Author: Juan Francisco Raful Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juanraful/ December 2022

Giving an edge to contractors in Toronto:

This analysis identifies business opportunities for private contractors by discovering construction projects that have submitted a building permit application to the city of Toronto (in a specific area of downtown Toronto). A machine learning model was trained to predict if project will submit a building addition or alteration application in the next 30 days, boosting contractors’ prospecting process and nurturing their sales pipelines with high-value leads. The methodology and a link to the GitHub repository are included.

Executive Summary

• 292 projects were found in a 3 KM radio from Bloor and Yonge, the main intersection in downtown Toronto where more than 500K people converge daily.
• 18 permit applications have been submitted in the last 30 days, and 42 in the past 90 days. The most recently submitted applications by each project are building additions and mechanical or plumbing modifications. Only three applications for New buildings or new houses have been submitted.
• The probability that a project submits a new Building addition application that can mean potential business for a contractor is driven by the time between the original permit application was submitted, and the number and nature of the previous applications. A contractor can expect that a construction project submits a new Building addition application either 76 days after submitting any previous application or after seven years. Scheduling follow-up communications to commercial proposals within these periods will likely increase conversion.

Analysis

Days since the previous permit application

Type of most recent permit application

Most permit applications are submitted 90 days after the initial application. However, a segment of construction projects consistently submits applications for: plumbing and mechanical modifications, this segments presents the most significant opportunities.

Building additions are the most common type of permits and are generally short-term projects, but that can be the entrance door to a commercial relationship with a developer or property administrator.

How can a contractor anticipate a new Building addition application?

Objective: Predict if a project (building) will submit another construction application in the next 30 days

The model expects to be highly useful for profiling. as project with a high probability is an attractive target for a commercial outreach.

A statistical analysis using optimal binning identified the following factors:

Days since the previous application

Number of previous applications

Number of previous building addition applications