Calgary, Alberta
Manufacturing software in Calgary.
Custom systems for Calgary fabrication and oilfield equipment shops. Alberta pays half of an automation project, up to $30,000. Free thirty minute walkthrough.
Money toward it
Alberta pays half. Up to $30,000.
The Alberta Manufacturing Productivity Grant is a matching grant. It covers 50% of an eligible project, up to $30,000, for capital equipment, robotics, automation, and IoT technology, plus installation and training. It is run by Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters on behalf of the Government of Alberta, and its page was showing “Apply now” on 1 September 2026 (CME, read 18 Sep 2026; Government of Alberta).
Confirm the current intake date with CME before you plan around it. We will not print a deadline we have not read on the day.
The money
What the other half buys
We mapped a 90 person fabrication shop. 28.5 hours a week went into work nobody sells (the payback chart on pragmabuild.com/how-it-works).
- $30.86an hour, median. A manufacturing supervisor in the Calgary region.
- $880a week. 28.5 hours times $30.86.
- $45,735a year. $880 a week times 52.
Wage: Job Bank, Calgary region, 2024 data, read 18 Sep 2026.
Your shop is not that shop. The walkthrough measures yours.
Your town
Yes, this is your town
Calgary has 1,614 manufacturing businesses employing about 39,000 people (City of Calgary, read 18 Sep 2026). The city’s own economic development office names energy and environment, transportation and logistics, and agribusiness among its core sectors (Calgary Economic Development, read 18 Sep 2026).
In manufacturing terms that means machining and precision parts, fabrication, and customised equipment built for the resource industry.
Custom equipment is the hardest thing in the world to run on a template system. Every job is a one off, the bill of materials changes twice before it ships, and the estimate was made from last year’s numbers.
The work
What we build
Know what it is made of.
One structure per part, versioned. Change it once and every quote, job and purchase order downstream sees the change.
Know where the job is.
Job status, labour and material capture, stage sign off, and job costing actual against quoted.
Know what is on order.
Requisitions, approvals, purchase orders, vendor records, price history, expediting, and a three way match to the invoice.
Know it got billed.
Quote becomes job becomes shipment becomes invoice. Typed once.
There is one more we have built and it belongs here. A scanned drawing goes in with a field tag on it. The system works out what the part actually is and comes back with three hundred listings from sixty seven sellers, with price, condition, lead time, and whether the replacement will physically fit what is already installed. Where nobody lists the exact part, it names the people who could find it.
What we hear
What usually stops people
“We are not in BC. Does that matter?”
No. Most jobs run remote on a screen share and a phone camera. When the job needs boots on the floor, we come.
“Our estimator is the bottleneck and he is the best one we have.”
Then he should not be re-typing. On the shop we mapped, the quote being re-typed into the job was 6.5 hours a week on its own.
“We tried to replace the ERP once and it cost us a year.”
We do not do that. We build what is missing, connect it to what you already run, and leave the ERP alone.
“Skilled people are impossible to find.”
Alberta’s construction trades alone need about 59,000 workers by 2034, with 43,400 retirements coming (BuildForce Canada, read 18 Sep 2026). That is the argument for capturing what your senior people know before they go, and for getting the work done without adding people.
Next step
Book a walkthrough.
Free. Thirty minutes. A written map of your operation, every process priced, in payback order. Yours either way, and it is what a grant application needs.
Straight answers
- Do you work in Alberta?
- Yes. Most jobs run remote. When the job needs us on the floor, we come. We are in Kelowna, about 600 km away.
- Can Alberta help pay for it?
- The Alberta Manufacturing Productivity Grant matches 50% of an eligible project up to $30,000. Confirm the current intake with CME.
- We build custom equipment, never the same twice. Does that fit?
- That is the normal case here, not the hard one.
- Who owns the system?
- We keep the code. You keep your data and your freedom to leave. Thirty day exit, no penalty.