Score = how interesting for laminate/panel supply: UAE, building type, construction 30–85% complete (fit-out window), tender/design stage, value. Projects on your wall are marked.
Routes in: projects where someone we know is already on site
Correlations found in this one export
- Saadiyat Lagoons PL2 (Aldar, 84% built, completion Jun 2027): BNC lists four main contractors — ACC, ASGC Abu Dhabi (Al Shafar General Contracting), Innovo Build and Trojan — and consultants KEO, Leo A Daly and Parsons. "SAGC" on your wall is most likely ASGC. Worth confirming with Saleh which plot ASGC holds.
- Ohana Development Company appears in BNC as a developer (co-owner with Modon of Elie Saab Waterfront, Al Reem Island), and the owner phone listed there is the same number you have for Saleh. So "go through Ohana" may mean going through the client side, not a consultant.
- Fibrex (your joinery) is in BNC as main contractor on Nobu Hotel & Residences (Aldar, Saadiyat, 37%) and District One West Package 1 (Meydan/Nakheel). Two Aldar projects where a partner of yours is already inside.
- Aldar owns 9 projects in this week's export alone (Yas, Saadiyat, Al Reem, Dubailand). One approved supplier status with Aldar opens all of them.
- Trojan and KEO each sit on 4–5 projects including Saadiyat. Meeting them once on Saadiyat gives a reason to call about the others.
Your wall today
What the Thursday report would open with. Generated by rules from BNC + your wall: overdue actions first, then projects of yours with no contact in 3 weeks, then routes in, then new high-score projects to qualify.
Organisations on 3+ projects in this export, plus every partner from your contacts sheet. Known = we already touch them (partner, or on a project we are on).
What the export actually is
The file is BNC's "updated in the last week" feed with no filter applied: 500 records across the Middle East and Africa, updated 26 Oct – 1 Nov 2026. It is not a list of Dubai projects, and it is not a full market list.
UAE records by sector
UAE urban by industry
UAE urban by stage
Completion % (UAE urban, 132 with a value)
67 rows have no completion figure.
Does it cover Dubai? Half? Industrial?
No, and it cannot from one export. BNC tracks several thousand live UAE projects; this file holds the ~230 that BNC staff touched in one week. Think of it as a change feed, not a directory. Coverage builds up as you import every week: after 8–10 weekly exports most active projects will have appeared at least once, because BNC revisits each live project every few weeks. Industrial is absent in the UAE rows of this file but present in the sector list, so it is a filter choice, not a gap in BNC.
How to export for our purpose. BNC caps an export at 500 rows, so filter before exporting. Suggested standing exports, each as its own file, imported in the same way:
- Weekly: Country = UAE · Sector = Urban Construction · Updated = last 7 days (this is roughly today's file minus the other countries).
- Base load, once: UAE · Urban Construction · Stage = Under Construction · Completion 20–90% · split by emirate or value band to stay under 500 rows per file.
- Pipeline, monthly: UAE · Stage = Design or Tender · Buildings/Hospitality/Retail/Healthcare/Education.
- Industrial, monthly: UAE · Sector = Industrial (warehouses, factories: panel demand, lower laminate demand).
What is useful in the columns, and what is missing
Useful
- Stable reference number per project: the key that lets the database grow and detect changes week to week.
- Owner, main contractor, consultant with phones and generic emails (contractor email on 77% of UAE urban rows, consultant 89%).
- Completion % on every UAE urban row: the single best signal for when fit-out buying starts.
- Stage, value, estimated completion, award date, parent/child structure.
- Key contact name on some rows (project manager, QS, architect).
Missing: this is Unilam's job to add
- Interior fit-out contractor and joinery: not an export column. This is exactly where laminates are specified, so it is the first field your visits should fill.
- Interior designer / ID consultant (the approval route): only the lead design consultant is listed.
- Our status, samples submitted, approvals, who we met, mock-ups.
- Emails are mostly info@ addresses. Real contacts come from your visits and your inbox.
- No link back to the BNC page: the export has the reference number only. Keep pasting the project URL into the wall until we find BNC's URL pattern.
How Pulse becomes this
The clean copy of Pulse now has a new module, projects.py, which did everything on this page: reads any BNC export, reads your wall, grows one database (projects.json), resolves "Aldar" to "Aldar Properties PJSC", scores projects, and produces the leads and overlaps. The rest is wiring it into the app and replacing the document screens.
- Done: clean copy. Previous owner's files removed, names and contacts scrubbed, app still compiles. Permit, census, vault and PRO-playbook modules are still present and will be deleted in step 3.
- Done: data layer.
projects.pywith BNC import, wall import, organisation resolution, relevance score, change history, leads, overlaps. - Next: screens. Replace Documents / Renewals / Team / Vault in
ui.htmlwith the five tabs you see here, inside Pulse's existing shell, globe and theme. "Import BNC file" button; the weekly report rewritten to the Leads list. Delete the irrelevant modules. - Zoho Mail. Pulse's IMAP path works with Zoho (imap.zoho.com, an app-specific password from Zoho's security settings; no IT involvement). Matching rules: sender domain → organisation, project name or alias in subject → project. Unmatched mail with attachments is queued for you to file with one click; nothing is filed silently.
- Excel export. Pulse becomes the master; the Thursday report and an Excel copy of the wall are generated from it for your manager.
- Later: Claude reading documents. Optional. See the note below.
About the Claude API key
Pulse's "Assistant" sends a PDF or scan to Anthropic's servers so Claude can read it (for example a tender invitation, to pull out the project name, consultant, deadline). That costs a few cents per document and needs an API key: an account at console.anthropic.com with a card attached. It is separate from your Claude subscription here. "Unilam-paid" only meant: if the company wants this, the company should hold the key and the bill, since company documents would be sent. For the first version it is not needed; the rules on sender domain and project name do most of the work without any outside service.
Questions for you
- Is "SAGC – Dar Al Insha'at" actually ASGC (Al Shafar General Contracting, Abu Dhabi)? BNC lists ASGC on Saadiyat Lagoons PL2.
- Which projects on the wall are Aldar's Haven vs "Verdes by Haven"? I matched Haven to Verdes by Haven – Dubailand; tell me if that is wrong.
- Can you set up the four BNC exports above? The base load is the one that makes the database useful on day one.
- Your Zoho mailbox: is it the Unilam work mailbox, and are you OK with Pulse reading it on your laptop only (nothing leaves the laptop in step 4)?
- Your laptop: can you install Python and run a scheduled task, or does IT lock that down? Try running
winget --versionin a terminal; if it answers, the installer will work.