Technical Copywriting for Construction - what is involved and how to do it.

At the core of any communication strategy is good quality copy, but all too often written materials are long, wordy and ultimately not useful for their target audience.

I’ve been writing technical and approachable copy for decades, and these days many of my clients use my services to help them communicate clearly and succinctly.

We can write

Website Copy with an understanding of your users, to motivate conversions;
Blog Posts that drive traffic, both topical and evergreen;
Case Studies to demonstrate your credibility and educate specifiers;
Awards Applications that convert into awards;
Reportage on Technical Events, both live blogging and more formal, and
Technical Reports that are succinct and readable.

Scroll down for examples of all of these.

Alternatively, if you want to find out if I can help you, just get in touch now.

Why writing for the Web is Different

Much of the writing we do is for consumption via a mobile or other screened device, which presents its own challenges. Web readers are impatient, and whilst they may be keen to read longer pieces, those pieces need to be properly structured.

When writing for the web, make sure your pieces are:

Targeted to a niche audience;
Immediately useful to that audience;
Optimised for search;
Free from jargon and platitudes;
Conversational and Interactive;
Easily shared with prompts;
Brief and well structured with short sentences, short paragraphs, subheadings, bullet points, and
Focused on a call to action, making sure your reader knows what to do next.

If you’re looking for technical copywriting, support, editing or strategic advice on using good copy, get in touch. Our prices are competitive and tailored to your needs.

Examples of Su Butcher’s Copy Writing

Website Copywriting

I write a lot of copy for websites, but most clients don’t like to share. Talk to me about your requirements if you need other examples.

Here is the new SIGA Natural Slate Website where I wrote all of the copy and worked with the client on structure and strategy.
I wrote the copy for the AccuRoof website when SIG Design and Technology rebranded, alongside advising on strategy and redesigning the website structure, advising on the user interface and helping the company be assessed by the Code for Construction product Information.
I also devised and wrote the 8 Steps to a #PerfectRoof microsite for SIG Design and Technology and all their blog content for over ten years.

Blog Post Copywriting

Blogging is a type of copywriting which is very different from other forms of writing, such as academic articles (with heavily detailed explanations and full references), news articles (which are for one-way consumption, not interaction) and PR pieces. PR pieces are about the company and its projects. Blog posts are written about the audience, for the audience.

One of my clients’ websites attracts many thousands of unique visitors a month and approximately 75% of that traffic arrives via blog posts I have written in the last six years. Some of our blog posts have been associated with hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of material purchases.

Here are a few examples of very successful blog posts we have written in recent years.

Case Study Copywriting

Good case studies aren’t just about the project and how great you were working on it; they need to be about the audience and what they can learn from your experiences. In that way, the audience learns something useful and your credibility is enhanced while they do.

Here are some examples of case studies JPL has written which fit this mould:

Awards Application Copy Writing

Writing for awards applications can be quite tricky. Whilst you need to have awareness of the subject, you also need editing experience to ensure you keep to the word limits whilst putting over your case in the most effective way. As well as writing (and winning) awards for my own company, I have also written awards applications for British Land. Of the five awards applications for British Land we made between 2012 and 2014, four were shortlisted (80%) and two won their award (40%). The awards entered were all related to sustainable development topics and included

The London Planning Awards (RTPI and Mayor of London)
The Green Business Awards (supported by ENDS) and
The Building Awards (UBM).

Reportage on Technical Events

The Knowledge Transfer Network (part of Innovate UK) commissioned us to write Interim Projects Reviews on two of their collaborative R&D competitions:

Digitising the Construction Sector, a £6m funding competition to support the digitisation of the construction sector supply chain, and
Rethinking the Build Process, a £4m competition to encourage a radical rethink of the build process and supply chain relationships, leading to more consistent delivery of low-impact buildings.

This commission involved attending the review workshops and curating the presentations from a day into a short document with key information and commentary. The project reviews were produced to focus the mind of the participants, share the results of the work thus far and make it possible for people to get in touch if they wanted more information or to collaborate.

These competitions kickstarted some of construction’s most interesting recent innovations such as Integrated Project Insurance (Dudley Advance II), Bid4Free: the cloud-based platform to support subcontractor tendering, and the Digital Object Identifiers project led by the RIBA, BSi and Construction Products Association.

Live Blogging of Construction Events

I’ve been live blogging events for eight years, evolving a technique and tools which allow the maximum return on investment for organisers in terms of visibility, interaction and web traffic. You can find out more about this service here.

Technical Reports, Guides and Toolkits

A Fresh Way Forward for Product Data: State of the Nation
In 2018 I was commissioned by the UK BIM Alliance to run the Working Group on Product Data. This group of 12 people interviewed over 140 professionals and drew together a concise report on the current ‘state of the nation’ on product data. The whole process took just over six months from inception to publication.

As chair of the group I ran the consultation and writing process in a collaborative manner, co-ordinating the team and working with them to meet our various deadlines.

You can read the report here and read a summary of the outcomes here.

BIM for Housing Associations Toolkit

In 2018 I was approached by Jack Ostrofsky to help set up a community of housing associations, asset managers and their consultants to produce a Toolkit to enable housing assocations to implement BIM in the wake of the Grenfell Tragedy and the forthcoming Building Safety Act. The Toolkit was first produced in June 2021 and an updated version in the Summer of 2022. It is supported by the National Housing Federation and funded by six major housing associations. I became programme manager for the group (known as BIM4HAs) and run its communications, writing the majority of its content and supporting others to produce useful resources for housing associations.

You can find out more about the BIM4HAs Toolkit on the NHF website. A brochure launching the project was also produced – view it here.

Digitisation for construction product manufacturers – a plain language guide

Following on from the ‘State of the Nation’ report, the Institution of Engineering and Technology commissioned me to write a Plain Language Guide specifically aimed at Construction Product Manufacturers to help them digitise. As part of the process of writing the guide, the editorial team (myself, Rick Hartwig of the IET, Patricia Massey of Electrium and Paul Surin of IBM) collaborated on a series of articles (which I wrote) and held a series of open zoom calls to discuss them. The guide was published in 2021 and has been very well received by the construction community.

You can read the Plain Language Guide here. The link also leads to a video of the launch webinar (which I hosted for IET) and videos about the guide (in which I featured).
There is also a summary document and a key facts flyer available. The team has a profile on the IET’s EngX (blog) website here where all the articles and videos of the calls are available to view.

The Apollo Protocol: unifying digital twins across sectors

In the autumn of 2021 I was approached to assist in producing a white paper setting out the case for a cross sector communication process between providers of digital twins in the built environment and manufacturing. This evolved into The Apollo Protocol and the cross sector Apollo Forum for the Built Environment and Manufacturing. The white paper was developed over 18 months as the cross sector group learned from each other and formulated their proposal. The document was written as a collaborative exercise which I facilitated and was launched at the IET in September 2022.

The project is supported by Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), The University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), High-Value Manufacturing (HVM) Catapult, The Digital Twin Hub (supported by the Connected Places Catapult), techUK, The Alan Turing Institute, and now InnovateUK.

You can read the White Paper here.

Following the successful launch in 2022, Innovate UK funded the team as part of their Cyber Physical Infrastructure funding to run eight events. Four in person and four online events took place around the country and were devised by the team on which I serve. I am carrying out reportage on the events, am working with the stakeholder comms teams to promote them and shall be writing the report about this experimental project, which now has a home on the Digital Twin Hub here.

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