Civil construction in New Brunswick

STA 0+120Excavation and trench rules

New Brunswick’s occupational health and safety rules set when an excavation must be sloped, shored or boxed, and when an engineer must design the protection.

• Walls must be supported by shoring, bracing or caging except when the excavation/trench is less than 1.2 m deep, in solid rock, sloped or benched to within 1.2 m of the bottom at not more than 1 m rise per 1 m run, or not entered (s. 181(1)); shoring, bracing or caging must be certified adequate by an engineer (s. 181(4))¹
• Locate underground utility lines before beginning; notify utility, de-energize and use adequate procedure when within 600 mm (s. 180); excavated material kept at least 1.2 m from the edge (s. 183(1))¹

STA 0+240Locates before you dig

• Info-Excavation provides free locate requests for Quebec and the Atlantic provinces; expect a 3 business day delay before starting work (emergency as short as an hour); 1-800-663-9228²

The paint colours are the same across Canada: white for the proposed excavation, pink for survey, then red, yellow, orange, blue, green and purple for the buried services. See call before you dig.

STA 0+360Holdbacks and prompt payment

We have not yet verified New Brunswick’s holdback and prompt-payment provisions from the legislation. Until we do, check the province’s lien legislation directly and see how holdbacks work.

STA 0+480Tenders, associations and specifications

• Provincial portal: New Brunswick Opportunities Network (NBON)³
• Federal work in the province: open CanadaBuys construction notices
• Road Builders Association of New Brunswick (NB Road Builders): rbanb.com⁴