Find New Construction Projects From Building Permits

Overview

When a building permit is filed over a certain value, a construction project is about to begin — and the general contractor, developer, or owner behind it is about to make a wave of purchasing decisions. Whoever reaches them first, while the plans are still being finalized, has an outsized shot at the work.

This Hound watches permit boards across the regions you serve, filters for the projects that actually fit your trade and size, finds the right people on the project team, and opens the conversation — automatically, the morning each permit posts.

How to set it up

Four things to brief your Hound. This is the exact configuration behind this play.

A · Describe the opportunity

This is the brief every source is filtered against. You describe what you're looking for in plain language, add keywords to sharpen it, then set the structured criteria. Forest applies this same brief to every source below — permit portals and press alike.

Tell Forest what you're looking for:

"I'm looking for newly filed commercial building permits in my service area that signal a construction project about to start — new commercial, mixed-use, or large tenant-improvement work. I want them as early as possible, ideally before ground breaks, so I can reach the project team while pricing decisions are still open. Focus on projects big enough to need real preconstruction help. Skip small residential remodels, sheds, pools, and reroofs."

Keywords to watch for: new commercial construction · mixed-use · tenant improvement · ground-up · core and shell · groundbreaking · selected as general contractor · [your metro area]

Fields to extract: project_value · permit_type · jurisdiction · general_contractor · owner · filed_date · square_footage · project_name· description

Match criteria:

• ✓ Project value ≥ $2,000,000 (note: permit values are self-reported and often underreported — use as a directional floor, not a hard cutoff)

• ✓ Permit type is commercial or mixed-use

• ✓ Jurisdiction within your service territory

• ✗ Exclude renovations under 10,000 sq ft

B · Choose the sources to monitor

Permits are filed at the local jurisdiction level, and every city and county publishes them differently. There's no single national feed — so for a permits Hound, you point Forest at the specific public permit portals for the regions you serve, and it scrapes them continuously. Add one per jurisdiction; a Hound can watch as many as your plan allows.

Public permit portals (bring your own link) 🔵 (free — these are public government pages)

• Your city/county permit portal — Paste the public search URL for each jurisdiction you cover. Forest scrapes new filings directly.

• Examples of what these look like:

  • Los Angeles, CA — pcts.lacity.gov (LADBS online permits)

  • Austin, TX — abc.austintexas.gov (Austin Build + Connect)

  • Chicago, IL — data.cityofchicago.org (building permits dataset)

  • Miami-Dade, FL — permitting.miamidade.gov

  • Many jurisdictions run on shared platforms — Accela (*.accela.com), Tyler EnerGov, or OpenGov — so once you've added one, the same URL pattern often works for neighboring jurisdictions.

How to find your region's portal: search "[your city or county] building permit search" or "[your county] permit portal" — the official .gov result is almost always the right one. Look for a page that lists recently issued or recently applied permits (not just a "apply for a permit" form). Paste that URL into the Hound. If your county publishes an open-data portal (many use Socrata — data.[city].gov), that's often the cleanest source of all.

News & Press 🟡 (default source — always on, configured in your match criteria)

• Every Hound includes News & Press by default. You don't add it — you tell it what to look for. For a permits Hound, prompt it in your match criteria to isolate the construction signal — e.g. "flag groundbreakings, capital-project approvals in council minutes, and 'selected as GC' announcements; ignore residential and opinion pieces." This catches projects that get announced before a permit is even filed. (See setup note below.) — est. 8/wk

C · Define the ICP to reach

Which roles on the project team to find and reach, in priority order, with fallbacks.

1. Director of Preconstruction — Primary — owns early vendor selection — PRIMARY

2. Project Executive / Sr. PM — Owns delivery and subcontractor scope

3. VP of Construction / Owner's Rep — Fallback if no PM is reachable — FALLBACK

D · Email & LinkedIn sequence

The play the Hound runs for each match. Fields from the permit drop in as variables. Make sure to include what you offer in the messages!

Email · Day 0 Saw the permit for {{project_name}} in {{jurisdiction}} — congrats on breaking ground. We've done preconstruction on similar {{square_footage}} projects and can turn around budget pricing in a week. Worth a quick call before scopes are locked?

↓ Wait 2 days · no reply

LinkedIn · connection request · Day 2 Hi {{first_name}} — reaching out about the {{project_name}} project. Would love to connect.

↓ Wait 3 days · no reply

Email · Day 5 · follow-up Circling back on {{project_name}} — happy to send a few references from comparable jobs. Even if the timing's off, worth being on your bid list for the next one?

⏸ Any reply on either channel pauses the whole sequence — the conversation is yours.