imperfectperson-max/build_material_guide

The Building Materials Price Intelligence Platform is a comprehensive full-stack system that addresses the critical challenge of volatile building material prices in South Africa's construction industry. # 🏗️ Building Materials Price Intelligence Platform (Locked for Honours, ml research and experimentation is primed for this System) > A Machine Learning-Driven Web and Mobile System for Price Forecasting and Supplier Comparison **Informatics 3 Project** | Academy of Computer Science & Software Engineering **Duration:** 13 Weeks (March 9 - June 9, 2026) **Team Size:** 4 Members --- ## 📋 Overview The **Building Materials Price Intelligence Platform** is a comprehensive full-stack system that addresses the critical challenge of volatile building material prices in South Africa's construction industry. By combining data engineering, machine learning, and modern web/mobile development, this platform provides contractors and developers with actionable pricing intelligence and predictive analytics. ## 🎯 Problem Statement The construction industry in South Africa faces significant challenges due to volatile building material prices: - **Market Volatility**: According to Statistics South Africa, construction material prices rose by **6.5% year-on-year in 2024**, following 6.6% growth in 2023 - **Manual Processes**: Contractors rely on manual price comparison across suppliers - **No Structured Data**: Absence of centralized, historical pricing datasets - **Reactive Decisions**: Purchasing decisions are made without predictive intelligence - **Limited Tools**: No anomaly detection capabilities for pricing irregularities **Key Volatile Materials**: Steel, cement, sand, copper, timber, PVC, bitumen, and masonry blocks The platform aims to transform this reactive approach into a data-driven, predictive procurement strategy. ## ✨ Key Features ### 1. 📊 Data Acquisition Layer - Automated web scraping of South African supplier catalogues - PDF price list extraction using OCR - Scheduled data collection for real-time market intelligence - Data validation and cleaning pipelines - Comprehensive tracking: material name, supplier, region, price, date, and bulk pricing ### …