June 15, 2026
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10 Mins
In the third quarter of 2025 alone, Canada’s construction sector contributed $170 billion to GDP, according to the Canadian Construction Association. Also, construction investment reached $24.5 billion in November 2025, according to Statistics Canada. That growth sits alongside a persistent, industry-wide challenge. Cost overruns consistently burden taxpayers, project owners, and contractors with hundreds of millions of dollars in additional expenses every year. Governments and public infrastructure owners across the country are responding by shifting Building Information Modeling from a competitive advantage to a core part of construction risk management.
The government’s analysis points to the same underlying shift. The National Research Council of Canada’s 2025 BIM Maturity at Scale Roadmap identifies fragmented workflows and uneven digital adoption as major contributors to inefficiency across Canada's construction industry.
Construction costs consistently increased through late 2025 and into 2026. Although the pace of rise has moderated compared with the sharper jumps seen earlier in the decade. According to Statistics Canada’s Building Construction Price Index, the most recent data reveals that residential construction costs rose 2.8% year over year during the first quarter of 2026. Non-residential construction costs increased 3.6% over the same period. On a $2 million non-residential project, that single year of input cost inflation alone stands at $72,000 in pressure before any design error or site class is factored in.
Labor shortages consistently push up wages across skilled trades, and tariff-related pressure on aluminum, steel, and other metal inputs has been repeatedly documented in Statistics Canada’s quarterly releases through 2025 and into 2026. Figures from the Q1 2026 release show increases in plumbing costs by 1.5% and in structural steel framing by 1.3% each quarter at the residential level, with metal fabrication posting the highest increase at 2.1%.
Sources: Statistics Canada Building Construction Price Index (BCPI); Blaze Estimating Canada Construction Cost Database, 2026 Edition
Although construction cost growth has moderated since the pandemic years, costs continue to rise. Statistics Canada reported year-over-year increases of 2.8% in residential construction costs and 3.6% in non-residential construction costs during the first quarter of 2026.
The trajectory of the trend is as significant as any single quarter's performance. Input costs continue to rise across the most recent quarters, even as the year-over-year rate of increase has eased each quarter slightly. Cost dynamics are also being shaped by structural factors, including labor availability, regulatory change, and trade conditions, rather than by short-term cyclicality. This is why pre-construction planning and the value of early-stage BIM coordination have become more central to project delivery than they were a couple of years ago.
The best-documented evidence in Canada for BIM assisting with cost control comes from the public infrastructure sector in Ontario rather than from provincial industry-wide statistics.
After the accomplishment of the Government Roadmap for the Infrastructure Data Modeling (BIM) in 2021, the Society of Quebec Infrastructures (SQI) notified in August 225 that the number of projects under construction by public infrastructure owners jumped from 77 to 265.
According to SQI, as part of this plan, the BIM project of the Hydro-Québec Poste des Irlandias substation was completed in September 2024. Using its own data, it limited change order costs to 3.6% for comparable work under the traditional delivery mode. This project is well documented. It differs from the industry average. Notwithstanding, it is one of a handful of cases in Canada in which a public owner issued a direct before-and-after comparison. The difference in change-order costs of 4 to 5 times smaller is enough to explain the 4 years of growth of the BIM project in Quebec’s public sector.
The third-quarter 2025 GDP for the construction industry was higher than the all-industry average, at $170 billion, according to the Canadian Construction Association. Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, and Calgary are generally high-rise residential and commercial centers, as well as healthcare and mixed-use centers. The BIM market is growing as projects become more complex.
The rate of BIM adoption varies from province to province. Quebec serves as one of Canada's leading provinces in public-sector BIM adoption. Other provinces and smaller businesses will see general contracts starting out earlier in the process. Addressing that gap is important for workforce planning. BuildForce Canada projects that Canada may fall short by 108,300 construction workers by 2034, due to retirement. This highlights the importance of coordination tools, such as BIM, to identify construction issues as early as possible, since there are fewer hands to spot triggers.
Construction costs are still climbing across Canada, and Quebec's public infrastructure sector has shown what a well-run BIM program can do to change-order costs on a real project. Choosing a BIM partner is no longer a preference. It's a risk-management decision.
Modelo Tech Studio supports owners, general contractors, consultants, and trades with BIM and VDC strategies built to reduce waste and rework and improve project outcomes across the country.
Located in British Columbia, Modelo has a multidisciplinary team with a track record spanning several million- to multi-billion-dollar projects across residential, recreational, commercial, institutional, industrial, energy, and healthcare sectors.
Curious to dive deeper into BIM practices? Check out our related blog posts for more insights and strategies to elevate your projects!
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