Havas, part of the £20bn global communications giant Vivendi, is planning to link the portal – called Barbour Expert – to a pan-European information network through its ownership of magazines and other publications in Europe. Vivendi and Havas have already invested £40m in the internet this year, including the launch of the much-publicised consumer service Vizzavi.
Barbour Expert exploits the huge pool of data already published by Barbour Index, Building and its 11 sister titles in The Builder Group. Among the best known magazines are the award-winning commercial property magazine Property Week, RIBA Journal, World Architecture, Construction Manager, and Building's sister housing magazine Building Homes.
Barbour Expert will concentrate on news and hard information; it is not an attempt to jump on the e-commerce bandwagon, so you won't be able to tender for work on the site, or buy and sell materials – but you will be able to find out everything you need to know about the latest technological developments.
The portal can be found at www.barbourexpert.
com, or accessed via the websites of any of The Builder Group's magazines: Building's site, www.building.co.uk, includes the latest news headlines, a weekly poll, an opportunity to discuss the leading stories from the week's magazine, subscription offers, and details of forthcoming events. In future, the website will offer interactive features such as the chance to quiz industry leaders live.
Barbour Expert is split into six main areas, containing about 20 000 pages of information between them.
Building Product Expert The most detailed construction product specification tool on the internet gives basic information about 30 000 products from 10 000 manufacturers, with detailed technical and physical characteristics of 11 000 products, as well as case studies. For example, you can use Building Product Expert to find the 28 manufacturers of triangular windows, and the one manufacturer of glass drainpipes. A special "construction dictionary" matches specific products to complex criteria, rather than standard word search systems that bury relevant choices in a frustratingly long list of alternatives.
This service dovetails with Barbour Index's long-established Barbour Product Compendium – the specifiers' Bible – and Construction Expert, a database of technical documents, regulations, and performance data on specification for designers and engineers.
Construction Safety News Exploiting Barbour's unrivalled information on safety, the module provides expert opinion in this highly sensitive and litigious area. News about prosecutions, the latest research and a system for alerting users to regulatory change will all be posted. Barbour's own safety specialists will answer users' specific questions through an exchange of emails.
LiveNews Up-to-the-minute news service for the construction and property industries.
The Jobs Site This will be the most comprehensive in the industry. All jobs will be searchable by title, employer, salary and location. There are also details of recent salary surveys, advice on preparing a CV and interview techniques, as well as a link to an editorial archive providing job hunters with the chance to research potential new employers.
Editorial archive This includes a database of 11 000 articles from Building and the 11 other magazines in The Builder Group, including the leading client magazine Property Week, RIBA Journal, and World Architecture.
Research A range of reports tracks shifts in the market, allows users to comment on the findings and suggest new topics for investigation.
These six modules constitute just the first phase of Barbour Expert. The service is set to be expanded in 2001.
