BuildData Now Covers Inspections, Licences, and Development Permits

BuildData started as a Canadian building permit API. It is now something broader: a unified platform for construction and development activity data across Canada. Over the past several weeks, we added four new dataset types, bringing total coverage to over 8 million records across 60+ cities. Here is what changed and why it matters.

Every dataset is accessible through the same endpoints, with the same normalized schema, and the same geographic coverage. The entity_type parameter selects the dataset. No new authentication, no new base URL, no schema to learn.

Building permits used to be the single signal available in structured form. They capture a moment well along the construction timeline: after a project has been designed, approved, and financed. With development permits and planning applications now in the database, that window moves earlier.

A large residential development in Calgary typically follows this sequence:

Each stage is now queryable. Because all records are normalized to a shared address format, records from different datasets can be joined by location. A planning application, a development permit, and the eventual building permits for the same site can be linked by normalized_address.

Every record in BuildData, regardless of dataset type, carries the same baseline fields: province, municipality, normalized address, latitude and longitude, event date, and a canonical category field specific to that entity type.

For permits, the canonical field is permit_type_canonical (new_construction, renovation, demolition, addition, and others). For development permits and planning applications, it is status_canonical (approved, pending, refused, cancelled, expired). For inspections, it is result_canonical (pass, fail, conditional). For business licences, it is category_canonical.

This means a query like "all refused development permits in Alberta in 2025" runs the same way as "all failed inspections in Calgary in 2025." The same parameters, the same response structure.

Market Brief is BuildData's weekly intelligence digest: subscribers choose a city and a type of work, and receive a weekly summary of matching activity. It now supports all five dataset types, selectable individually or in combination.

A contractor tracking commercial renovation work in Edmonton can now receive a combined digest covering new permits, active inspections, and recently approved development permits in the same weekly email. The data comes from three separate open data sources, normalized and deduplicated automatically.

Coverage varies by dataset type, reflecting what municipalities actually publish. Building permits have the broadest coverage at 60+ cities. Inspections are currently limited to three cities with machine-readable inspection records. Business licences cover 21 cities. Development permits and planning applications cover major cities in Alberta, Ontario, and British Columbia.

All records include a province field, making province-level aggregations straightforward without relying on city-to-province lookups on the client side.

Coverage expands as municipalities update their open data portals. The dataset is refreshed daily for most sources.