license	cc-by-4.0
language	en fr
size_categories	1K<n<10K
tags	canada construction real-estate permits building-permits municipal rag llm-training
pretty_name	BuildData — Canadian Construction Records (Sample)
configs	config_name data_files default split path train builddata_sample.jsonl

BuildData — Canadian Construction Records (Sample)

Sample of 5,000 Canadian municipal construction records across 54 cities. Mix of building permits, business licences, development permits, planning applications, and inspections. Last 3 months of data from the full BuildData API.

Want the full dataset? 8.6M+ records across 60 cities, normalized + geocoded, daily refresh, query by city / address / value / type / date. Get an API key →

What's in here

Field	Type	Description
source_id	string	Originating system (city's open-data portal)
entity_type	string	permit, licence, development_permit, planning_application, inspection
record_id	string	Stable per-record identifier from the source
municipality	string	City name
event_date	string (ISO date)	Issue date for permits/licences, application date for planning
category	string	Permit type / licence type / planning stage
data	object	Full raw record from the source (JSON) — addresses, values, descriptions, GIS data

Composition (sample)

entity_type	rows
permit	2,500
licence	700
development_permit	700
planning_application	700
inspection	400

54 unique municipalities represented. The full dataset spans 60 cities including Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Québec City, Halifax, Saint John, plus 50 more.

Use cases

• RAG / agents — ground LLM responses in real Canadian construction activity
• Domain fine-tuning — train models on construction vocabulary, NOC codes, GIS schemas
• Real-estate intelligence — track building permits as a leading indicator of property changes
• Construction lead generation — discover contractors, developers, suppliers active in a market
• Insurance underwriting — property age, renovation history, code compliance signals
• Schema exploration before committing to API integration

Limitations of this sample

• Snapshot only — frozen 2026-02-25 to 2026-05-25. New permits issued daily; this sample will not reflect them.
• 5K rows — full dataset is 8.6M+. Sample is enough to test schema, prompts, prototypes; not enough for production analytics.
• No querying — can't filter by city, value range, address, or date. Use the API for that.
• No geocoded coordinates surfaced — the full API returns latitude/longitude; sample omits them to keep payload small (still inside data for some sources).

Production access

• Docs: https://builddata.ca/docs
• Pricing: https://builddata.ca/pricing — free tier 25 req/day, Pro $49/mo 1K req/day
• Quickstart:

  curl "https://api.builddata.ca/permit?municipality=Toronto&limit=10" \
    -H "x-api-key: YOUR_KEY"

• Export: https://api.builddata.ca/permit/export?format=csv&limit=1000 (no key, JSON/CSV/XLSX)

License & attribution

Data sourced from Canadian municipal open-data portals (Toronto CKAN, Vancouver Opendatasoft, Calgary Socrata, Edmonton Socrata, etc.). All source data is under open government / municipal licences. Sample redistribution is permitted under CC-BY-4.0.

Contact

• API and enterprise inquiries: nicolas@builddata.ca
• Bug reports: https://github.com/NicolasPrimeau/Nimbus (or via the contact link on builddata.ca)

Mirror locations

The same sample is published in three places — pick whichever you prefer:

• Hugging Face: https://huggingface.co/datasets/nimbusdata/builddata-canadian-construction-sample
• Kaggle: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/niexon/builddata-canadian-construction-sample
• GitHub: https://github.com/nimbusdata/builddata-sample