How to get building products specified by architects

Most building products lose the job before anyone bids it.

The spec names three products. Yours is not one of them. The contractor who would happily install yours now has to file a substitution request to try.

The architect was not against you. They wrote down what they already knew.

In AIA's 2016 Architect's Journey to Specification survey, with 330 completed responses, 59 percent said they always or most of the time know what they will specify ahead of time. Your competition is not the other brand. It is the habit.

Where the decision gets written down

Most spec sections follow CSI's three part format: General, Products and Execution. Part 2 describes the quality of the products required. Part 3 covers preparation and how those products are used on the job. That is where installation lives.

So an architect is not only choosing a product. They are writing down how it goes in. If they cannot picture the install, they reach for one they can.

Getting in after the spec is written is uphill. Yale's substitution procedures section for its building projects asks for product data "including fabrication and installation procedures," a list of similar completed installations, cost information and a schedule comparison. If the architect does not decide in time, the specified product gets used.

That is a lot of paperwork to undo a habit. It is easier to be the habit.

Continuing education is the front door

Architects need hours. AIA members must earn 18 learning units a year, 12 of them in health, safety and welfare. AIA's state table lists 12 HSW hours a year for a North Carolina license renewal.

They also value it. In the same 2016 survey, 65 percent rated continuing education programs as highly useful. More than three fourths used manufacturer websites, continuing education and manufacturer reps together to keep up with products.

But a course is not a sales call. AIA's speaker agreement asks presenters to deliver programs "without endorsement, bias, marketing, or sales orientation," and product questions are handled before the program starts or after it formally concludes. AIA also has a separate track for product specific courses, with a required compliance course for the providers, authors and instructors who deliver them.

So teach the subject your product lives in. Moisture at the wall transition, fire at the penetration, sound through the slab. Then let the architect connect it to you after the course ends.

Video makes that kind of course land. A failure mode filmed in a mockup, a test running, a crew getting a detail right and wrong. It also means every rep teaches the same course the same way.

Installation video architects actually use

In the 2016 survey, more than half of respondents said installation instructions are important information at the review and approval stage. That is when a submittal lands on someone's desk and they decide whether to trust it.

Film a real install, start to finish. Not a render. When we filmed The Flame Detector, a home fire detector, one of the three videos from that test day was a setup walkthrough. Box to connected in three minutes. Three AA batteries, a magnetic bracket and an app. It answers the question nobody asks out loud, which is whether this will be a project.

Show the details that go wrong. The corner, the transition, the fastening pattern, the cure time. Those are the lines in Part 3, and the places a crew is most likely to guess.

Put the installer on camera. The contractor who uses your product every week is more believable than your rep, and contractors are worth filming in their own right. We filmed a contractor appreciation day for Prism Paint and Benjamin Moore as a short event documentary.

Show it finished, in a real building. A finished room shows what your product looks like when the job is done, not on a sample board. We document the Parade of Homes for the Home Builders Association of Winston-Salem, and one walkthrough of a finished house gave Quality Workx twelve short videos.

Show where it is made, if that helps you. AIA's 2026 specification report found 72 percent of architects prefer U.S. manufactured products. If you make it in North Carolina, let them see the plant. More on our manufacturing video production.

Where video does not help

Video gets attention and explains. It does not get you specified on its own.

Architects still need test reports, code evaluations, CAD and BIM details, warranty terms and spec text they can paste. If those are missing, a good video only shows them what they cannot use.

Think of video as the thing that gets your data opened. Plenty of building products end up inside a wall, so more on marketing a product nobody ever sees.