The week between award and mobilisation is not idle time before the real work starts — it is a fixed list of notices, registrations and confirmations, several with their own lead times that can eat the whole week on their own.
Key takeaways
STEP 01 OF 10
In Ontario, a Notice of Project under O. Reg. 213/91 s.6 is required once the total cost of labour and materials is expected to exceed $50,000 (or $250,000 for a project confined to an automobile-manufacturing factory). Check the project's estimated value against that threshold on day one, not partway through mobilisation — a project that clears the line needs a signed notice posted somewhere available for inspector review before work meaningfully begins. See the regulator's own notice-filing guidance.
British Columbia's threshold under OHSR 20.2 is different: $100,000, or any project involving professional-engineer design, tall structures, cofferdam or compressed-air work, or a trench over 30 metres long. Do not carry Ontario's $50,000 figure onto a BC project.
STEP 02 OF 10
Every constructor and employer engaged in construction in Ontario must complete Form 1000 before beginning work at a project. It does not need to be submitted to the Ministry — but it must be physically at the project while the employer is working there. Build this into the mobilisation checklist as a paperwork item completed at the office and carried to site, not filed anywhere.
This is an easy item to lose track of precisely because it is never submitted anywhere — there is no filing confirmation to check later, only a document that needs to already be on site the day an inspector asks for it.
STEP 03 OF 10
A WSIB clearance certificate request made by email takes three to five business days to return. In a five-business-day mobilisation week, that turnaround alone can consume 60 to 100% of the available time if the request goes out on Monday instead of the prior Friday. Build the clearance request into the pre-award or award-day sequence, not the mobilisation-week checklist itself.
The certificate is valid for up to 90 days once issued, so a firm juggling several project awards in a short window can request clearances ahead of individual mobilisation dates and still have them current when each one starts.
STEP 04 OF 10
In Ontario, any business owning or running a construction operation — with or without employees — must register with the WSIB, with 10 calendar days from the day the first employee is hired to complete registration. A new registrant typically makes an initial advance payment of $250, applied as a credit to the account. Confirm this is done before mobilisation, not assumed because the firm has worked in construction before.
British Columbia's equivalent is the WorkSafeBC clearance letter rather than a WSIB certificate — the underlying purpose is the same, but the two systems are not interchangeable documents, and a clearance from one province does not substitute for the other.
STEP 05 OF 10
In Ontario, a JHSC is required on a construction project once it is expected to employ 20 or more workers regularly for three months or more. A short-duration project that never crosses either threshold may not need a JHSC at all — but a project that starts small and later scales past 20 workers needs the committee stood up before it crosses the line, not after. Build the crew-size and duration forecast into the mobilisation plan specifically to catch this.
Where a committee is required, at least two of its members must be certified, with refresher training required every three years — confirm certified members are available before the committee is legally required, since certification training itself takes time to arrange.
STEP 06 OF 10
If the project includes a trench more than 1.2 metres deep into which a worker may enter, Ontario requires notice before work on it begins. British Columbia's trench definition and its notice trigger are different — OHSR 20.1 defines a trench specifically, and its 24-hour advance notice under OHSR 20.2 applies more broadly to trenches over 30 metres long as one of several notice triggers. Confirm the applicable definition and timing for the project's actual province before excavation is scheduled into the first week.
This is a notice that is easy to miss specifically because excavation is often one of the first physical activities on site — the paperwork has to be ready before the equipment, not alongside it.
STEP 07 OF 10
Mobilisation week is when the document control system needs to already exist, not when it gets built. See a document control system for a GC for the structure itself — the mobilisation task here is simply standing up that structure for this specific project: the folder or software instance, the submittal log, the drawing revision tracker, all live before the first RFI comes in.
A project that mobilises without its document control system ready spends its first month reconstructing a log that should have existed on day one.
STEP 08 OF 10
Every subcontractor mobilising in week one should already have a complete package on file — see a subcontract package template set — including its own current WSIB or WorkSafeBC clearance, insurance certificate, and trade licence verification. Chasing a subcontractor's clearance certificate after its crew is already on site is a compliance gap that started the moment the crew walked through the gate.
This step and step three run in parallel, not sequence: the GC's own clearance and each mobilising subcontractor's clearance should be requested at the same time, given the same three-to-five-business-day lead time applies to all of them.
STEP 09 OF 10
Mobilisation is when the schedule should first record the anticipated substantial-performance date and, in Alberta, the contract price the statutory test will be calculated against. See standing up a scheduling function for how that date gets tracked and updated as the project proceeds — the mobilisation-week task is simply putting the initial reference point on the schedule, not leaving it to be calculated for the first time months later.
This matters because every downstream lien and holdback deadline in every province runs from a substantial-performance or completion date — a schedule that never explicitly names that date has nothing for those deadlines to run from.
STEP 10 OF 10
Before the crew count grows past whatever the JHSC threshold requires, run one review that confirms every item above: Notice of Project posted if required, Form 1000 on site, WSIB or WorkSafeBC clearance current for the GC and every mobilising subcontractor, trench and other applicable notices filed, document control live, and the schedule's substantial-performance reference point set.
This final review is what turns a list of individually correct actions into an actual mobilisation gate — a single point where someone confirms the whole week's work is done, rather than assuming each item was handled because nobody flagged a problem.
Requesting the WSIB clearance certificate on the first day of mobilisation week instead of before it. A three-to-five-business-day turnaround can consume most or all of a five-day mobilisation week if requested late.
Assuming Ontario's $50,000 Notice of Project threshold applies in British Columbia. BC's threshold is $100,000 under OHSR 20.2, with additional structural and design triggers Ontario's rule does not have.
Filing Form 1000 with the Ministry. It is not submitted anywhere — it only needs to be physically at the project while work is underway, which is easy to get backwards.
Waiting until crew size crosses 20 workers to think about a Joint Health and Safety Committee. Certified committee members take time to arrange — the assessment needs to happen against the project's forecast crew size, not its current one.
Letting subcontractor mobilisation outrun their own clearance and insurance verification. A crew on site without a current clearance certificate is a compliance gap dated from the day they arrived, not the day someone noticed.
Most of a mobilisation week is paperwork with a real lead time attached — here is where that time actually goes on a $180,000 Ontario project.
The project value clears both Ontario's $50,000 Notice of Project threshold and (hypothetically, if the work were in BC instead) BC's $100,000 threshold — so the notice question is settled immediately. The WSIB clearance certificate request goes out the business day before mobilisation officially starts; at a three-to-five-business-day turnaround, it returns somewhere between day 3 and day 5 of a five-day week — meaning if it is not requested early, the certificate may not be in hand until the mobilisation week is nearly over. Form 1000 takes an afternoon to complete and needs no lead time at all, but it has to physically travel to site before crews arrive, not follow them.
The dollar figure and the exact turnaround will vary by project and by how quickly WSIB processes a specific request — the fixed point is the sequencing: the item with the longest external lead time has to start before the week does, or it defines how long the week actually takes.
The mobilisation checklist itself does not change much province to province — but two of its items run on genuinely different rules.
A national mobilisation checklist template needs both province-specific branches built in, not a single generic notice-and-clearance step assumed to work everywhere.
It is a compliance risk to do so — the safer sequence is requesting clearance before or on the award date so it is in hand before crews mobilise, given the three-to-five business day turnaround.
In Ontario, the JHSC requirement for a construction project applies once it is expected to run three months or more with 20 or more regularly employed workers — a genuinely short project may fall under a different requirement, such as a single health and safety representative, depending on worker count.
The constructor is responsible for ensuring a signed copy is posted in a conspicuous place at the project or otherwise available for an inspector's review — it is a constructor-level obligation, not left to an individual subcontractor.
The form documents the constructor and employers engaged at the project; a change in constructor is a material change worth re-confirming the registration reflects, even though the form itself is never filed with the Ministry.
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