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Contractor & Industry Standards
The Contractor & Industry Standards committee undertakes to develop the accepted definition of what makes a qualified electrical contractor and works with other stakeholders to develop standards of safe and professional electrical installations.
During the course of the year, the Chair of the Contractor & Industry Standards committee changed hands – many thanks to Glenn Carr for his many years of leadership and to Gary Beer for taking on this important role for the Association.
Electrical Contractor Registration Agency and Provincial Licensing
The original purpose of the Electrical Contractor Registration Agency of ECAO (ECRA) was to administer a provincial system of examining and registering master electricians and electrical contractors.
On March 17, 2006, ECAO officially transferred ECRA to the Electrical Safety Authority, including all rights to the pre-exam course, logos and registrant data.
The regulation enabling province-wide licensing was approved in November 2005 and the one year transition period commenced January 1, 2006. The ECRA of ESA began accepting applications for Master Electrician and Electrical Contractor Licenses on July 1, 2006 with the objective to have all contractors licensed in time for the January 1, 2007 start date. At the time of writing this report, about 3,500 contractor licenses and 1300 provisional contractor licenses had been issued by ECRA of ESA.
The advent of province wide licensing has spurred demand for the pre-masters exam course. More than 2,000 electrical workers have taken the course over the last year, giving industry standards a significant boost.
Glenn Carr and Gary Beer represent ECAO on the ECRA of ESA board and Glenn Carr is its first Chairman. Other constituents of the board are from ESA, government, Ontario Electrical League and consumers.
Standard Practices
ECAO continues to be involved in the Kennedy Electric vs. Rumble Automation case where the courts ruled that the Construction Lien Act does not apply to the installation of process equipment in an industrial establishment or in an industrial building. In the court’s view, the installation – however permanent – is not an improvement to the building. The ECAO, in partnership with a number of other stakeholders, funded the appeal of this decision in the Divisional Court. In a split decision, the court upheld the original decision.
In March of 2006, the ECAO board approved supporting a further appeal to the Court of Appeal for Ontario. The Appeal was heard on April 25, 2007. The panel reserved judgment with no decision being issued at the time of writing this report.
ECAO is working with the Council of Ontario Construction Association’s (COCA’s) construction lien act committee to develop amendments which will, among other things, ensure that the Construction Lien Act covers industrial process work, regardless of the outcome of the legal process in the Kennedy case.
The committee gets involved in other standard practices issues as well, including combating reverse auction tendering, promotion of bid depository to the provincial government and maintaining relations with Infrastructure Ontario.
The new ECAO strategic plan makes the payment issue a priority and assigns the responsibility for education, research and policy development to the Contractor & Industry Standards Committee.
ESA Relations
Maintaining relations with ESA is one of the more important roles of the Contractor & Industry Standards committee. The Contractor & Industry Standards committee supports ECAO representatives on a number of ESA committees and councils. The Contractor Advisory Council (CoAC) is comprised of thirteen industry representatives, including, from ECAO:
- Gary Beer
- Glenn Carr
- Dan Lancia
- Frank Talenti
- Joe Spadafora, and
- Eryl Roberts.
In addition to managing the relationship between ESA and the electrical contracting industry, the CoAC recruits contractor representatives to sit on various ESA committees including the Ontario Provincial Code committee, the Fee Restructuring committee and Appeals Tribunals.
As noted above, the ECAO also participates in both the ECRA Board and ECRA Master Examining Board.
Practices & Policies
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