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‘Not your grandfather’s construction industry’: A Q&A with new OCA boss Bill Ferreira

March 17, 2026

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Bill Ferreira has taken the reins of the Ottawa Construction Association at a momentous time for the local industry. The OCA’s new executive director replaces John DeVries, who retired earlier this month after 27 years as the group’s president and general manager. In many ways, the new job seems to fit Ferreira like a glove. The Carleton University alumnus previously spent eight-and-a-half years as executive director of BuildForce Canada, an Ottawa-based organization that tracks labour trends in the construction industry, and held various senior leadership roles with the Canadian Construction Association for nearly a decade before that. As a result, Ferreira was already very familiar with the OCA, Canada’s largest local construction association by number of members with about 1,200 firms under its umbrella, before joining the organization in January. “When the opportunity was presented to me, it was a no-brainer,” he says. Construction is a massive business, pumping more than $5 billion into the National Capital Region’s economy each year. And now, as he surveys the industry landscape, Ferreira sees a sector in transition. Local construction firms are grappling with a host of issues – among them, how to replenish an aging workforce and integrate emerging technologies such as AI into an industry that has not always been known as a trailblazer in that regard. Meanwhile, the sector is embarking on one of the largest construction projects in the city’s history: the multibillion-dollar plan to build The Ottawa Hospital’s new Civic campus on Carling Avenue. Ferreira recently chatted with OBJ about these issues and more. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. OBJ: What’s your overall assessment of Ottawa’s construction industry right now? BF: There’s a bit of a slowdown (in residential builds). We’re certainly seeing that. We’re not immune from it. It hit Toronto first, but we are starting to see a bit of a slowdown here. Also, changing market conditions – we’re moving away from multi-storey (properties). The demand for singles has been steady. Multi-storey low-rise, row housing, we’re continuing to see demand for that and semis, which are slightly less expensive than singles. The condo market does seem to be slowing. We’ve benefited from a lot of those projects being converted over to rentals. But not a lot of new projects are getting started. OBJ: What about non-residential projects? BF: On the (industrial, commercial and institutional) side, we’re still seeing a lot of activity. The market right now is primarily driven by federal investments into redeveloping many key public assets, such as Centre Block, the Parliamentary Precinct, we’re waiting on the (redevelopment) of the Supreme Court (building) to get started, the Pearson Building, the new library for the City of Ottawa and the national archives. We’re waiting on the final schedule related to the (new Civic campus of the Ottawa Hospital). That is going to take up a lot of the workforce in the city. We are seeing some interest in this market from contractors outside the market. That is a bit of an interesting trend. We typically don’t see that, but given that other markets are softer right now, we are starting to see more competition in the market from firms that don’t typically do work in the Ottawa area. That’s a function of just how soft things are right now in the (Greater Toronto Area). It also speaks to how lucky we are right now that we have a very buoyant market. OBJ: All those projects need people to build them, of course. How’s Ottawa doing on the labour front? BF: With market conditions softening slightly, I’m not hearing from our contractors quite as much about labour. We’ll see over the course of the summer just how busy a season it turns out to be and just how scarce labour really is. The main issue is demographics. We’ve got about 20 per cent of the population sitting between the ages of 50 and 64, and only about 16 per cent of the population under the age of 15. You don’t have to be a mathematician to figure out that, over the next 15 years, we’re going to have more people exiting the workforce than available to enter the workforce. Some workers will stay on a little bit longer … but the vast majority are going to be exiting, and we have to continue to remain focused on bringing labour into the industry – particularly convincing young people that these are very good, well-paying, satisfying careers, and that we should be a first choice, not a second choice or a backup choice when university doesn’t work out or some other career plan fell through. We’re not your grandfather's construction industry anymore. This is a modern industry that relies heavily on technology and skills. We need high-skilled individuals who can think for themselves and take direction at the same time, and can work in a team environment. That really is the key. OBJ: How are potential workers’ perceptions of the industry changing? BF: We’re starting to see, thankfully, a lot more interest on the part of young people to pursue careers in the trades, in part because we’ve had some very strong support from the federal government as well as the provincial government trying to promote careers in the trades to teens and newcomers (to Canada), and trying to encourage individuals in the Indigenous community to give the construction industry another look. And we’re seeing a lot of internal initiatives on the part of the industry itself to try and encourage more young women to get into the industry and try and change some of the perceptions that exist around construction. It’s a slow process, and it’s not going to happen overnight, but we are starting to see some progress. What I like about being here at the OCA is I’m really at the front line of that. For far too long this industry has suffered from (the perception that) it becomes kind of a fallback career as opposed to a career of choice. That’s not the case anymore. We’re seeing a sea change in terms of parents’ attitudes towards the construction industry and in general towards the trades. And that part has also been led by the investments that we’ve seen from both the federal and provincial governments into trying to rebrand the public perception around the trades, that these are good, well-paying careers. You hear the premier talk about this all the time. OBJ: Are there things you’d like to see governments do to attract more new talent to the industry? BF: The one area where we continue to see some challenges is the overall demographics of the country. Fast-forward 15 years from now, we’re going to see a gap. Our biggest challenge remains that our immigration policies are very much focused on individuals with a university degree, typically master’s or better, which makes it really difficult for us to bring in the kind of individuals with skilled trades experience that we need to help supplement our domestic recruitment efforts. The federal government is certainly focused on this, but despite those best efforts, we continue to see very, very low numbers of individuals with skilled trades experience admitted to the country. I know the Canadian Construction Association is working on this with the federal government to try and bring about some reforms to current policy. We continue to be an industry that does not benefit greatly from the federal immigration system, and we would love to see some reform on that front. If you come in as a skilled trades worker right now, you will have no problem finding work in the construction industry. That isn’t necessarily true of somebody coming in with a master’s degree that may be looking to pursue a career requiring a professional designation that may take some time to get themselves accredited. Asking the construction industry to take somebody who’s an environmental engineer and turn them into a carpenter, they didn’t come to Canada to be a carpenter. Send us the carpenters instead, and we’ll make sure that they’re working in Canada and that they adhere to Canadian standards. OBJ: How is technology such as AI changing the way the industry does business? BF: The reality is, we’ve got to speed up the pace at which we build things. We’re starting to see a lot more use of modular construction. Obviously, everyone is familiar with 3D printing and the opportunities that exist there. On the heavy industrial side, we’re starting to see a lot of new technology being introduced that allows you to (conduct) blueprint development and reviews on site. In a lot of cases, workers can now see on their cellphones what they’re being asked to build. When you start marrying that together with augmented-reality glasses, and once we start seeing lower internet latency, you can start getting very real-time instruction and direction as to where to deploy workers. When you can actually track your deliveries and where they are, whether they're stuck in traffic or not and you’ve got a crew that’s waiting on them … the site supervisor now has the capacity to start moving individuals around so that there’s no down time. OBJ: How about the industry’s willingness to adopt new technologies? BF: You’re starting to see a lot of technologies. They’re very much in their infancy. I like to think much of this is kind of (similar to) early-stage Blackberries. We’re not yet to the first-generation iPhone, but it’s not far off. It’s important to remember that this is not your grandfather’s industry. We really are becoming, like most other industries, a lot more dependent on the use of technology, particularly monitoring and modelling technology, so that we have a very good sense of not only what it’s going to take to build the project, but the overall modelling of the life cycle of that project and ensuring that project is built in such a way to try and maximize its useful service life. We’re starting to see those technologies find their way to market, and they’re coming quickly. OBJ: Can you give an example of a project that has really benefited from new technology? BF: When you look at the technology that went into the refurbishment of the Centre Block, there was a tremendous amount of innovation that went into that. These are buildings that are irreplaceable. There’s no amount of insurance that would cover the loss of the Centre Block. So when you factor all of that in, it really does speak to the innovation that exists within this industry. We really are in many ways at the forefront of some of these really innovative technologies. We can hold our own against any construction industry around the globe.