Ontario Construction News: Resources for public sector construction services purchasers

Ontario Construction News, the province’s first electronic daily construction trade newspaper, has published each business day since May 1, 2019. We’ve designed our publication to comply with both the Ontario Construction Act and the public notice publication provisions within the Legislation Act (2006).

Notably, the long-established former print daily publication serving the industry has decided to effectively emulate our publishing model, producing their newspaper in a page-turning PDF format like ours, along with full website coverage.

OCN offers some special resources and services for public sector purchasers:

Free posting of tender/notice advertisements

We’ll publish your tender or pre-qualification notice FREE in any single day’s issue of your choice. If you wish magnify and intensify the coverage, we’ll publish it in the PDF and WordPress site formats for an entire month for a flat fee of $249.00 plus HST. To take advantage of the free offer, or to arrange for a longer posting, send a note to chase@ontarioconstructionnews.com or phone him at (888) 627-8717 ext 212.

CSP and other notice postings

If you have a requirement to post a Certificate of Substantial Performance (CSP) or other publicly mandated notices as specified in Ontario Construction Act regulations, Ontario Construction News provides a competitive and legally compliant service. While you can fill in your notice online, you can also simply send the relevant completed form(s) to certificates@ontarioconstructionnews.com and our staff will key in the data, sending a proof before publication. We are set up to respond quickly — proofs signed off by 5 p.m. on the business day before publication will be published in the next day’s issue, with a Certificate of Publication issued that day.

CSP/notice searching

One of the biggest challenge of the new regulatory environment is that organizations seeking to verify when and where relevant certificates and notices have been published now need to search through several publications.

We’ve addressed this issue by developing a universal search site, at certificatesubstantialperformance.com. Viewers can search by keyword and time frame and find the relevant publication notices in one location. You can also request a daily email file of current notices.

News — updated daily

Ontario Construction News publishes a daily news update, which is freely available to all readers without requiring registration or any fee. As a bonus, we invite subscribers who register (again without fee) access to daily bidding and tender opportunities posted through DataBid.com. Full “Gold” subscriber access enhances content availability and Gold subscribers can request material from any Ontario Construction News back issue. OPBA members can receive a free Gold subscription by request to buckshon@ontarioconstuctionnews.com.

As well, of course, we welcome your news releases and announcements relating to policies, to encourage or report on bidding opportunities, or other materials you believe would be interesting to our readers. Send these to editor Robin McLennan at rmclennan@ontarioconstructionnews.com.