Life sciences + lab TI
22%3,180 active
Lab oversupply has cooled new ground-up; lab-to-office reconversion and high-spec TI now dominate Kendall, Watertown, and the Seaport.
Boston, Massachusetts
Boston construction projects, live from the permit feed.
52,000+ active projects across Greater Boston — Seaport, Back Bay, Fenway, Kendall Square, Allston-Brighton, and the dense Cambridge / Somerville / Brookline ring. Filter by trade, value, and stage — pursue before bid award.
52,420
Active projects in Greater Boston
3,940
Permits issued in the last 30 days
208
Commercial $5M+ permits this month
Market snapshot
What's actually happening in Boston construction in 2026
Greater Boston is the densest research + healthcare construction market in the country. Permitting flows through Boston ISD inside the city limits, the BPDA for projects subject to Article 80 review, Cambridge ISD for everything across the river, plus separate portals for Brookline, Newton, Somerville, Arlington, Watertown, Quincy, and the rest of the inner ring. "Greater Boston" on a sales pipeline is functionally a dozen sub-markets — Kendall, Seaport, Longwood, Allston/Watertown lab corridor, Cambridgeport, the inner-ring multifamily belt — each with distinct ownership, AHJ behaviour, and contractor lists.
What's changing in 2026: the life-sciences ground-up wave has cooled meaningfully from the 2022 peak — lab vacancy in Watertown and Cambridge is real, and a wave of lab-to-office or lab-to-multifamily reconversions has started. That doesn't shrink the addressable market — it shifts it from new construction to high-spec TI and conversion work, which is a different pursuit motion. Mass General Brigham, BIDMC, Children's, and BMC continue multi-year campus expansions; Longwood is a multi-decade backlog regardless of the broader market cycle. The MBTA Communities Act has forced inner-ring multifamily zoning across Newton, Brookline, Arlington, and the South Shore — that's an emergent pipeline that didn't exist before 2024.
The sales teams winning in Boston right now are not chasing more permits — they're being more disciplined about which sub-market and which AHJ matches their bonding and union profile. The top teams pull a saved feed every morning, filter to their value band, and run pre-call research on the GC and architect before any outreach. The teams losing are still alternating between BuildingBoston and the Cambridge LDS portal on Tuesday mornings.
Trade mix
Where the permitted value sits in Boston
Trade mix across the Boston / Cambridge / inner-ring metro over the last 12 months, weighted by permitted value above $1M.
Healthcare + medical office
18%2,940 active
Mass General Brigham, BIDMC, Boston Children's, and BMC anchor multi-year capital plans across Longwood + the downtown campuses.
Multifamily ground-up
16%4,820 active
MBTA Communities Act zoning is filling the inner-ring (Newton, Brookline, Arlington, Somerville) with mid-rise wood-frame entitlements.
Higher-ed + research
12%1,640 active
Harvard, MIT, BU, BC, Tufts, and Northeastern run continuous capital pipelines on academic, dorm, and research scope.
Tenant improvement (office)
10%5,840 active
Seaport, Back Bay, and Financial District TI volume has firmed up post-RTO; the lease-up dynamic now favours hybrid-ready fit-outs.
Single-family + ADU
5%12,180 active
Brookline, Newton, and the South Shore carry a high-volume / low-ticket SFR + accessory pipeline driven by ADU rules updates.
Pursuit playbook
The Boston pursuit playbook
How the top construction sales teams in Greater Boston actually operate in 2026.
- 1
Pick your AHJ ring before your trade
Boston ISD, BPDA Article 80, and Cambridge ISD are three different pursuit motions. The inner-ring (Brookline, Newton, Somerville, Arlington, Watertown) is another. The South Shore + 128 corridor is a fourth. Pick the ring your bonding + licensing actually serve before you build a "Greater Boston" pipeline.
- 2
Save the filter, not the search
A saved feed on "Boston + Cambridge commercial over $10M filed in the last 30 days" is the single highest-leverage object on a Greater Boston sales calendar. The BuildingBoston portal is for the public; the feed is meant to push new filings to you as they hit.
- 3
Profile the architect, not just the GC
Elkus Manfredi, ARC/Architectural Resources Cambridge, SGA, Stantec, HDR, and Sasaki drive a disproportionate share of the high-value bid lists. Knowing the architect of record is often a stronger signal of which sub-trades get invited than knowing the GC.
- 4
Time outreach to BPDA Article 80 milestones
Article 80 large-project review precedes the building permit by 9–18 months on most projects above $25M in Boston proper. If you sell sub-trade scope and you're showing up at permit, you're already late — be on the project at Article 80 certification.
- 5
Treat lab conversions as a distinct play
Lab-to-office and lab-to-multifamily reconversion is structurally different work than new-build life sciences. Tag those projects with their own saved filter so your TI / conversion pursuit doesn't sit inside the same bucket as ground-up R&D.
- 6
Drop everything into the CRM the same day
Pipedrive sync, project → owner → GC → architect linkage, and an AHJ-tagged note for every interaction. The teams scaling fastest treat the CRM as the source of truth, not a list of stale BPDA project codes.
FAQ
Boston construction FAQ
The Boston feed refreshes continuously across the city, Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, and every inner-ring municipality. New permits typically appear in the live feed within hours of being issued, and inspection events refresh nightly.
See Boston on the live map.
30 minutes with a founder. We pull up Greater Boston, run the matrix on the 25 GCs you'd most like to win, and provision your workspace the same day if it's a fit.
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