It’s been a year since seven of Ontario’s largest local construction associations launched Link2Build.ca.

“We are proud of what we’ve achieved since, and excited to bring even more to our users in the months to come,” says John DeVries, president of the Ottawa Construction Association.

Every day, Link2Build delivers three essential services to users: a news reporting service that covers Ontario’s construction industry, regular publishing of tender opportunities from public and private sector entities, and a forum to publish certificates of substantial performance (CSPs) and other notices required under Ontario’s Construction Act.

In its year of operation, Link2Build has counted a number of significant achievements. The site has published more than 800 news articles, reported on more than 12,000 bid opportunities, and published more than 1,800 CSPs and other government notices.

“I’m proud of our product and what we’ve achieved to date,” says DeVries. “Link2Build was the first entity in Ontario to make a number of changes to the CSP publishing process. We offered publishers the opportunity to upload their actual CSP forms to our site. No one was doing this prior to Link2Build. We provided immediate publishing of these notices. Other sites use to take days to publish. And we entered the market at a price that was far lower than anyone else—a fact that forced incumbents to drop their rates. In the process, we saved owners and contractors millions of dollars in publishing fees.”

So what’s next? Link2Build is busy building on its success with further functionality. Users can now subscribe to a daily news feed that includes a summary of the top news stories on the site, with invitations to learn more. They can also subscribe to a second email that provides a summary of the CSPs and other notices published that day—so they can stay on top of all required notice periods. A new invitation-to-bid platform is also in development, with a launch planned next month.

“The change we’re most excited about, though, is our capacity to offer pre-paid certificate packages,” says DeVries. “We’ve heard from a lot of our regular users that they’d prefer to buy a bundle of credits on our system and apply them to the certificates they publish, rather than entering their credit card details at every transaction. We listened, and we created packages in increments of five for up to 25 pre-paid credits.”

For more information on Link2Build.ca, and how to access the full suite of news and information services it offers, call 800-265-7847 or email info@link2build.ca.