Not only was B.C.’s construction industry largely spared from provisional restrictions during the pandemic, but the value of construction starts also grew, according to data collected on Business in Vancouver’s Biggest B.C. Construction Starts in 2020 list.
In 2019, the average deal value was bolstered by that year’s No. 1 start, the LNG Canada facility, valued at $36 billion. If this outlier is excluded from the 2019 comparative figures, the average deal value of the biggest construction starts in the province grew 8%: to $659.6 million in 2020 from $610.7 million in 2019.
That growth, however, is still significantly smaller than the increases posted in 2019 even after excluding the LNG Canada deal. In 2019, the average top deal value excluding LNG Canada grew 209.2% from $197.5 million in 2018. When the LNG Canada deal is included, 2019 construction starts soared 1,403.5%, or roughly 14 times their average value, to $2.97 billion.
The highest-valued construction start, the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion (No. 1), was valued at $4.5 billion, significantly less than the top start in 2019.
Despite its smaller No. 1 deal, 2020’s biggest construction start list had double the number of starts valued at more than $1 billion compared with the 2019 list and the most since at least 2014.
In 2019, median deal value fell by 23.1%, suggesting that the swift growth in the average start value was more reflective of outliers at the top of the list rather than representative of the whole.
However, in 2020 the median construction start deal value grew 58% to $158 million from $100 million in 2019, its highest level in at least the past five years. That erased the decline in 2019.
This suggests that growth within the largest starts was more evenly shared throughout the list than in previous years. •
– Albert Van Santvoort
