for the builder who says “it’s just building” —
SR&ED for construction & specialty trades
It’s not just building. Solving it on site qualifies.
Novel methods, a material that had never been used that way, an engineering problem the drawings didn’t anticipate. If you had to figure it out, there’s likely a claim in it.
One of the most under-claimed sectors
Rarely claimed
Software is ~43% of SR&ED credits (per CRA); in our experience, construction is consistently under-claimed.
Almost nobody claims in this sector — which means almost nobody you compete with is recovering it either.
Typical qualifying activities
Novel building methods
A technique you developed because the standard approach didn’t work on this site.
Material substitution
Using a material in a way its spec didn’t cover, where performance was uncertain.
Energy & envelope
Hitting a performance target — air-tightness, thermal, net-zero — that needed real iteration.
Site-specific engineering
Foundations, soil, or structural problems the drawings didn’t anticipate.
Prefab & modular
Developing a panel, joint, or assembly method that didn’t exist off the shelf.
Failed approaches
The method that didn’t work counts too — uncertainty is the test, not success.
Client pattern · anonymized
A builder manufacturing wall, floor and roof panels in a factory — insulation, windows and siding pre-integrated — so a home can be assembled on site in a day instead of months. The R&D was in the robotic automation: end-of-arm tooling that reliably handles dimensionally inconsistent lumber, repeatable placement, and the combinatorial explosion of panel geometries. The innovation was in how they build, not just what.
Industrializing construction is process R&D — and it qualifies.
Real work we’ve claimed
Sound familiar?
Almost every one of these started the same way: the standard, off-the-shelf approach didn’t work, and nobody could tell them why. Figuring it out — including all the tries that failed — is exactly what SR&ED is for.
A home builder set out to assemble houses like manufactured products — building wall and floor sections in a factory with robots. The robots couldn’t reliably grab and place lumber, because real lumber varies piece to piece. Reworking the tooling and the process until it held up is the claim.
A builder wanted Net-Zero-Energy homes that actually pencil out at scale, not just as expensive showpieces. They built them, measured how they really performed versus the design, and found big gaps. Closing those gaps through real-world testing and modelling is exactly what SR&ED rewards.
A trades shop kept hitting a job where the normal tooling, material, or finish just wouldn’t give the result — so their crew spent weeks dialing in the method until it worked. Most shops write that time off. It’s usually recoverable.
A construction team tried to use a new structural material in place of the usual concrete and had to prove it would actually perform through the seasons. Field-testing something the handbook doesn’t cover yet, and working out where it falls short, is claimable.
A builder wanted every trade — design, manufacturing, scheduling — working off the same shared model to kill rework and waste. Getting disconnected tools and data to behave as one system took genuine problem-solving, and that’s the part that counts.
If you had to solve it, let’s see if it’s a claim.
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