 50+ suppliers as a baseline.
Are regional differences handled? A national average price is less useful than the actual price from the merchant your region uses.
How are products matched? Construction materials have complex product hierarchies — sizes, grades, standards, manufacturer variants. A good pricing system normalises these so you’re always comparing like for like.
PricingPro covers 100+ UK suppliers, updates multiple times daily, and handles regional pricing automatically. The 60,000+ products in the database are matched across supplier product codes so the right price is applied to the right material every time.