Building permits in Calgary: what you need and how long it takes

When Calgary requires a building permit

The City lists these as examples of work that requires a building permit. The list is not exhaustive, and the safety codes officer decides on the scope you actually submit.

• New buildings or structures.
• Retaining walls over 1.2 metres in height.
• Swimming pools or hot tubs.
• Demolitions and relocations.
• Repairs or alterations to existing buildings and structures.
• A change of occupancy or use of a space.

Trade permits are separate from all of this. Electrical, plumbing, gas and mechanical work follows its own codes, needs its own permit, and must be done by a qualified tradesperson.

City of Calgary: building permit process and common questions

What a complete application has to contain

The City pre-screens every application for completeness before a plans examiner sees it. Its own guidance on drawings: all drawings should include the project title, scale, north arrow, dimensions and room labels. Depending on the work, it lists these as the documents that may be required.

• A site plan or key plan showing the entire layout of the site.
• Architectural and structural floor and mezzanine plans.
• Elevations, where the work includes exterior additions or alterations.
• Details of the wall assemblies and doors.
• Plumbing, mechanical, electrical and sprinkler drawings.
• A mechanical site slip from an engineer, for new construction and additions with new foundations that could affect underground services.
• Architect and engineer seals and stamps, and any necessary professional schedules, where the project requires professional involvement.

Which list applies to you is set by the Complete Application Requirement List for your project type, not by this page. The City publishes one per project type and tells applicants to work from it.

City of Calgary: complete application requirement lists

How long a decision takes

The City reports its permit timelines by quarter, against a target it sets itself. The figures below are its published targets and its own measured results for April 1 to June 30, 2026. They are not a promise about your application.

Calgary publishes a target in calendar days and, every quarter, what actually happened against it. For April 1 to June 30, 2026, building safety approvals reported the following. Read the third number, not the first: it is the average the City measured, and for two categories it is worse than the target.

• New single, semi-detached and duplex dwellings, infill: 14-day target to permission to start construction, met 72 per cent of the time, averaging 15 days. Permit issued: 30-day target, met 85 per cent of the time, averaging 13 days.
• New single, semi-detached and duplex dwellings, greenfield: 1-day target to permission to start construction, met 99 per cent of the time, averaging under a day. Permit issued: 7-day target, met 88 per cent of the time, averaging 3 days.
• Residential improvements: 7-day target at low complexity, met only 66 per cent of the time and averaging 10 days — one of only three rows in this table where the City’s own average is worse than its own target. At high complexity, a 21-day target met 85 per cent of the time, averaging 15 days.
• Multi-family: a new low-complexity project has a 49-day target met 80 per cent of the time, averaging 43 days; a high-complexity one has a 120-day target met 71 per cent of the time, averaging 103 days. Improvements have a 28-day target met 89 per cent of the time, averaging 16 days.
• Commercial and non-residential: improvements run a 30-day target at low complexity, met 84 per cent of the time and averaging 21 days, and a 35-day target at high complexity, met 76 per cent of the time and averaging 31 days. New work and additions run 28, 90 and 105-day targets by complexity; the low-complexity row is the one to watch, met only 60 per cent of the time and averaging 52 days against its 28-day target.

For commercial work the City also states it plainly: a building permit for a minor tenant improvement may be issued within 21 calendar days, and larger projects may be issued in 56 calendar days — both on the condition that code requirements are met and all necessary documentation was provided at the time of application.

For a whole project rather than one permit, the City publishes approval-to-shovel-ready ranges: approximately 2 to 3 months for a new residential home, an average of 8 to 10 months for a new multi-residential building, 7 to 8 months for commercial, 13 to 14 months for mixed use and 4 months for industrial — all assuming the applications are ready for review at submission and the correct land use is already in place.

City of Calgary: building safety approval timelines

City of Calgary: development timelines, application to shovel ready

What actually stalls an approval

None of the timelines above start until your application is complete, and the City says so in the same sentence every time: timelines are not a guarantee and depend on volumes, application completeness, and the applicant’s timely replies to requests for more information. These are the published rules and limits that turn a slow week into a lost month.

• The 90-day clock. An application may be refused if adequate information and documentation is not supplied as requested by the safety codes officer within ninety days of receipt. If a permit is considered for refusal, you are notified in writing and given 30 days to resubmit the missing information.
• The 10 MB upload limit. Files on the residential ePermit portal are limited to 10 MB and to .pdf, .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .jpg, .jpeg and .txt. Oversized drawing sets have to be split by document type, not compressed into one file.
• File naming and document type. Special characters in file names are refused, and each document must be uploaded under the correct type — several files for one type have to be combined into a single file first.
• Site plans filed under the wrong heading. For development permits the City states that site plans cannot be included with the residential drawings and must be uploaded only under the site plan document type.
• Who pays for a revision. A revision you pull after approval attracts an additional plans review fee. A revision a safety codes officer pushes after approval does not.
• Permit expiry. A building permit expires 180 days from issuance; a contractor trade permit and a homeowner permit expire at 330 days. You can request an extension, but only before it lapses.

City of Calgary: building advisory A19-002, building permit complete application

City of Calgary: residential ePermit submission requirements

After you submit

Online applications return a Job Access Code by email, and the City’s Vista system is what tracks the file against it. If a plans examiner finds a major deficiency you will be contacted for more information or revised drawings, and permits may be issued with conditions to be addressed before or during construction — a condition on an issued permit is not the same thing as a finished permit, and treating it as one is how work gets covered before it should be.

City of Calgary: tracking an application and what happens on refusal