CanaData’s construction starts, for all of Canada, began 2008 in fairly good shape. Residential and engineering work were down from last year, but non-residential building activity was well ahead.

It has to be remembered that year-ago figures include revisions (i.e., projects discovered later to have started in the month) made during the course of the year, whereas the early months of this year will be preliminary and will be adjusted upward (or downward, if there are cancellations) as we proceed further into 2008.

In January 2008 versus January 2007, total Canada residential starts were -23% in square footage and -27% in dollars.

Total non-residential building (ICI) work was +34% in square footage and +21% in dollars. Two large projects particularly helped the commercial category within non-residential building in the latest month. There was a start on the Trump International Hotel and Condominium Tower in Toronto for $300 million and 800,000 square feet. And in Calgary, a two-million-square-foot project was launched, entitled Eight Avenue Place. (The Top 10 starts list appears in RCD’s Market Insights website channel.)

Total engineering construction starts were -59% in dollar terms.

The grand total (i.e., residential, plus ICI, plus engineering) was -9% in square footage and -19% in dollars.

Notes: CanaData’s construction starts are made up of new, addition and alteration work. There are dollar and square footage figures for new and addition work, but not for alterations.

The type of structure breakdowns are residential, non-residential building (also known as ICI, for industrial, commercial and institutional) and engineering. These are all recorded in both dollars and square feet, except for engineering (e.g., roads and highways, pipelines, electricity projects, etc.), which only makes sense in dollars.

CanaData, a statistics-gathering and forecasting product line of Reed Construction Data, calculates starts based on RCD’s extensive tracking of projects through all stages of construction.

Alex Carrick

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