QuantLens Get Started
Real Estate & Construction

ConstructAlpha Intelligence Deck

A 20-year, ML-ready benchmark of the $1.8T US construction cycle – engineered for quants, funds, and infra analysts.

2005–2024 macro coverage · 2008–2024 federal awards · ~60 region–month features · ~30 award features · event-study ready with price reactions.

Note: This v1 deck focuses on a lean, high-signal feature set. The larger 170-feature Ultra Pro configuration is on the roadmap; current counts and columns are documented in the schema file shipped with the pack.

~60
Region-Month Features
~30
Award-Level Features
7
Data Sources
20
Years Coverage
$1.8T
Annual Market Size
3,000+
Counties Covered

What is ConstructAlpha?

ConstructAlpha Intelligence Deck is a fused, ML-ready benchmark of US construction activity, built entirely from public sources: Census permits and spend, BLS labor and wages, OSHA safety, USASpending awards, PatentsView innovation, and FRED materials indices.

Instead of juggling 10+ raw feeds, you get one coherent deck with 20 years of aligned monthly data and ~60 engineered features per region–month. It's designed for:

Quants

Forecasting construction cycles, cost pressure, and regional risk.

Funds

Event-driven plays on builders, materials, and infra names.

Analysts

Scoring regions and segments on risk, safety, and innovation.

Feature Engineering: v1 & Roadmap

The current Pro release ships with a compact, ML-ready feature set focused on permits, labor, safety, and composite 'heat' indices. The roadmap extends this into a ~170-feature Ultra Pro deck.

Included in v1 Release

Permits & New Supply

Permit units & value, YOY & MOM growth, Z-scores, density metrics, 3-month EWMAs.

Construction Spend

Res / nonres / infra spend, CAGRs, per-worker metrics, rolling averages & volatility.

Labor & Wages

Employment levels & growth, wage metrics, tightness & stress scores, productivity proxies.

Safety Signals

OSHA inspections & violations, fatality counts & rates, safety heat scores, risk flags.

Federal Awards

Total, infra, military awards, award size & intensity, agency & vendor concentration.

Materials Cost

Steel, lumber, concrete PPI, YOY price changes & spikes, composite cost indices.

Roadmap: Ultra Pro Extensions

Innovation & Green

Construction & green patents, innovation intensity scores, 3-year rolling trends.

Geo & Clusters

Region type encodings, K-means geo clusters (K=10), density & population metrics.

Momentum & Volatility

Lags (1, 3, 6, 12 months), rolling windows & EWMAs, realized volatility, trend strength.

Advanced Indices

Overbuild & infra boom indices, risk index & risk regimes, cycle regime labels.

Data Sources

Census BPS / HUD
Building Permits
Census C30
Construction Spending
USASpending
Federal Awards
BLS NAICS 23
Labor & Wages
OSHA
Safety Enforcement
FRED
Materials PPI
PatentsView
Innovation Data

One-Time Licensing – No Subscriptions

ConstructAlpha Core

$799 one-time
  • Canonical spine (Parquet file, see docs)
  • 20 years of permits, spend, labor, safety, awards, patents, materials
  • Clean Parquet (flat file structure)
  • State & county coverage
  • Dimension tables
  • Schema & QA docs
Get Core Spine

Typical Use Cases

For Quants

  • Predict construction cycle regimes by region
  • Model cost pressure from materials, wages, and awards
  • Train XGBoost / RF models on risk and overbuild indices

For Funds

  • Event studies: award/permit shocks → builder returns
  • Screen high-risk regions for construction names and ETFs
  • Overlay ConstructAlpha regimes on your macro / factor models

For Analysts

  • Identify boom/bust regions ahead of headline data
  • Score markets on safety, labor stress, and innovation
  • Anchor infra theses to actual award & spend flows

QuantLens Assistant

Hello! I'm the QuantLens Expert Assistant. I can help you find datasets, explain schemas, compare products, or troubleshoot issues. What are you looking for?