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Trade Playbook
Commercial construction has no special provincial trade licence, but the prequalification bar — bonding, $5M insurance, COR safety certification, and references — is what actually gates entry to the work.
Commercial Construction at a glance
Learn it. Earn it. Own it. Pick the door that matches where you are.
No provincial commercial-contractor licence exists, but commercial and institutional owners gate access through prequalification: surety bonding capacity, $5M CGL, often COR® safety certification, financial statements, and project references. Building permits and the Ontario Building Code govern the work; compulsory trades must be certified.
Commercial owners almost always require $5M CGL, surety bonds (bid, performance, labour & material payment), and frequently COR certification. Wrap-up liability may be required on larger projects.
Commercial construction isn't a trade you learn — it's a market you graduate into, and the questions are a contractor's, not an apprentice's: how to break in past the prequalification wall, why bonding and COR gate everything, tenant fit-outs versus ICI new construction, and how getting paid works when the client is a developer sitting on your holdback.
From day one to the top of the trade. Ontario figures, approximate and worth verifying against current rates.
Running commercial projects for someone else — the path to running your own.
Volatile, and bonding capacity caps how much you can carry at once.
Business income and developer-scale risk, not a salary.
Office and retail build-outs for tenants and landlords — smaller, faster, and far less bonding-intensive. The realistic entry to commercial.
Best for: Contractors breaking into commercial from residential.
Institutional, commercial, and industrial buildings — full prequalification, bonding, big tickets and slow draws.
Pay: Large, slow-paying.
Best for: Established firms with bonding and a track record.
Schools, hospitals, and government work — strict prequalification, mandatory bonding, and COR safety certification.
Best for: Firms built for the prequalification game.
Surety bonding capacity, $5M insurance, COR® safety certification, financial statements, and project references — assembled into a prequalification package owners score before you can even bid. This is the wall most residential contractors hit.
Best for: Anyone serious about commercial.
You don't apprentice into commercial — you come from a trade or a residential GC and break in through the prequalification process. Build bonding capacity by showing financial strength to a surety, get COR-certified, assemble a prequalification package, and win smaller tenant fit-outs to build references before bidding larger ICI and institutional work.
Scale into a larger GC, specialize as a commercial trade contractor on a niche, or sell. A commercial contractor with bonding capacity, a management team, a safety program, and a backlog is a genuinely valuable, sellable asset — the bonding and the systems are worth more than the tools.
The communities, official bodies, and wage data tradespeople actually use.
The official pages that govern this trade. Bookmark these, they are the final word on requirements and fees.
AEC Stack handles incorporation, licensing, insurance, compliance, and operations, so you can focus on the work.
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