Preconstruction Data, and What Makes a Record Worth Selling From
Preconstruction data is information about a project between the moment it becomes real and the moment the work is awarded. That window is where trade packages are bought, which is why the data is valuable and why so much of what is sold as preconstruction data is useless: it names a building, not a buyer.
The same four steps, whether the buyer is a builder, a designer, an owner or a company you want to acquire.
What counts as preconstruction
The industry uses the word loosely. In practice a project passes through several public moments before anyone breaks ground, and each one carries different information:
Preconstruction is steps one to five. By step six most of the money has been committed.
What a usable record contains
A row that names an address and a dollar figure is a statistic. A row you can sell from carries four things, and missing any one of them breaks the chain:
Each step discards rows that cannot be resolved. What survives is a conversation rather than a statistic.
Where Builtie's data comes from
- Municipal permit and planning records. The public trail above, read continuously rather than occasionally, across ten metros in the United States and Canada.
- Corporate and property records. Used to resolve applicants, agents and single-purpose numbered companies back to the operating builder or developer.
- Public professional and company sources. Used to identify the people at those companies by role, and to corroborate a way of reaching them.
- What builders and developers publish themselves. Public posts about projects, which are a timing signal and a personalization hook rather than a source of contact details.
- Field checks. On the projects that matter, someone confirms what stage a site is actually at, because that is the field no record publishes.
The scale of it
Bar length is relative within this chart. Counted on September 4, 2026.
The full breakdown by city, including how completely each municipality names the company on its own records, is on the coverage page.
Stage is the field almost nobody has
A permit tells you a project was approved. It does not tell you how far along the build is, and that answer changes every week. Without it you cannot tell an open package from one awarded three months ago, which is the single most expensive mistake in construction sales.
The five build stages Builtie infers, and what is being bought at each. Click a stage.
What the data refuses to store
The failure mode in this category is not missing rows, it is confident wrong ones. A plausible email for the wrong person is worse than an empty field, because nothing downstream questions it and a real prospect is quietly written off. So four rules decide what gets stored:
- A company match needs more than a similar name. Construction company names repeat endlessly; a match has to share a distinctive part of the name, not a generic industry word.
- A person is matched on their declared employer, not on profile headline text, which is marketing copy and the largest single source of wrong contacts.
- A surname is not an identification. Without the company as an ordered phrase and evidence of the right country, the match is refused.
- An email attaches only to a corroborated name. One address on a page does not belong to the one name on that page.
The full method, including why a failed lookup must never be recorded as a verdict, is on how contact data is verified.
Preconstruction data is not a bid feed
A bid feed lists packages that are already out for tender, which means the buyer has already chosen whom to invite and you are competing with everyone reading the same notice. Preconstruction data covers the months before that, when the decision about whom to involve is still being made. Both are legitimate; only one of them can change who gets asked.
Builtie plans start at $550 per month per seat for 50 matched projects a month, and $880 for 200. Every plan includes done-for-you LinkedIn and email outreach, and there is a 7-day free trial with 10 projects.
Frequently asked questions
What is preconstruction data?
Information about a construction project between the point it becomes public and the point the work is awarded: rezoning and planning applications, site plan approvals, demolition permits and building permits. It is the window in which trade packages are actually bought.
What makes a preconstruction record usable for sales?
Four things together: the project and its scope, the current build stage, the company resolved past agents and numbered entities, and a person at that company identified by role with a verified way to reach them. A record missing any one of them cannot start a conversation.
Where does Builtie's preconstruction data come from?
Municipal permit and planning records across ten metros, corporate and property records used to resolve who is behind a project, public professional sources used to identify people by role, what builders publish about their own projects, and field checks on the projects that matter.
How much data is there?
1,024,996 permits issued since January 2024 across the ten covered metros, counted on September 4, 2026, with 225,161 permits of Toronto history and 113,927 of Hamilton behind them, 70,167 companies tracked and 19,036 carrying identified decision makers.
Is preconstruction data the same as a bid feed?
No. A bid feed lists packages already out for tender, where the invitation list is set and the competition is everyone reading the same notice. Preconstruction data covers the months before that, while the buyer is still deciding who to involve.