News
LDC exits BCIS following four year transformation
11 May 2026
LDC, the leading private equity investor, has exited its investment in the Building Cost Information Service (BCIS), the UK’s leading independent construction data and cost benchmarking platform, to Bowmark Capital.
BCIS provides subscription-based building cost, valuation and carbon data to the built environment and insurance sectors. The platform is trusted by property and insurance professionals, helping organisations in the UK and overseas to make informed decisions on construction projects, valuations and risk assessment.
LDC backed BCIS’ management team in June 2022 in a carve-out from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) to support investment in the business’ technology and services. Building on BCIS’ unique heritage and data capabilities developed over many decades during its ownership by RICS, and with LDC’s support, BCIS has successfully pursued an ambitious growth strategy to establish itself as an independent platform and market-leading data and insights business.
In 2023, the business acquired price book provider Griffiths and Hutchins to expand its offering and in 2025, it launched BCIS Rebuild Plus, an AI-enabled tool that enables insurers to validate and address underinsurance across residential and commercial properties.
BCIS has also invested heavily in its ESG performance. It partnered with former LDC portfolio company NBS to help support the industry’s transition to net-zero buildings and launched a Cost and Carbon Materials Database to improve carbon estimating and benchmarking. In 2024, the business won the Net Zero Champion Gold Award at the Engineering Matters Awards in recognition of its commitment to decarbonising the built environment.
During the four-year partnership with LDC, BCIS achieved recurring revenue growth at over 25% per annum, grew headcount from 30 people to more than 80 and more than doubled EBITDA. The transaction was led by Dan Smith, Partner and Head of Yorkshire at LDC and Investment Manager Anthony West with support from Investment Director Will Scales.
The business’ partnership with LDC has been transformational. LDC backed an ambitious vision under independent ownership, investing in people and infrastructure, enabling us to build out our sales and product capabilities, and crucially, supporting us to unlock new revenue streams from our dataset and deliver ever increasing value back to our customers."
Richard continued: “We’re excited to begin the next chapter with Bowmark and continuing to deliver essential data and insights to our growing customer base.”
Dan Smith, Partner and Head of Yorkshire at LDC, added: “It has been a privilege to support BCIS in the last four years. Following the initial carve-out led by James Fiske and Richard MacLean, the business has significantly grown its senior team, broadened its product offering and delivered impressive growth to become the trusted standard in UK construction cost data. We wish Richard Linstead and his team all the best during their next phase of growth with Bowmark.”
Bowmark partner, Simon Kaufman, said: “BCIS occupies a unique position in the UK built environment, underpinned by its exceptional market reputation and proprietary benchmark dataset. Having followed the business for several years, we are delighted to be partnering with the management team to support the next phase of its growth.”
LDC and BCIS were advised by KPMG (Graham Pearce and Ben Taylor), Addleshaw Goddard (David Parker), BDO (Ben Coggin) and GCS (James Tetherton).
Bowmark was advised by Stephenson Harwood (Legal); BCG (Commercial); and Deloitte (Financial, Tax and Technology).