Recent reports indicate construction activity is stabilizing in the Portland market.

Mortenson‘s latest , for the first quarter of 2026, suggests developers, owners and contractors are beginning to see increased confidence in the project pipeline. The region’s construction market remains active but selective, with project performance varying in different sectors, according to the report.

Mortenson Vice President Mike Clifford, general manager of the firm’s Portland office, said it is a cautious confidence, and owners are continuing to evaluate projects.

“Compared to where we were a year or two ago, we’re seeing projects starting to go through planning and into the design phase,” he said. “There’s greater certainty around pricing, procurement and scheduling than there’s been in the past couple of years.”

Mike Salsgiver, who is preparing to step down as CEO of the Associated General Contractors‘ Oregon-Columbia chapter, stated in an email that overall, the organization is seeing signs that the slowdown experienced over the past year is lessening.

“Larger companies such as Mortensen are reporting improvements in the pipeline as inflationary cost pressures, supply chain challenges, and interest rates are stabilizing,” Salsgiver stated.

Construction and development company Skanska also reports renewed momentum in the project pipeline on a national level.

“In the Portland market, activity seems to be stabilizing, with public sector investment in education, healthcare, and infrastructure driving much of the work,” Skanska Executive Vice President Trevor Wyckoff, general manager of the firm’s operations in Oregon and Southwest Washington, stated in an email. “Private development demand continues to be shaped by sector-specific growth, particularly by data centers and life sciences.”

According to Skanska’s spring , cautious private commercial development is leading companies to focus on essential facilities, critical upgrades and industrial capacity. Modernization, deferred maintenance and energy efficiency improvements are being prioritized over new builds.

Mortenson has seen a slight rise in project starts, Clifford said. Construction starts were up 13 percent in March, according to Mortenson’s report.

There is strong demand for large-scale infrastructure, manufacturing, and data center construction, the report states.

Several regions have reported increasingly competitive bidding environments as trade partners pursue a more limited pool of conventional commercial and institutional work. While overall labor availability and supply chain conditions have stabilized, local constraints persist in specialized trades and steel and electrical scopes.

From AGC’s perspective, availability of trained and skilled workers continues to be a problem, Salsgiver stated.

Energy infrastructure and advanced manufacturing sectors have seen some growth. In energy and infrastructure, there have been projects around the grid, grid resiliency, battery storage and renewable energy, Clifford said. Advanced manufacturing historically is a large sector in the market and it’s now experiencing some encouraging signs.

Some larger projects are starting to move forward in design. In particular, Portland General Electric has advanced some energy infrastructure projects.

Many of AGC’s contractor members, however, are encountering challenges in one sector, according to Salsgiver.

“Public projects, especially in transportation/heavy civil and heavy highway, continue to experience serious headwinds as funding for projects has become uncertain because of the (Oregon) Legislature’s failure to pass and implement a transportation funding bill that can withstand scrutiny from the voters,” he stated.

While nonresidential construction conditions remained stable through the first quarter of 2026, cost escalation and procurement conditions continued to vary by market and project type. Elevated metal pricing and continued demand tied to power, electrification and expansion of data centers are causing pressure on some materials and equipment availability, Mortenson’s report states.

“Our price increase in the market is still year over year on the lower end towards the bottom of the major markets,” Clifford said. “That reflects a market that’s been localized and subdued compared to some of the faster growing parts of the country.”

While things have moderated, the local market is still influenced by global and regional prices.

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Portland General Electric will build two solar projects in Eastern Oregon to meet growing demand from data center operators, the utility announced Tuesday.

PGE will spend approximately $540 million on a 125-megawatt solar facility and a 125-megawatt battery energy storage system in Sherman County. And in Morrow County, PGE will invest approximately $490 million in a 240-megawatt solar facility and a 125-megawatt battery system.

“We’re advancing critical infrastructure investments that will support economic development, both in Oregon and in Washington, and builds on a base of growing data center and high-tech customers,” PGE CEO Maria Pope said in a conference call on Tuesday.

The announcement came as PGE reported fourth-quarter and annual results. The utility is publicly traded under the stock symbol “POR.” PGE stock slipped 2.7 percent on Tuesday.

PGE also revealed a major acquisition, saying it would acquire PacifiCorp‘s Washington utility operations for $1.9 billion, in a deal financed in a partnership with Manulife Investment Management. PGE will manage the Washington utilities as a newly formed subsidiary regulated by the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission.

“In this time of unprecedented electricity demand, PGE’s commitment to the Pacific Northwest and our excellent service and energy infrastructure will benefit Central and Southeastern Washington,” Pope said.

Construction of the new solar projects will begin this year; they’re slated to come online by the end of 2027, Pope said. They are eligible for federal tax credits between 30 percent and 40 percent, she added.

PGE is also moving forward with last year’s request for proposals for new generation resources, and a short list will be submitted to the Oregon Public Utility Commission this week, said Joseph Trpik, PGE’s chief financial officer.

The Portland-based utility’s large customer group — such as industrial users, including data centers — is expected to grow by 10 percent annually through 2030, Pope said.

Utilities nationwide have come under public pressure as data centers’ voracious appetites for power have caused residential rates to soar. In a nod to rising prices, Pope said PGE’s tariff proposal includes a 25 percent price hike for data center customers, which is expected to “reduce residential and small business customer prices.”

Data centers now account for about 6 percent of PGE’s total customer load, Pope said.

PGE’s total load increased 3.8 percent in 2025, and 4.7 percent in weather-adjusted terms. The industrial load jumped 14 percent, while the residential load fell 1.8 percent.

Trpik attributed the load increase to “diverse and growing data center and high-tech customers.” Warm weather in the fourth quarter weakened overall demand, he said.

The Washington deal will add 140,000 customers around Yakima, Walla Walla and other communities in Central and Southeast Washington, PGE officials said.

“This acquisition is a great fit,” Pope said, calling the deal an “excellent opportunity to expand our service to Washington state and acquire generation, transmission and distribution assets we know very well.”

The acquisition must be approved by regulators in Oregon and Washington. The regulatory process should require 11 to 12 months, Pope said.

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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court backed a multibillion-dollar oil railroad expansion proposal in Utah on Thursday in a ruling that scales back the use of a key environmental law and could accelerate development projects around the country.

The 8-0 decision followed an appeal to the high court from backers of the project, which aims to quadruple oil production in a remote area of sandstone and sagebrush.

The decision will have a sweeping impact on National Environmental Policy Act reviews, environmental groups said. President Donald Trump’s administration has already said it’s working to support his January declaration of a “national energy emergency” and his vow to boost U.S. oil and gas production.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh referred to the decision as a “course correction” in an opinion fully joined by four conservative colleagues.

“Congress did not design NEPA for judges to hamstring new infrastructure and construction projects,” Kavanaugh wrote. The three liberal justices agreed the Utah project should gain approval, but they would have taken a narrower path.

The justices reversed a lower court decision that required a more thorough environmental review and restored an important approval from federal regulators on the Surface Transportation Board.

The board’s chair, Patrick Fuchs, said the ruling reins in the scope of environmental reviews that are “unnecessarily hindering” infrastructure construction throughout the country.

The case centers on the Uinta Basin Railway project, a proposed 88-mile expansion that would connect the oil-rich region of northeast Utah to the national rail network, allowing oil and gas producers to access larger markets. The state’s crude oil production was valued at $4.1 billion in 2024, according to a Utah Geological Survey report, and could increase substantially via the expansion project.

Construction, though, does not appear to be imminent. Project leaders must win additional approvals and secure funding from private-sector partners before they can break ground, Uinta Basin Railway spokesperson Melissa Cano said.

Environmental groups and a Colorado county had argued that regulators must consider a broad range of potential impacts when they consider new development, such as increased wildfire risk, the effect of additional crude oil production from the area and increased refining in Gulf Coast states.

The justices, though, found that regulators were right to consider the direct effects of the project, rather than the wider upstream and downstream impacts. Kavanaugh wrote that courts should defer to regulators on “where to draw the line” on factors to consider.

“The goal of the law is to inform agency decision-making, not to paralyze it,” he said.

The court has taken steps to curtail the power of federal regulators in other cases, however. For instance, it struck down the decades-old Chevron doctrine that made it easier for the federal government to set a wide range of regulations.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in a concurrence that the court could have simply cleared the way for the railway approval by saying that regulators did not need to consider increased fossil fuel production tied to the project.

Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the case after facing calls to step aside over ties to Philip Anschutz, a Colorado billionaire whose ownership of oil wells in the area means he could benefit if the project goes through. Gorsuch, as a lawyer in private practice, previously represented Anschutz.

The Trump administration announced last month it’s accelerating environmental reviews of projects required under the same law at the center of the Utah case, compressing a process that typically takes a year or more into just weeks.

“The court’s decision gives agencies a green light to ignore the reasonably foreseeable consequences of their decisions and avoid confronting them,” said Sambhav Sankar, senior vice president of programs at Earthjustice.

Wendy Park, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said opponents would continue to fight the Utah project.

“This disastrous decision to undermine our nation’s bedrock environmental law means our air and water will be more polluted, the climate and extinction crises will intensify, and people will be less healthy,” she said.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, said the ruling affirms a “balanced approach” to environmental oversight. He praised the railroad expansion as a critical infrastructure project that will help “restore America’s energy independence” and bolster the state’s rural economy.

The project’s public partner also applauded the ruling.

“It represents a turning point for rural Utah — bringing safer, sustainable, more efficient transportation options, and opening new doors for investment and economic stability,” said Keith Heaton, director of the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition.

Editor’s note: Schoenbaum reported from Salt Lake City.

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