A subcontract award decision and a compliance decision are two different questions, made under the same deadline pressure. This is the intake sequence that keeps them from getting blurred together.
Key takeaways
STEP 01 OF 10
CCDC describes its Contractor's Qualification Statement as "a standard format for contractors to provide information about their company, capacity, skill, and experience," covering company information (legal structure, financial details, insurance references, health and safety information, construction work valuations), key personnel, and documented project experience across three categories: completed work from the past five years, comparable projects, and work currently underway (ccdc.org/document/ccdc11/).
Use it even on projects too small to justify a formal RFQ process. The form's structure alone — forcing a sub to document company standing, named personnel, and real project history — surfaces more than an informal reference check does.
CCDC notes CCDC 29 as the companion guide for how to actually run a pre-qualification process built around CCDC 11 — useful once a project's size justifies the fuller process described in step four, but the intake form itself is worth requiring on every project regardless of size.
STEP 02 OF 10
A WSIB clearance certificate is "valid for all your contracts and is valid for up to 90 days" (wsib.ca/en/clearances). Pull it as part of the intake gate itself, before the subcontract is signed — not as a formality confirmed only once the first invoice arrives.
If the subcontract will run longer than 90 days, that fact belongs in the intake file from day one, flagging that a recheck is coming, rather than being discovered later as a surprise.
A first-time clearance for a sub new to WSIB registration often comes with an initial advance payment on the sub's side — typically $250, applied as an account credit. That's not a GC-side cost, but knowing it exists explains why a brand-new sub's clearance can take slightly longer to process at first request than an established one's.
STEP 03 OF 10
A certificate valid today but expiring midway through the project isn't a pass at intake — it's a scheduled gap. Compare the certificate's expiry date against the subcontract's expected end date explicitly, and flag any mismatch before the contract is signed, not after work has started.
STEP 04 OF 10
CCDC 29 sets out pre-qualification types — unlimited, short-listing, or source-list — along with best practices for the Request for Qualifications process: checklists, submissions, evaluation, interviews and notification (ccdc.org/document/ccdc29/). Decide in advance which project size or complexity triggers this fuller process rather than your own vendor panel's simpler intake bar.
A source-list approach is effectively a standing, pre-qualified panel — the same underlying discipline described in building a vendor panel you can rely on, applied here to subcontractors instead of maintenance vendors.
STEP 05 OF 10
Ontario names 23 compulsory trades requiring a current Certificate of Qualification, Provisional C of Q, or Registered Training Agreement (skilledtradesontario.ca). Confirm this at the individual level for the specific workers the sub is assigning, not just at the level of the subcontracting company's general trade classification.
A subcontractor's own hiring practices are outside a GC's direct control, which is exactly why this check belongs at intake — verifying it after the crew has already started work is too late to prevent the exposure.
STEP 06 OF 10
COR certification, working toward it, or neither — ask the question directly, but treat the answer as one input among several rather than an automatic pass/fail, unless a GC's own written policy specifically requires COR. COR is a voluntary national programme, not itself an OHSA or OHS Code requirement (ihsa.ca/COR: "IHSA is the 'Authority having Jurisdiction' to grant COR in the province of Ontario").
A sub with no COR certification but a strong, documented safety record isn't automatically a worse risk than a COR-certified one with a thin project history — weigh the full intake picture, not one flag in isolation.
STEP 07 OF 10
Ontario's OHSA distinguishes a constructor from an employer, and the notice-of-project and reporting obligations attach differently depending on which role a party holds. Confirm explicitly, before work starts, which party — the GC or the sub — is filing any required notice for this specific subcontract, rather than assuming it defaults to whoever usually handles it.
Put the answer in writing inside the intake file itself, not just in a verbal understanding between the two parties. If a notice is ever missed, the file should show clearly which party owned the obligation.
The distinction traces to the Act's own definitions, not just to convention: OHSA's s. 1(1) defines "constructor" narrowly, around the person who takes on a project for an owner, while its definition of "employer" is deliberately wide enough to catch a sub who has simply agreed to perform work for someone else on the job — a GC, another sub, or the constructor itself. A firm can be the job's employer without ever being its constructor, which is exactly why the two roles, and the separate notice obligations attached to each, can land on different parties on the same job.
STEP 08 OF 10
Every intake document — the CCDC 11, the WSIB clearance, the insurance certificate, the licensing confirmation — should be filed against the specific subcontract number, not in a loose vendor folder shared across every project that vendor has ever worked on. In a dispute, this becomes evidence tied to the specific contract in question, not a generic vendor history that has to be reconstructed after the fact.
This also protects the GC on a repeat vendor relationship — a document current for one project isn't automatically assumed current for the next one just because the same sub is involved. Each subcontract gets its own complete intake file, even for a sub the GC has worked with many times before.
STEP 09 OF 10
A WSIB clearance collected at award only covers the first 90 days of a longer contract. Build the recheck date into the project schedule itself, not just the vendor file, so it surfaces the same way any other project milestone does.
In BC, this step looks different: WorkSafeBC's clearance letter "shifts liability" for the entire length of the contract rather than expiring on a fixed day count (worksafebc.com/en/insurance/why-clearance-letter) — a BC subcontract doesn't need the same recheck cadence an Ontario one does.
STEP 10 OF 10
A lapsed clearance, no insurance, no required licence — write the conditions that disqualify a sub down as policy before a live decision has to be made under bid-award pressure. A decision made in writing, in advance, is far more defensible than one improvised the week before a project starts, when the pressure to award the contract is at its highest.
Apply the written conditions identically regardless of how badly a project needs the specific sub in question. The conditions exist precisely for the situation where following them is inconvenient.
Include an explicit exception process too — who can approve a documented, time-limited waiver, and what has to be recorded when they do. A policy with no exception path tends to get quietly overridden instead of formally waived, which defeats the purpose of writing it down.
Accepting a WSIB clearance certificate at face value without checking the online lookup. A certificate can be altered or simply out of date. Verify it against WSIB's own system rather than trusting a PDF a vendor forwarded, especially at intake for a new relationship.
Treating COR certification as a legal requirement to bid. It's a voluntary national programme unless a GC's own policy makes it mandatory. Stating it as a legal requirement when it isn't misrepresents the actual bar to a subcontractor.
Collecting CCDC 11 but never reading past the cover page. The form's value is in the project-experience and personnel detail, not the fact that it was submitted. A CCDC 11 filed and never reviewed is no better than no intake form at all.
Assuming a repeat subcontractor's file from a prior project is still current. Clearances and certificates expire regardless of the relationship's history. File a complete, current intake for every new subcontract, even with a vendor the GC has used for years.
Scenario. An Ontario subcontract runs 200 days. A WSIB clearance collected at award (day 0) covers only the first 90 days. Rechecking at day 90 covers through day 180 — still 20 days short of the contract's end. A third check at day 180 covers the remainder. That's three total clearance checks across the 200-day contract (day 0, day 90, day 180), not one — a schedule that only checks at award and assumes coverage for the full contract length is exposed for the final third of the project.
Not under OHSA or the OHS Code — it's a voluntary programme. Some owners or GCs require it as a matter of their own contract terms, which is a business decision, not a statutory one.
Treat it as an immediate pause-and-verify event rather than a paperwork follow-up. Confirm the clearance is re-obtained before the sub continues work, and document the gap regardless of how quickly it's resolved.
No — it documents what the sub reports about their own project history. Calling the named references is still worth doing, particularly for a sub new to the GC's own project history.
Before signing, at minimum — document collection as part of the award decision itself, not a follow-up task after the contract is already in force. A disqualifying gap found post-signature is a much harder problem to unwind.
The core documents — clearance, insurance, applicable licence — apply universally, but the fuller CCDC 29 pre-qualification process is reasonably reserved for projects or trades that cross a size or complexity threshold the GC sets in advance.
A 30-minute call is enough to map the gate against your current subcontracting practice.
