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Trade Playbook
Industrial construction — plants, refineries, mines, power, and process facilities — is a world apart, and the questions reflect it: how owner safety-qualification systems (ISNetworld, Avetta) gate everything before you can even quote, why it's union- and certified-trade dominated, the shutdown/turnaround economics, and whether the pay and per-diem are worth the travel and the camps.
Where it starts
Top union rates + shutdown OT
Certified trade on industrial
Where it tops out
Large
Established industrial contractor
Ontario figures for industrial construction, from the first day on site to the top of the trade. Approximate, and worth checking against current collective agreement rates and job postings in your region.
| Stage | Pay | What is going on at this stage |
|---|---|---|
| Certified trade on industrial | Top union rates + shutdown OT | Steamfitters, millwrights, boilermakers, electricians — among the best-paid hands in construction. |
| Industrial PM / estimator | $100k–150k+ | Running industrial projects and turnarounds. |
| Industrial specialty contractor | Business income | A mechanical, electrical, or specialty sub on plant work. |
| Established industrial contractor | Large | Owner relationships, certified crews, and safety qualification are the moat. |
Every figure above is what industrial contractors get paid. It is not what you charge once you run a industrial construction business. Your rate has to carry the hours you are not on the tools, the truck, the tools themselves, WSIB, insurance, the quote you wrote and lost, and the holdback sitting in someone else's account for 60 days. Contractors who set their rate off their old hourly wage are the ones who work every weekend and still cannot say whether the year was profitable.
The step from paid by the hour to paid by the jobScale, specialize into a high-value niche (pressure piping, millwrighting, instrumentation), or sell. Industrial contractors with safety qualification, certified crews, and owner relationships are high-value and hard to replace — those owner relationships and the safety record are the real, sellable assets.
Wage data, union rate sheets, and the places industrial contractors talk about money openly.
The rates above are the market. The live feed is the market this week: which builders and contractors just pulled a permit or won a contract in Ontario, what they are about to need, and who to call.
Construction Craft Worker and Labourer Jobs in Ontario: Who Is HiringAEC Stack handles incorporation, WSIB, insurance certificates, quoting, invoicing, and chasing the money, so a industrial construction business runs like one with an office behind it.
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