Construction companies in Cleveland: 4,200 contractors, the city's contractor register and the sewer program

This report is for property owners and businesses hiring a contractor in Greater Cleveland, contractors looking for subcontractors or partners, people weighing a job or an acquisition, and B2B sellers who sell into Northeast Ohio's trades. You'll find the Census count, the city's contractor register and permit file, the sewer district's pipeline and a way to prospect all three.

Cleveland construction in numbers

US Census Bureau County Business Patterns (CBP) 2023, construction sector (NAICS 23), Cleveland, OH Metro Area (CBSA 17410):

That's about $3,600 more than the national construction average of $76,580, by our calculation from the CBP state files.

Cuyahoga and the collar counties

Cuyahoga County has 46% of the metro's establishments but 63% of its construction jobs: the larger commercial, mechanical and civil firms are based there. The collar counties are mostly small residential builders and trades, and Geauga's average of 4.9 employees is the smallest.

The trades and the builders

Specialty trades are 68% of establishments and 72% of jobs. Remodelers outnumber new-home builders four to one, which fits a region of older housing. Industrial building, multifamily building and pipeline contractors are counted too, but their employee totals are flagged by the Census Bureau as high-noise, so they're not reported here.

Size

In broader bands, 3,791 establishments (90.3%) have 1 to 19 employees, 359 have 20 to 99 and 50 have 100 or more; the published cells leave three with 500 or more, which the Census Bureau doesn't split. The count covers locations with a payroll, so companies with several sites appear more than once and solo operators don't appear at all.

Cleveland's contractor register

The City of Cleveland's Department of Building and Housing registers contractors before they pull permits, and it publishes the active list on the city's open data portal with the registration type, business name, address, phone and, where held, the EPA lead-safe (RRP) certification number. In October 2026 it held:

Of those, 3,148 have Ohio addresses; the rest are out-of-state firms registered to work in the city. To vet a contractor for a job in Cleveland:

1. Find it on the register and confirm the registration type matches the work: a general contractor registration doesn't cover the electrical or sewer work.
2. For pre-1978 homes, check the RRP number on the register before any work that disturbs paint.
3. Look up its permit history in the city's permit portal, which anyone can search by address without logging in.
4. Get its insurance certificate and confirm it with the insurer, and ask for recent references on similar jobs.

Outside the city, check with the municipality where the work is.

What the city permitted in 2025

The city's Issued Building Permits dataset lists job value, description and the contractor's business name for most permits. In 2025 the city issued 16,317 permits with $1.47 billion in stated job value. The building work broke down like this:

Trade permits added 909 commercial electrical permits ($119.9 million), 744 commercial HVAC and refrigeration ($133.3 million) and 403 commercial plumbing ($65.0 million). Demolition is a market of its own here: 669 residential demolitions in a year, and 107 registered demolition contractors to do them.

Sewers: Project Clean Lake

The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District's Project Clean Lake is a 25-year program to reduce combined sewer overflows in the district's service area. By the district's count, it has spent or awarded $2.44 billion since 2010 across 74 active or completed contracts, with five future projects remaining and half of its 4 billion gallon annual reduction goal met. The district takes bids electronically through its OpenGov portal, and new vendors register through its iSupplier system. For a seller, the useful question on each contract is which specialty work the prime contractor subcontracts.

Listed companies with Cleveland addresses

Two SEC-registered companies in construction industry codes have their principal offices in the metro, though neither is a typical contractor. Preformed Line Products of Mayfield Village is classed by the SEC under utility line construction but describes itself in its 10-K as a designer and manufacturer of products for overhead and underground energy and communications networks; it reported $669.3 million in 2025 net sales. Range Impact, an over-the-counter company in Cleveland, reported $3.7 million in 2025 revenue, from consulting and royalties. Northeast Ohio's large general contractors are private.

Selling to Cleveland contractors

The register gives you names and phone numbers; the permit file tells you who is busy. A contractor with several commercial permits this quarter is buying labor, equipment and materials now. To reach the right person at each, see finding decision makers.

Illustrative example. Erie Shore Shoring and its rental figures are made up; the counts are from the city's register and CBP 2023.

Erie Shore Shoring (erieshoring.example) rents trench boxes, shoring and confined-space equipment. Its list is the city's 120 registered sewer contractors plus the metro's site preparation (228) and water and sewer line (30) establishments: 378 accounts, before removing duplicates. If 40% dig deep enough to need shoring, that's about 150 accounts; winning 20% (30) at $45,000 of rentals a year each is $1.35 million. The research that matters is who has subcontracts on the remaining Project Clean Lake work. Bebop researches contractors like these from a plain-language description and writes a playbook for each.

Sources for names

For the region's factories rather than its builders, see the Cleveland manufacturing companies report.

Next step: compare Northeast Ohio with Columbus and Cincinnati in the Ohio construction companies report.