Every trade on this hub eventually deals with a permit. A utility contractor deals with something that runs earlier and is easy to underestimate: the locate request that has to clear before the ground can legally be disturbed at all. Miss that clock and the rest of the schedule — trenching, notice of project, the actual install — never gets the chance to matter.
Key takeaways
Start with the clock that runs before any other part of a utility contractor's schedule can move. Before ground is disturbed anywhere in Ontario, a locate request must be submitted, and click-or-call-before-you-dig applies to every job, big or small. Responsibility for making that request does not follow the property owner or the general contractor — it follows whoever is holding the shovel: the person physically completing the excavation is responsible for obtaining locates, regardless of whose property the excavation is occurring on. That single sentence is why a utility contractor's own project tracking has to own the locate request, rather than assume the client or the site owner already handled it — the legal obligation sits with whoever's crew is in the trench.
The request itself is simple to file; the wait is where a schedule gets built wrong. Infrastructure owners are legally bound to provide locates within a legislated timeframe of 5 business days for a single-address request, or 10 business days for an advanced request — though there is no guarantee a locate will actually arrive within either window. A dispatch schedule built as though a crew can be on site the day after a locate request is filed is built on a five-to-ten-day gap that does not exist yet on paper, and every utility contractor on this hub eventually loses a billable day to a client who assumed otherwise. The honest planning number is the legislated window plus a buffer for the "no guarantee" language the regulator itself uses, not the fastest locate the contractor has ever personally seen.
Getting a clean locate answers one question — where the buried infrastructure is — and it is a separate question from whether the trench itself needs its own notice. Ontario's own occupational health and safety guidance sets a distinct trigger for excavation depth: a trench notice is required if the project includes work on a trench more than 1.2 metres deep into which a worker may enter, entirely separate from the locate process and from the general Notice of Project threshold. A utility contractor digging a shallow service connection may need only a locate; the same contractor digging a deeper main-line trench needs the locate, the trench notice, and very possibly a Notice of Project on top of both — three separate obligations stacked on one hole in the ground, each with its own trigger.
Worked example — scheduling around the locate window, not against it
A utility contractor is asked to start a service-line install on a Monday. A locate request is filed that same Monday morning.
Ontario One Call's standard window for a single-address request is at least 5 business days. Counting from the Monday filing, the earliest legally supportable start date is the following Monday — not the Wednesday a rushed client is hoping for.
Because the regulator itself states there is no guarantee the locate arrives inside that window, the contractor books the crew provisionally for the following Tuesday rather than Monday, leaving one buffer day rather than promising a date the locate process does not actually guarantee.
That one buffer day is the entire difference between a schedule the contractor controls and a schedule a delayed locate controls for them.
Three uses hold up against that shape. First, filing and tracking the locate request as its own milestone with its own legislated window, rather than folding it into a generic "permits" checklist item that hides how long the actual wait is. Second, flagging when a job's excavation depth crosses the 1.2-metre trench-notice threshold so that requirement is caught at the estimating stage, not discovered by a site inspector after the trench is already open. Third, tracking which province's Notice of Project threshold and lead time applies for a multi-province utility contractor's active jobs, since Ontario's dollar figure and BC's dollar figure plus mandatory notice period are not the same rule.
Once the locate and any trench notice are handled, a larger utility job may still trigger a Notice of Project, and the trigger is not the same number everywhere. Ontario's threshold sits at an expected total cost of labour and materials exceeding $50,000 with no stated lead time. British Columbia's OHSR 20.2 sets its own bar — a $100,000 estimated cost trigger with additional structural triggers, and a mandatory minimum 24 hours' written notice before work begins. A utility contractor working both provinces needs both thresholds and both lead-time rules tracked separately, not a single "notice of project" flag that silently assumes one province's numbers apply everywhere.
A locate only exists for the duration of the ticket it was issued against. Once a utility contractor backfills a trench, the only lasting record of exactly where that new line sits is whatever as-built documentation the contractor itself produced — GPS coordinates, depth, offset from a fixed reference point. A utility contractor whose as-built records are a rough sketch on a paper form is quietly creating the next locate's uncertainty: a future crew digging near that same line will only be as accurate as the record left behind by the contractor who buried it. Consistent, structured as-built capture at backfill time is not a compliance nicety on this trade — it is the raw material every future locate on that stretch of ground depends on.
Related reading: how road building reconciles weigh-scale quantities against day sheets and building a notice-of-project filing workflow that tracks provincial thresholds.
The person physically completing the excavation is responsible for obtaining locates, regardless of whose property the excavation occurs on. It is not automatically the site owner's or the general contractor's obligation.
The legislated timeframe is at least 5 business days before digging for a single-address request, or 10 business days for an advanced request, though the regulator itself states there is no guarantee a locate will arrive within either window.
No. A locate identifies buried infrastructure before excavation begins. A separate trench notice is required in Ontario for any excavation more than 1.2 metres deep into which a worker may enter, regardless of what the locate found.
No. It can file the request, track the legislated window, and flag depth or cost thresholds that trigger additional notices. Only the infrastructure owner's locate response and a qualified person on site confirm it is actually safe to proceed.
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