Data
Oregon trade contractor licences
Last updated November 6, 2026
Next update December 2026
Oregon licenses its electrical, plumbing and boiler contractors through one office, the Building Codes Division. The division publishes every active licence it has issued as one open file. We, TrustPast, downloaded the contractor rows of that file on 23 October 2026 and kept 5,380 licence records. They created 3,055 new companies in our database and matched 1,265 that were already there.
This page counts those 3,055 companies. By licence, by trade, by how many licences each holds, by when the licences run out and by where the businesses are. Then it shows where our pipeline put them. One thing it can’t show is age: the file has no issue date, and the section on expiry explains why the expiry date doesn’t help either.
What the licences are
The Building Codes Division, the BCD for short, sits inside Oregon’s Department of Consumer and Business Services. Its contractor page lists the licences it issues to businesses, each with a summary of the work it allows and the rule behind it.
Electrical contractors. The general licence, code C, “Allows a company to engage in the business of making electrical installations.” Below it sit the limited licences. A limited energy contractor (CLE) works on limited energy systems, the low-voltage side. A limited sign contractor (CLS) does the same for signs. A limited maintenance specialty contractor (LMS) may “connect replacement appliances to existing junction boxes” and repair lighting fixtures, but not services, feeders or branch circuits. A limited renewable energy contractor (CLR) makes renewable energy installations “limited to 25 kva and 600 volts nominal or less.”
Heating and cooling. Oregon has no separate HVAC contractor licence in this file. Two electrical licences cover the trade. The limited maintenance specialty contractor HVAC/R (LHR) may “maintain, service, repair or replace commercial and industrial electrical products that use fuel or other forms of energy to produce heat, power, refrigeration or air conditioning.” The restricted energy contractor (CRE) is “Limited to Heating, Ventilating, and Air-conditioning (HVAC) activities.” The boiler and pressure vessel business (BB) may install, repair and alter “boilers, pressure vessels or pressure piping.”
Plumbing. The plumbing business licence, PB, “Allows a business to advertise; furnish labor and material, or labor only; install; change; and repair plumbing.” It doesn’t let the holder work as a journeyman plumber without an individual licence. The limited pump installation specialty contractor (CPI) is an electrical licence for “pump equipment for potable or irrigation water systems, sump pumps, effluent pumps and ground water pumps on residential and agricultural property.” Its scope is pump work on drinking water, irrigation, sump and effluent systems, so our collector files it under plumbing.
Combinations. A firm can hold several of these under one number. The BCD says of each combination: “Requirements are the same as for the component of the single licenses.” The advantages it lists are one application, one renewal and one licence number. The file has plumbing and boiler (BP), plumbing and limited maintenance (PM), plumbing and pump (PP), plumbing, boiler and HVAC/R (PBH), boiler and HVAC/R (BH), boiler and electrical (BE), and elevator electrical and mechanical (EM).
The BCD’s list has no roofing and no general building licence. Those sit with a second office, the Construction Contractors Board, which keeps its own file. The board says: “Generally, Oregon law requires anyone who works for compensation in any construction activity involving improvements to real property to be licensed.” Its examples include roofing, heating, air conditioning, electrical and plumbing. So an Oregon trade firm often holds both, and the BCD’s application asks it to “List CCB licenses”. There is no auto repair licence in either list, so there is no auto repair row here.
The file we read
The BCD publishes the file on the state’s open data site, data.oregon.gov, as “Building Codes Division - Active Contractor/Individual Licenses”. Its description: “Building Codes division provides this list of all active license holders as required by Oregon Revised Statute Chapter 192.” It lists individuals and businesses together, under a Public Domain licence. The site gives the publishing frequency as monthly; the rows were last updated on 2 October 2026.
On 6 November the file held 45,452 rows. Most are licences of a person: journeymen, supervising electricians, inspectors and plan examiners. Our collector asks the site for the business licences only, by the code at the start of the licence type. That download ran on 23 October 2026, and the 5,380 records went into the database between 11:55:47 and 11:55:51 UTC. The same filter on the live file returned 5,380 rows on 6 November.
Here are those rows as the file counts them, one per licence.
| Licence type in the file | Code | Trade we gave it | Licence records |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plumbing business | PB | Plumbing | 1,875 |
| Electrical contractor | C | Electrical | 1,418 |
| Limited maintenance specialty contractor HVAC/R | LHR | HVAC | 466 |
| Limited maintenance specialty contractor | LMS | Electrical | 374 |
| Limited energy contractor | CLE | Electrical | 320 |
| Boiler and pressure vessel business | BB | HVAC | 282 |
| Restricted energy contractor | CRE | HVAC | 225 |
| Limited pump installation specialty contractor | CPI | Plumbing | 206 |
| Plumbing and limited maintenance | PM | Plumbing | 55 |
| Plumbing and boiler | BP | Plumbing | 40 |
| Limited sign contractor | CLS | Electrical | 37 |
| Elevator contractor, mechanical | ECM | General | 23 |
| Limited renewable energy contractor | CLR | Solar | 21 |
| Elevator electrical, alone or with mechanical | EC, EM | Electrical | 12 |
| Plumbing, boiler and HVAC/R | PBH | Plumbing | 10 |
| Plumbing and pump | PP | Plumbing | 9 |
| Boiler with HVAC/R or with electrical | BH, BE | HVAC | 7 |
| All | 5,380 |
By the trade our collector gives each code, that’s 2,195 plumbing records, 2,161 electrical, 980 HVAC, 23 elevator and 21 solar.
Those records sit on 4,320 companies. 3,055 were new, created by this file, and hold 3,556 of the records. The other 1,265 were already in our database from another file, and hold the other 1,824. 878 of them came from the Construction Contractors Board’s file, 189 from Washington’s licence file and 198 from 11 other files. From here on, the tables count the 3,055 companies the BCD file created.
Which licence created the company
Each company carries one licence class and one trade: those of its first row in the collector’s order. Plumbing comes first, then the limited maintenance HVAC/R licences, then the electrical contractor, the restricted energy contractor and the other electrical licences, with the boiler business and the elevator contractor last.
| Licence on the company | Trade | Companies | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electrical contractor (C) | Electrical | 1,212 | 39.7% |
| Limited energy contractor (CLE) | Electrical | 228 | 7.5% |
| Limited maintenance specialty contractor (LMS) | Electrical | 63 | 2.1% |
| Limited sign contractor (CLS) | Electrical | 28 | 0.9% |
| Elevator electrical (EM, EC) | Electrical | 10 | 0.3% |
| Plumbing business (PB) | Plumbing | 1,015 | 33.2% |
| Limited pump installation (CPI) | Plumbing | 141 | 4.6% |
| Plumbing and boiler (BP) | Plumbing | 22 | 0.7% |
| Plumbing and limited maintenance (PM) | Plumbing | 18 | 0.6% |
| Plumbing and pump (PP) | Plumbing | 9 | 0.3% |
| Plumbing, boiler and HVAC/R (PBH) | Plumbing | 6 | 0.2% |
| Limited maintenance HVAC/R (LHR) | HVAC | 172 | 5.6% |
| Boiler and pressure vessel business (BB) | HVAC | 83 | 2.7% |
| Restricted energy contractor (CRE) | HVAC | 11 | 0.4% |
| Boiler and HVAC/R (BH) | HVAC | 5 | 0.2% |
| Elevator contractor, mechanical (ECM) | General | 18 | 0.6% |
| Limited renewable energy contractor (CLR) | Solar | 14 | 0.5% |
| All | 3,055 | 100% |
Electrical leads with 1,541 companies, 50.4%. Plumbing follows with 1,211, 39.6%, and HVAC has 271, 8.9%. Elevator mechanical firms (18) and solar firms (14) make up the rest.
The two tables differ most for the HVAC licences. The file has 225 restricted energy licences, but only 11 companies were created by one. The other restricted energy holders either hold a licence that comes earlier in the collector’s order, or were already in our database from another file. The limited maintenance licences show the same gap: 374 records, 63 new companies.
The trade is the collector’s reading of the code, not the firm’s own description. A plumber that also holds an electrical licence under a separate number is filed under plumbing. The file publishes no trade mix beyond the licence, so this page doesn’t count one.
How many licences a company holds
A company with several BCD licences under its name has several rows. The combination licences put two or three under one number, which keeps the count down.
| BCD licence records per company | Companies | Licence records |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2,690 | 2,690 |
| 2 | 270 | 540 |
| 3 | 69 | 207 |
| 4 | 17 | 68 |
| 5 to 7 | 9 | 51 |
| All | 3,055 | 3,556 |
2,690 companies, 88.1%, hold one record. 365, 11.9%, hold two or more. That sits between Washington, at 8.0%, and Minnesota, at 18.4%. Iowa, which registers a business once whatever its trades, sits far lower: see Iowa contractor registrations. A firm’s Construction Contractors Board licence isn’t in this file, so it isn’t in this count.
When the licences run out
The file lists active licences only. Every row says “Active”. So the expiry date is the next renewal, not a record of lapses.
| Expires | Companies | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 1 July 2029 | 3,034 | 99.3% |
| 1 July 2028 | 18 | 0.6% |
| Other dates | 3 | 0.1% |
| All | 3,055 | 100% |
The dates line up because the BCD renews a licence type all at once. Its FAQ says: “Most licenses within a license type expire at the same time and on a three-year cycle. The first cycle may seem short if the license was issued in the middle of the current license cycle.” The contractor page gives “Next renewal date for all C licenses: July 1, 2029,” and the same date for every other type here but two. Elevator mechanical licences renew on 1 July 2028, which is the 18 companies in the second row. Elevator electrical licences renew on 1 October 2027. The “other dates” row merges three companies, fewer than five on each date.
That is why this page has no age table. A firm licensed in 1990 and a firm licensed last spring both show 1 July 2029. The file has no issue date and no first-licence date. Our database stores each company’s years of records from the dated records we hold, and for 3,046 of these companies that field is zero. Eight of the other nine took a date from Colorado’s licence file, matched on 25 October; the ninth is matched to no other file. For the age of Oregon contractors from a file that does carry a date, see our table of how long trade licences have been held, which reads the Construction Contractors Board’s original registration date.
The BCD’s renewal page adds one more limit. “License holders will need to retest if the license has been expired for more than one year.” A firm that let its licence go is simply not in this file. So this page can’t count closed firms the way some state files can.
Where the businesses are
The file gives the mailing address on the licence. 2,642 companies, 86.5%, give one in Oregon.
| State of the address | Companies |
|---|---|
| Oregon | 2,642 |
| Washington | 290 |
| Idaho | 55 |
| California | 17 |
| Utah | 7 |
| Texas | 5 |
| 22 other states | 39 |
| All | 3,055 |
Washington and Idaho, the two neighbours, come next with 345 between them. It runs both ways. On our Washington page, 395 of the firms Washington licenses give an Oregon address. HVAC firms come from furthest afield here: 53 of 271, 19.6%, give an address outside Oregon. Electrical firms follow at 240 of 1,541, 15.6%, and plumbers are the most local, 114 of 1,211, 9.4%.
The file also names the county. Inside Oregon the addresses fall in 35 counties, plus one row that gives a city in the county field.
| County | Companies | Share of Oregon addresses |
|---|---|---|
| Clackamas | 388 | 14.7% |
| Multnomah | 309 | 11.7% |
| Washington | 281 | 10.6% |
| Marion | 259 | 9.8% |
| Lane | 245 | 9.3% |
| Deschutes | 201 | 7.6% |
| Jackson | 143 | 5.4% |
| Linn | 92 | 3.5% |
| Douglas | 78 | 3.0% |
| Yamhill | 67 | 2.5% |
| 26 other names | 579 | 21.9% |
| All in Oregon | 2,642 | 100% |
Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties, the three around Portland, hold 978 companies, 37.0%. Electrical firms lean on them a little less than plumbers: 457 of 1,301 Oregon electrical firms, against 442 of 1,097 plumbers. Marion and Lane add 504 more.
The cities, as written on the address, name 233 places.
| City | Companies |
|---|---|
| Portland | 274 |
| Salem | 145 |
| Bend | 125 |
| Eugene | 118 |
| Oregon City | 72 |
| Beaverton | 63 |
| Gresham | 53 |
| Medford | 51 |
| Hillsboro | 50 |
| Springfield | 50 |
| 223 other names | 1,641 |
| All in Oregon | 2,642 |
The ten largest hold 1,001 companies, 37.9% of the Oregon addresses. Portland alone has 274, 10.4%. This is the town on the mailing address, not where the work is done.
What our pipeline did with them
Our pipeline puts every company in one lane, by headcount. Lane C is every company under 30 people or with no headcount on record, and Polyshares is its buyer. The BCD file carries no headcount, so the companies started in lane C.
| Lane and status | Companies |
|---|---|
| Lane C, qualified | 3,035 |
| Excluded | 14 |
| Lane C held for a name check, or lane B (fewer than 5 each) | 6 |
| All | 3,055 |
3,035 companies, 99.3%, sit in lane C as qualified. Fourteen are excluded under our qualification rules, because their names carry a word for an industry we keep out. Fewer than five are held because a name carries a word our risk check stops on, and a person clears them or they stay out. Fewer than five sit in lane B, which isn’t Polyshares’ lane: another source puts their headcount at 30 or more.
The BCD file has no phone and no email column. At the read our pipeline had a website for two of these companies.
What a licence says about the record
For most of these licences, the BCD’s application asks the firm to designate a signing supervisor. For some types it asks for more. The BCD’s application asks restricted energy, limited maintenance and limited maintenance HVAC/R contractors to submit a list of employees. It says nothing about the files behind the work. A plumbing business licence renewed for 2029 could sit on thirty years of job folders, or on last spring’s first invoice.
What Polyshares looks at is the record itself. Its home page says: “The length and texture of the record matter more than headcount or revenue.” Under “Who qualifies” it puts “Any company with real operating history, in any sector,” and construction is among the sectors it names. On price: “Depth of operating history and how much visible reasoning the record contains move the number far more than raw volume does.”
Polyshares publishes a few of its deals. Polyshares lists a roofing company, filed under home services, at $450,000 (indicative, not an offer). Polyshares lists a general contractor, filed under construction, at $300,000 (indicative, not an offer). Each is a “Perpetual exclusive license to the operational record,” “Anonymized before delivery.” A published deal is one company’s price. It doesn’t predict anyone else’s.
What this means for an Oregon trade contractor
The records that count are the ones that show how a job was worked out. The licence file can’t say how long you’ve kept them. You can.
For an electrical contractor, that’s the bids, the permits, the load calculations, the inspection corrections and the as-built notes. A service upgrade that failed its first inspection, with the note on what the inspector wanted, is the kind of record that shows reasoning.
For a plumbing business, it’s the service tickets, the quotes, the camera reports and the job photos. A pump and well firm keeps the pump tests, the pressure readings and the replacement history of each system. Our page for plumbing companies goes file by file.
For an HVAC or boiler firm, it’s the service history. A no-heat call in a Bend January, what the technician measured, what was replaced and what the callback fixed. The maintenance agreements, the start-up sheets and the boiler inspection reports sit beside it. Our page for HVAC companies walks through those records.
For all of them, the estimates and the change orders carry the most. Our page on estimates and quotes covers the bids that became jobs and the ones that didn’t, and our page on job files and work orders covers what happened after the yes. Polyshares counts “spreadsheets, CRM history, support tickets” and “accounting and ERP exports” as operational data.
Before any of it is used, it’s de-identified. Polyshares says identifying fields are stripped by a specialist partner “before anything moves.” Customer names and payments are never what is wanted. What is wanted is how the work was done: how an estimate became a job, how a change order was settled, how a fault was traced. Our explainer on what data buyers actually want from a trade business puts those records in order, and how de-identification works shows what gets removed.
How many years of yours can you still open? Our estimate takes two minutes and asks exactly that.
What the tables do not prove
The file is a snapshot of active licences. It says nothing about how long a firm has held one, and nothing about firms that have stopped.
The trade is our collector’s reading of the licence code. A firm filed under electrical may do mostly heating work under a general electrical licence. A pump installer is filed under plumbing, though the BCD issues its licence for electrical work on pumps.
The file covers the BCD’s business licences. Roofers and general contractors hold Construction Contractors Board licences, not BCD ones, and aren’t counted here. Neither are the individual journeymen, supervisors and inspectors the BCD licenses.
Our matching keeps one company per business name, state and town. A firm that trades under two names stays two companies. Two firms with the same name in the same town would become one.
Our lane is the pipeline’s reading of the records we hold, not a buyer’s decision. Polyshares decides on its own review; it says “We read a sample of the record.”
What is never included
This page holds counts only. It names no company and shows no licence number, address, phone number, email address or person. Where the licensee is a person trading under an assumed business name, the collector keeps the business name as the company; we keep the person out of every table.
In a licence of records, the customer’s own information stays out. Polyshares says its licence “does not cover what you hold on behalf of your own clients.” It says identifying fields, customer names, emails and account numbers are “stripped by a specialist PII partner before Polyshares or any lab sees the record.” Our advice: payment card numbers, bank statements and payroll should never be in an export at all. Nor should a home’s door codes or the alarm details on a service ticket. How it’s safe walks through what leaves your systems, and when.
For the same kind of count in other states, see Washington trade contractor licences, Minnesota trade contractor licences and licensed trade contractors by state board.
Questions and answers
Does this page show how old Oregon contractors are? No. The BCD file has no issue date, and nearly every licence renews on 1 July 2029, whatever year it was first issued.
Why are heating firms filed under electrical licences? Oregon licenses the electrical side of HVAC work. The limited maintenance HVAC/R and restricted energy licences are electrical contractor licences limited to heating, cooling and refrigeration equipment.
Are roofers in this file? No. The BCD’s list has no roofing licence; roofing is work the Construction Contractors Board licenses. The BCD file covers electrical, plumbing, boiler and elevator work.
Does an Oregon licence qualify a firm with Polyshares? Not by itself. Polyshares prices the record, not the licence: “We read a sample of the record. That is how we price it.”
Methodology
The file. “Building Codes Division - Active Contractor/Individual Licenses” on data.oregon.gov (vhbr-cuaq), published by the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services, Building Codes Division, under a Public Domain licence. One row per active licence, with the licence number, profession, licence type, licensee name, assumed business name, mailing address, city, state, ZIP code, county, status and expiry date. The site’s metadata gives a monthly publishing frequency and a last row update of 22:55 UTC on 2 October 2026. It held 45,452 rows on 6 November 2026.
What was collected. Our collector (or-bcd) sends one filtered request to the site’s data API: every row whose licence type starts with one of 19 business codes (PB, PM, BP, PBH, PP, CPI, LHR, BH, C, CRE, LMS, CLE, CLS, EC, EM, CLR, BE, BB, ECM). It stops if the rows reach its 200,000-row limit. A row with no name or no licence number is skipped, and a licence number seen twice is kept once. The trade comes from the code: PB, PM, BP, PBH, PP and CPI are plumbing; LHR, BH, CRE, BE and BB are HVAC; C, LMS, CLE, CLS, EC and EM are electrical; CLR is solar; ECM is general. Rows are written in that order: plumbing, the HVAC/R licences, the electrical contractor, the restricted energy contractor, the other electrical and solar licences, the boiler business and the elevator contractor, and a company keeps the trade and licence class of its first row. Where the licensee’s name reads as a person’s and the row carries an assumed business name, the business name is the company. The run of 23 October 2026 wrote 5,380 records between 11:55:47 and 11:55:51 UTC.
Status. The file lists active licences only, and every row of the download says “Active”. The collector marks a company active unless its expiry date has passed.
When we read it. We read the host database read-only on 6 November 2026 through single read-only statements, counts only. The data.oregon.gov page, its metadata and two counts of the live file, the BCD’s contractor, application, FAQ and renewal pages, the Construction Contractors Board’s licence page, and the Polyshares pages were fetched the same day. The licence records by type come from a grouped count of the live file under the collector’s filter, which returned the same 5,380 rows; the company tables come from our database.
Which companies. The tables count the 3,055 companies whose source is or-bcd, the ones this file created. The 1,265 that another file created first are left out. Licences per company count every or-bcd record linked to the company. A record matches a company by business name, state and town.
The queries, in plain words. Records, companies and fetch times for the source; companies by first source, and the state of those another file created; companies by trade and by licence class; records per company; companies by expiry date and year; the years-of-records field; status; lane and pipeline status, and the reasons on the excluded and held ones; companies by state, and by state and trade; Oregon companies by county from the collector’s note, and the three Portland-area counties by trade; Oregon companies by city in capitals, and the count of distinct cities; other sources matched to these companies later. Each statement and its output are kept with the page’s working files for a reviewer to re-run.
Places. The state, county and city are the mailing address’s. County and city names are counted in capitals as written. The county table counts Oregon addresses only.
Suppression. Any cell under five is merged: the elevator electrical codes, the boiler combinations, the expiry dates other than the two cycles, the held companies and lane B.
Lane and status. The pipeline’s own at the read, set by our qualification step.
Left out. The BCD’s licences of a person; the prefab and manufactured dwelling licences; the Construction Contractors Board’s registrations; the 1,265 companies another file created first; licences issued since 23 October 2026. The file carries no issue date, so there is no age table.
Refresh. The tables are rebuilt monthly from a fresh download and a new read of the database. The next update is due 6 December 2026.
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Sources
- Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services, Building Codes Division, Building Codes Division - Active Contractor/Individual Licenses (data.oregon.gov vhbr-cuaq): the file, its columns, its licence types, Public Domain, monthly publishing
- Oregon Building Codes Division, Contractor and business licenses: the scope of each contractor licence, the combination licences, the next renewal date of each type
- Oregon Building Codes Division, Apply for a contractor license: the CCB licences on the application, the Secretary of State registration, the signing supervisor, the employee lists
- Oregon Construction Contractors Board, How to get a license: who needs a CCB licence, and the work that requires one, roofing, heating, air conditioning, electrical and plumbing among it
- Oregon Building Codes Division, Licensing FAQs: the three-year cycle on which a licence type expires
- Oregon Building Codes Division, Renew a license: online renewal, notices 45 days before expiry, retesting after a year expired
- Polyshares, home page: who qualifies, the length and texture of the record, anonymisation, what the licence does not cover (polyshares.com)
- Polyshares, case studies: a roofing company and a general contractor, with their published deal amounts (polyshares.com)