If you’re someone who is looking to start your career, or who is considering a career change, you owe it to yourself to look at the construction sector.
No matter where you look across the country — and especially across Eastern Ontario — construction is booming. Governments at all levels are investing heavily in the sector to meet the needs of a growing population. That’s why you see so many schools, hospitals, roads, highways and bridges springing up almost everywhere you look. The private sector is just as busy, with almost as many office towers, condo buildings and warehouses under construction.
Importantly, construction is also playing a major role in shaping Canada’s future. Construction, for example, is leading the effort to build more homes to address Canada’s housing affordability crisis, and it’s helping to reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions by greening buildings.
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We’ve compiled a list of five major projects that are either planned or currently underway across our region. These are major works that will take years to complete, will make meaningful differences to the communities they serve for generations to come and will generate hundreds of skilled jobs.
CHEO’s New Integrated Treatment Centre, Ottawa
CHEO started construction on its new Integrated Treatment Centre — known as 1Door4Care — in November 2023. The goal of the project is to merge seven care locations that the hospital currently leases across Ottawa into a single, state-of-the-art, purpose-built site on CHEO’s main Smyth Road campus.
The six-storey, 200,000-square-foot building is expected to be completed in 2028. It will include a host of features and functions such as a multi-use clinic space, a physiotherapy rehab gym and spaces for care for patients with complex needs. And with sustainability foremost in mind, the building has been designed to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver certification.
Building the $370-million facility is a team led by one of Canada’s largest contractors, EllisDon. During the construction period, the project will draw on the expertise of countless construction trades workers, with trades such as concrete finishers in demand early on, and electricians, sheet-metal workers and steamfitters in demand in its middle and later stages.
Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital, Picton
Staying with the health-care sector, work is about to start on another long-term hospital project, this one in Picton.
A new, two-storey, 92,000-square-foot Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital building has been designed to respond to the needs of this growing community. It will feature an expanded, 24-hour emergency department with as many as 13 rooms, a helipad, a surgical suite, a dialysis unit and other specializations.
Like the CHEO build in Ottawa, the new Prince Edward County Hospital will call on the expertise of a wide variety of construction trades. Those building the outer shell of the building will include heavy equipment operators, concrete finishers and crane operators; those called on in later stages of the work will include electricians, mechanical trades and floor covering installers.
Lansdowne 2.0, Ottawa
The City of Ottawa is currently in the early stages of planning its second major expansion and reconfiguration of the Glebe’s Lansdowne Park.
The Lansdowne 2.0 project proposal includes a new event centre and north-side stands for the TD Place stadium, more retail spaces and the addition of two residential towers of up to 40 storeys each that would provide an influx of housing in the downtown core.
The city’s goal is to start work on at least the event centre and north-side stand components of the project in the first half of 2025.
If Lansdowne 2.0 gets the green light to proceed as planned, it will draw on construction workers from almost every trade imaginable. Early stages of the work will require skilled heavy equipment operators, general trades workers and demolition contractors. Later works will call on electricians, air-handling and plumbing trades, as well as finishing trades such glaziers and roofers.
And don’t discount the significant need for construction managers and supervisors, whose expertise will be needed to co-ordinate work on a busy site that will likely still be open to the public during construction.
R.H. Saunders Generating Station, Cornwall
In Cornwall, Ontario Power Generation (OPG) has announced the start of work on the refurbishment of the R.H. Saunders Generating Station.
The facility is the second-largest generating station in the province, with an output of a whopping 1,045 megawatts, or enough energy to power more than 800,000 homes annually.
OPG’s plan to refurbish the station calls for work to unfold in 16 stages across as many years. Estimated for completion in the early 2040s, the project will add up to 160 gigawatt-hours of additional clean electricity to the station’s output. That’s the equivalent to powering more than 19,000 additional homes.
Along the way, the project will create hundreds of highly skilled jobs across various civil, electrical and mechanical trades, as well as trades helpers and seasoned construction supervisors and managers.
The Ottawa Hospital Civic Campus Redevelopment, Ottawa
The largest project on our list by dollar value, the redevelopment of the Ottawa Hospital’s Civic Campus, also promises to be one of the most impactful.
The project is in the early stages of planning and building a massive, integrated campus on a 50-acre site adjacent to Dow’s Lake in Ottawa. The project plan calls for the construction of a 2.5-million square-foot, state-of-the-art health-care facility and academic research centre that aims to deliver world-class health care, while also training the next generation of health-care workers and enabling the discovery of life-changing research.
Valued at more than $2 billion, the project will be the largest of its kind ever built in our region. The Ottawa Hospital is currently working with a construction joint venture led by PCL Constructors Canada and EllisDon Corporation in the project’s development phase to define project requirements and build out its schedule and budget.
There’s not a construction trade that won’t be touched by this transformative project.
Construction is already underway on the building’s parking garage, with trades
such as labourers, concrete finishers, crane operators and truck drivers in high demand.
Work on the hospital building itself is expected to start later this year or early next and continue through to late 2028 or early 2029. Initially, that construction will draw on many of the same trades as the parking garage. As the building comes out of the ground, demands will shift to require electricians, elevator mechanics, plumbers, refrigeration and air conditioning mechanics, sheet metal workers, floor covering installers — and more.
Opportunities everywhere you look
When it comes to construction employment, the potential impact of just these five projects alone is massive. Together, they will create hundreds of jobs across the trades and other occupations within the sector. And this says nothing for the countless other projects that are planned or underway across our region and that aren’t listed here.
If you’re considering your career options, add construction to your list. There’s arguably never been a better time to join the ranks of this vibrant and dynamic industry.
