Alberta is Canada’s largest construction market outside Ontario and BC, and it is growing. In 2025, Calgary issued 24,691 building permits with $9.1 billion in declared construction value, while Edmonton issued 16,222 permits with $5.0 billion declared. Combined, that is about 41,000 permits and $14.1 billion in declared project value issued in a single calendar year across two cities. (Source: SiteWire permit warehouse, as of July 2026.)
For contractors, trades, and material suppliers working in Alberta, permit data is the most granular and up-to-date map of construction activity available. The challenge is that Calgary and Edmonton each publish their data separately, and monitoring both manually is not practical.
Alberta’s two-city market
Alberta’s construction market is dominated by Calgary and Edmonton, but the two cities have meaningfully different character:
Calgary is the larger permit market by volume and value. The $9.1 billion in 2025 declared permit value reflects the city’s continued commercial and residential expansion, with significant activity in the southeast quadrant, the Beltline, and suburban communities in the north and west. Calgary’s permit mix includes substantial commercial and industrial development tied to the energy sector.
Edmonton is the provincial capital and institutional hub. Its $5.0 billion in 2025 declared permit value includes a higher proportion of government, healthcare, and educational projects than Calgary. Edmonton’s suburban residential market is significant, concentrated in growing communities to the south and west of the city.
Both cities publish permit data through open data portals. Neither publishes province-wide data, contractors working across Alberta need to monitor both independently or use a tool that aggregates them.
What Alberta’s permit data includes
Both Calgary and Edmonton permit records typically include:
- Civic address, the street address of permitted work
- Work type, New Construction, Addition, Alteration, Demolition
- Declared value, owner-declared construction value
- Contractor name, the permit holder on record (Calgary more consistently than Edmonton)
- Issue date, when the permit was formally issued
- Description, text description of the work scope
- Community/neighbourhood, the geographic subdivision within the city
How Alberta contractors use permit data
Tracking major projects as they clear permit stage. For high-value commercial and industrial work, the permit issuance date is a reliable signal that construction will begin within 60 to 90 days. Mechanical, electrical, and structural trades that monitor permit issuance can contact the GC before the sub list is finalized.
Monitoring developer activity across both cities. Developers who are active in Calgary may also be building in Edmonton. Province-level permit monitoring reveals cross-city patterns that city-by-city monitoring misses. A developer pulling multiple permits in Calgary’s southeast might have a parallel project in Edmonton’s southwest, visible only if you’re watching both feeds.
Benchmarking your permit-to-win rate. Alberta contractors who track which permitted projects they bid and win, against the full universe of permits in their segment, can benchmark their market share and adjust their business development strategy accordingly.
Identifying infrastructure-driven opportunity. Alberta’s provincial infrastructure investment drives significant permit activity that is separate from private development. Road, utility, and facility permits tied to government capital plans appear in municipal permit data and are often underserved by contractors who focus exclusively on private sector work.
Calgary’s permit market in detail
Calgary’s 24,691 2025 permits are distributed across a large geographic footprint. The city’s continued boundary expansion means new community residential permits are issued regularly in areas that did not exist five years ago. For residential contractors, framing, foundation, mechanical, following Calgary’s new community development approvals is a reliable source of project flow.
Calgary’s commercial and industrial permit volume is concentrated in specific zones: Currie Barracks and East Village for mixed-use urban infill, Stoney Industrial and Shepard for logistics and light industrial, and the Beltline and downtown core for commercial alteration and office conversion work.
Edmonton’s permit market in detail
Edmonton’s 16,222 2025 permits are concentrated in new suburban residential development in communities like Windermere, Glenridding, and Laurel in the southwest, and Crystallina Nera and McConachie in the northeast. Infill development in mature central neighbourhoods, Glenora, Crestwood, Westmount, is a smaller but high-value segment.
Edmonton’s institutional permit activity is worth separate attention. The University of Alberta, Edmonton Public Schools, AHS, and provincial government facilities generate a steady stream of large-value permits with longer timelines, and lower competition from contractors who only watch private sector work.
The pre-permit window in Alberta
Both Calgary and Edmonton publish development permit and subdivision applications separately from building permits. Development permit applications are typically filed before a building permit, usually 60 to 90 days early.
SiteWire tracks active development applications alongside issued permits in Calgary and Edmonton, surfacing projects while they are still in the planning phase. This is the window where relationships are built before any contractor has been formally engaged.
SiteWire’s Alberta coverage
SiteWire aggregates permit data from Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer, and Lethbridge, with more Alberta municipalities added regularly, into a single normalized feed. Filter by city, work type, declared value, or keyword, and receive daily alerts when new permits match your criteria.