B&J architectural decisions worth surfacing in case-study narrative — eight, ranked

The case study body has room for 3–5 specific decisions that show craft. Below are the strongest candidates, in priority order.

1. Tanks as first-class objects. Every tank carries fuel type, capacity, ownership, inspection date, and reorder point. Reorder point is what drives automatic delivery. No generic CRM models tanks at all. [Verified — CRM project plan]. Full entry: B&J data model — first-class entities, including TANKS (the most quotable architecture decision).

2. Multi-site accounts with degree-day zones. A farm has a farmhouse, a barn, a shop, and a remote field tank. Each is its own location, with its own access notes and its own degree-day zone. The degree-day zone is what powers consumption modeling. [Verified]

3. Price contracts as first-class entities. Fixed / capped / market rate / budget billing — these are contract types, not memo fields. They live in the schema with effective and expiry dates. [Verified]

4. The marketing site, CRM, lubricants catalog, and customer portal share one design system, one component library, one API layer. This is the architectural payoff that makes the long-term build coherent. [Verified — tech-stack doc]

5. Manifold as a separate data product. The data layer powering embedded widgets (tax-stack, price components, regulatory effective windows, programs that may apply) is itself a Candid Creative product with its own brand and roadmap. The B&J site consumes it via API. This is unusual: most agencies hardcode data into pages. [Verified — Manifold Phase 3 brief]. See Manifold data platform — Candid Creative product powering embedded widgets on the B&J site.

6. AI-citation-readiness as a foundational layer, not an afterthought. schema.org + semantic HTML + llms.txt + regulatory citation discipline + dated source attribution — built in from the start. [Verified — pre-launch audit]

7. The "honest version" voice. The home-heating page acknowledges that "every fuel supplier in the industry has run a tank dry at some point." This is what the positioning posture sounds like in production copy. [Verified — audit calls this out explicitly as a craft signal]

8. No comparative copy. Across the entire site, B&J never says "unlike other suppliers." Confidence comes from specificity, not contrast. [Verified — positioning principle]. Codified rule: Rule (B&J): never use comparative copy on B&J surfaces — confidence from specificity, not contrast.