The city’s Building and Engineering Development Manager says there were no big construction permits issued by the city of Kamloops in the month of November.

Jason Dixon says 80 per cent of the $10.4-million in permits last month were for residential construction in what he called a ‘steady’ month, down from the $25 million in permits from November 2019.

“In November 2019, we had two apartment buildings go out and that really comprised almost $18-million in construction value. If you take that away from 2019’s values, it starts to look a lot like the November we had this year,” he said.

“So it really depends on the timing of those big projects.”

While most of this year’s construction value has been driven by the $417 million Royal Inland Hospital Patient Care Tower project, Dixon says it has been a strong year for residential construction with 86 single family home permits issued this year compared to 81 at this time last year.

“Residential has been steady all year really. I think it was just over shadowed a bit with some of the big commercial and institutional projects like the RIH Project,” he added.

“A lot of months will have that one big permit that we can sort of point to to say that’s where a lot of the construction value came from. I think now that we haven’t seen any big permits go out the door in those other classes for a couple of months, you just start to see the continued strength in the residential market.”

Through the first eleven months of this year, the city has issued just over $377-million in permits, which is a fourth straight record year for construction value in the city.