If you are a sub-trade or specialty contractor looking for more commercial work, the most direct question you can ask is: who are the GCs pulling the most permits right now in my city? The answer is sitting in every city's open permit data — but pulling it, cleaning it, and ranking it takes meaningful effort. The GC Activity Leaderboard product exists to answer that question out of the box, updated weekly.
Here is how it works and why permit count — not project value — is the right metric for most sub-trades building their GC relationships.
What the leaderboard measures
The GC Activity Leaderboard ranks the top 100 general contractors in a given city by their commercial permit application count over a rolling 90-day window. For each GC, the file includes:
- Permit count (90-day): Raw volume of commercial permits applied for with this GC as the listed applicant or contractor.
- Aggregate estimated project value: Total estimated cost across all permits in the window.
- Average project size: Aggregate value divided by permit count — a rough indicator of whether this GC works small-volume or large-volume projects.
- Most common permit type: The work-class category that appears most frequently in this GC's recent permits — a useful proxy for the type of projects they bring to market.
- Geographic concentration: Whether their activity is concentrated in one quadrant or distributed across the city.
- Contact information: Business phone and address sourced from public business licence and Google Places data where available.
Why permit count beats project value for sub-trade relationships
The instinct most sub-trades have is to target the GC with the biggest projects. That instinct is understandable but often wrong, for several reasons.
Large-project GCs have pre-approved sub-trade lists. A GC doing a $40M build is typically drawing on a roster of sub-trades they have worked with multiple times. Getting onto that roster when you have no existing relationship requires a long runway — months of outreach, references, and smaller introductory work. You are not breaking in on a $40M project cold.
High-volume GCs award sub-trade work more frequently. A GC pulling 15 permits per month at an average of $350K each is making sub-trade award decisions continuously. There is almost always an open project where a new sub-trade can submit a quote without displacing an entrenched relationship. That is a far more accessible entry point.
Frequent work builds the relationship faster. The goal of targeting active GCs is not just winning one job — it is getting on their approved list by demonstrating competence on a smaller project first. High-permit-count GCs give you more at-bats per year to do exactly that.
Reading the leaderboard: what to look for
A few patterns in the leaderboard data are consistently valuable:
GCs with rising permit count but stable average project size
A GC whose permit count has grown 30%+ over the past 90 days compared to the prior 90 days, while average project size has stayed flat, is a GC that is scaling. They are taking on more work of the same type. That means they are likely under-resourced on their sub-trade bench and actively seeking new partners. This is the highest-priority profile to approach.
GCs with a dominant permit type that matches your trade
If a GC has pulled 18 commercial tenant improvement permits in the last 90 days and you are a flooring or painting contractor, the overlap is obvious. Target GCs whose dominant permit type creates demand for your specific trade, not GCs who are the largest by total value.
New entrants to the top 100
A GC that appeared in the top 100 this week but was not in the list 60 days ago is a GC that has recently ramped up activity. New-entrant GCs are often newer businesses or GCs expanding into a new city or project type — they have fewer established sub-trade relationships and are the most receptive to new introductions.
How to use the leaderboard in practice
The workflow a well-run sub-trade estimating team uses with this data:
- Receive the weekly leaderboard file on Monday morning.
- Filter to GCs whose average project size falls within your estimating capacity (e.g., $150K–$800K).
- Cross-reference against your CRM to identify any GCs you have already spoken to.
- Flag the top 5–10 GCs you have not yet contacted who match your trade type and project size.
- Assign one team member to make first contact with each — introducing your firm and asking to be added to their sub-trade bid list.
The contact information in the leaderboard file — business phone and address — is sourced from the public business licence registry and Google Places data, not from cold-scraped personal contacts. You are calling a business to introduce your business. That is a normal commercial interaction and exactly the kind of outreach that builds a sustainable pipeline.
The Calgary and Edmonton view right now
In the current 90-day window for Calgary, the top 10 GCs by permit count represent approximately 22% of all commercial permit volume in the city. For Edmonton, the top 10 represent about 19% — Edmonton's market is slightly more fragmented, meaning a broader outreach list is needed to cover the same proportion of available work.
Both markets have a meaningful tier of GCs ranked 11–40 by permit count who are highly active but rarely targeted by sub-trades focused on the headline names. That middle tier is where relationship-building is fastest and competition for sub-trade bids is lowest.
GC permit counts derived from City of Calgary Open Data (c2es-76ed) and City of Edmonton Open Data permit feeds. 90-day rolling windows. No individual business names are reproduced in this public post; names appear in subscriber-only XLSX files delivered through the Shovel Radar portal.