What We Do:
Before Construction
Even before shovels touch the ground, your company may benefit from advice on the issues that may arise on your project. No matter your role, we can help to select an appropriate structure, minimize and allocate known and unknown risks, assist with project implementation, and document the project in agreements between owners, consultants, contracting teams, insurers and sureties. Our lawyers will apply their experience to help set your company up for success on the project.
Choosing a Project Structure
Every construction project has unique challenges and various types of contracts lend themselves to different situations. We bring vast experience across different sectors and industries ranging from energy, transportation and infrastructure to institutional, commercial and residential construction projects.
A project’s contracting structure will determine relationships, statutory obligations, risk allocation, scope of work and other obligations between owners, contractors and trades. Kennaley Construction Law can help you weigh the advantages of different approaches to contracting to help you determine which structure best suits your needs. We can also help with understanding the impact of different models of contract delivery such as increasingly common PPP, construction management, and integrated project delivery models.
Procurement and Tendering
In the complex landscape of Ontario’s construction industry, navigating the “Contract A/Contract B” framework requires a precise legal strategy to mitigate risk and ensure compliance. Kennaley Construction Law can provide you with comprehensive guidance on the procurement process, from drafting rigorous Request for Proposals (RFPs) and Invitations to Tender to advising on the nuances of the Construction Act and the Broader Public Sector (BPS) Procurement Directive. If you are looking for help with structuring fair and transparent bidding processes that minimize the risk of confusion or disputes, we can assist. For Contractors looking to protect their interests during the submission and evaluation phases, we can advise and provide guidance. Whether you are navigating a public-private partnership (P3) or a private commercial build, we ensure your procurement strategy is legally sound, commercially competitive, and built to withstand the scrutiny of Ontario’s courts.
Project Security
As market shifts and legislative changes continue to increase market demand for project securitization, Kennaley Construction Law offers assistance with bonds and other security arrangements. We can provide advice on underwriting processes, domestic and international bonds and letters of credit, parent company guarantees, collateral warranties and indemnity agreements. Our lawyers are familiar with project finance and PPP transactions and have experience reviewing construction contracts and ancillary documents as part of lender and surety due diligence.
Insurance
Insurance has never been more important in Ontario’s construction industry. There was no better example of this than when the industry ground to a halt during the COVID-19 pandemic. Insurance can form the bedrock for a successful project by mitigating known and unknown physical and legal risks. From commercial general liability to builder’s risk and course of construction policies, we can work with you and your broker to help you acquire appropriate coverage for your project. We can also help you to better understand your policies.
Contract Drafting & Review
Our construction lawyers can help you develop and fine-tune your contracts before the work begins, to help ensure that important, project-specific details are covered. By reviewing documents prior to project commencement, we can help to identify unusual terms, identify gaps, improve clarity, and improve Construction Act compliance. We work with bespoke contracts as well as CCDC, OPSS, OAA and FIDIC and other known standard documents in their various forms and at all levels of the construction pyramid. We aim to provide practical, commercially-driven advice tailored to your specific objectives and risk appetite. With Kennaley Construction Law, you will have the benefit of our lawyers’ depth of experience across a broad range of sectors on both domestic and international projects.
Contract Negotiation
Drafting or reviewing a contract is often only the first step in reaching an agreement with your counterparty to get the deal done. Dealing with pushback on your preferred position can be daunting when you are under pressure to come to an agreement. The lawyers at Kennaley Construction Law can help to prepare you for negotiations or participate in negotiations directly alongside you. Understanding the importance of commerciality, we approach negotiations collaboratively to understand and address the concerns of your counterparty. This helps us to craft potential solutions that meet the needs of both parties to reach agreement without undermining your objectives.
Consultant Agreements
In Ontario, consultant agreements for architects, engineers, and specialized designers are governed by the Construction Act, professional regulations, and common law liability. Our firm provides strategic counsel to consultants at the start of the project lifecycle, ensuring that standard forms—such as the OAA 600, ACEC 2, or CCDC 31—are tailored to protect your professional interests. If you are looking to focus on critical risk-allocation provisions, including limitation of liability caps, indemnity alignment with professional liability insurance (PLI) coverage, or the precise definition of “Scope of Services” to prevent unauthorized scope creep, Kennaley Construction Law can assist.
Subcontract Drafting/Review
Whether you are a contractor trying to avoid being caught between an owner and your trades, or a subcontractor wanting to ensure you are treated fairly on the construction project, our construction lawyers can help you with drafting, reviewing and negotiating your subcontracts. Contractors often benefit from advice on how to cost-effectively incorporate your obligations under the prime contract into your subcontracts, in a way that avoids gaps in responsibility, provides clarity to all parties, ensures that risk is allocated to the party most capable of avoiding or bearing it, and works in practice as well as on paper. Our lawyers have considerable experience of passing-down the terms of bespoke prime contracts and contracts for public-private partnerships. We also work with subcontractors faced with trying to understand and navigate bespoke subcontracts or standard form subcontracts with extensive or unusual supplementary conditions; and subcontractors who wish to craft their own forms of contract to use with their suppliers and contractors.
Applying the Construction Act
With additional changes to the Construction Act coming into force at the start of 2026, understanding the requirements of owners, contractors and subcontractors is critical to ensuring that statutory obligations are met and legitimate entitlements are not inadvertently waived or lost. Our lawyers have written and spoken on many of the challenges created by the changes to the prompt payment, adjudication and holdback provisions of the Construction Act over the last ten years. We can assist you to navigate the application of these provisions from the outset of your project. Updating your contracts to reflect the latest requirements, recommending contract terms and procedural backstops to manage increasing administrative burdens and helping your project administration teams understand their new responsibilities are just some of the ways we can help your project get off to the right start.