Mold and Air Quality Subcontracting for General Contractors
When a project uncovers mould, the clock starts. We attend, assess, scope, and price it fast enough to keep your change order moving and your schedule intact. Ontario and Quebec, since 2005.
🏅 RBQ + IICRC ⚡ Same-Day Virtual Assessment 🛡️ 1-Year Warranty
Your New Partner Launch Offer
- ✓ Same-day virtual assessment on any live site finding
- ✓ Written scope and price you can attach to a change order
- ✓ Pre-occupancy clearance testing through CALA-accredited labs
- ✓ Containment that lets the rest of the floor keep working
- ✓ Prequalification package ready for your vendor list
- ✓ 1-year conditional work warranty
Mould on a live site is a schedule problem before it is anything else
Your crew opens a wall and finds growth behind it. Four things happen at once, and none of them wait for you.
Work stops in that area
Trades cannot follow through the space until someone qualified says what is there.
A change order needs a number
The owner wants a price. You cannot give one without a scope, and you cannot scope it by looking at it.
Someone will ask who caused it
Whether it was pre-existing or came from the work decides who pays. That answer needs documenting now, not later.
Handover still has its date
Substantial performance has not moved. Whatever you do about the mould has to fit inside the time you already have.
What it costs you
The delay is usually more expensive than the remediation
A contained mould remediation in a commercial space is rarely the biggest number on the job. The days spent waiting for someone to attend, then waiting again for a scope you can actually price, are what push a handover date and put general conditions at risk.
- Trades stacked behind a stopped work area still cost money
- An unpriced change order is an open argument with the owner
- Undocumented causation becomes a claim months after close-out
What Mold Busters does about it
One call, and the scope arrives in writing
We hold RBQ licence 5726-4947-01, active and unrestricted, and our technicians are IICRC-certified. We have worked across Ontario and Quebec since 2005, on more than 15,000 inspections and 5,000 remediation projects.
- Same-day virtual assessment so you are not waiting on a site visit to start pricing
- Written scope of work and a price your project manager can attach to a change order
- Containment built so the rest of the floor plate keeps working
- Clearance testing and a documented result at the end
CCDC 2 has a mould clause. Most people find out the hard way.
If your prime contract is CCDC 2-2020, mould is not handled under general concealed conditions. It has its own general condition, GC 9.5, and it is specific about what happens next.
CCDC 2-2020, GC 9.5 MOULD
What the clause actually requires
Under 9.5.1, whichever party observes or reasonably suspects mould has to report it to the other in writing, and the contractor must “promptly take all reasonable steps, including stopping the Work if necessary.” If the parties do not agree on the existence, significance or cause of it, the owner retains and pays for an independent qualified expert to investigate and determine those matters.
That determination decides the money. Under 9.5.2, mould caused by the contractor’s operations is remediated at the contractor’s own expense. Under 9.5.3, mould that was not caused by the contractor is the owner’s cost, and the owner must extend the contract time and reimburse the contractor for delay costs.
Quoted from the published CCDC 2-2020 stipulated price contract. Your own contract may carry supplementary conditions that change this, so read it rather than relying on a summary.
The practical read: the faster a qualified third party documents what is there and what caused it, the faster the clause resolves in someone’s favour and the schedule starts moving again. That is the role we fill.
How we work on an active site
Four steps, built around the fact that your site does not stop for us.
1
Same-day virtual assessment
Send photos and a short video from the site. We tell you the same day whether this looks like a small contained job or something that needs sampling before anyone commits to a number.
2
Attend, test, document
An inspector attends, takes air and surface samples where they are warranted, and photographs conditions. Samples go to an independent CALA-accredited laboratory. We do not analyse our own samples.
3
Scope and price in writing
You get a written scope of work and a price, structured so your project manager can attach it to a change order without rewriting it first.
4
Remediate and clear
Work runs inside containment under negative pressure, with post-remediation verification at the end and a written clearance result for the project file.
The rest of the floor keeps working
Containment is the difference between losing one work area and losing a floor. We build a sealed enclosure under negative pressure with HEPA filtration, so the affected area is isolated and the trades outside it carry on.
On occupied or partially occupied buildings we schedule the loud and disruptive phases outside working hours. On a live construction site we work around your sequence rather than asking you to work around ours.
- Sealed containment, negative pressure, HEPA filtration
- After-hours and weekend scheduling where the building is occupied
- Photo documentation of containment and conditions throughout
Documentation your project file can actually use
Three documents close out a mould scope, and each one exists because somebody downstream will ask for it. The owner wants to know what was done. The consultant wants a third-party result. Your own file needs to show causation was established at the time, not reconstructed a year later.
- Scope of work written to attach to a change order
- Laboratory results from an independent lab accredited by the Canadian Association for Laboratory Accreditation against ISO/IEC 17025:2017
- Clearance report confirming post-remediation verification before the space is handed back
We collect the samples. We do not analyse them. That separation is deliberate, and it is what makes the result usable by an owner or a consultant who will not take a contractor’s word for it. More on how our third-party lab testing works.
Prequalification, licensing, and the paperwork your vendor list wants
Getting added to an approved vendor list is its own process. Here is what we can put in front of your procurement team.
Quebec licensing
We hold RBQ licence 5726-4947-01, active and unrestricted. In Quebec, remediation involving demolition, repair, or alteration of a building is construction work under the Building Act and requires an RBQ contractor licence. The licence number is verifiable in the Regie du batiment du Quebec public register.
Ontario coverage
We are WSIB-covered in Ontario and can provide a clearance certificate on request, along with certificates of insurance naming your project or your client as required by the subcontract.
Technician certification
Our technicians are certified through the IICRC, the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification, whose S500 and S520 standards govern water damage restoration and mould remediation. We are also IAQA corporate members.
Laboratory independence
Analysis is performed by two independent laboratories accredited by CALA against ISO/IEC 17025:2017. Both accreditations are listed in CALA’s public directory, so your consultant can verify them without asking us.
Bilingual service across Ontario and Quebec. Tell us which documents your prequalification package needs and we will send them together rather than one at a time.
Organizations that have worked with us
Multi-site retail, telecom facilities, and public sector clients across Ontario and Quebec.
Where this fits with the rest of our commercial work
Different people at a construction company need different things from us.
Commercial demolition
The service-page view of our demolition scope, for when you want to see the work itself rather than the partnership.
Post-construction cleaning
HEPA cleaning and air quality verification before handover, on projects where there is no mould finding to resolve.
Commercial real estate
For the owner or developer side of the project, where the building is an asset with tenants rather than a job site.
All commercial services
The full picture across property management, healthcare, government, industrial, and hospitality.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. We work either as your subcontractor, billing you against your own contract with the owner, or directly for the owner with you as the referring contractor. Which one makes sense usually depends on how the change order is being handled and whether the mould was pre-existing. We are comfortable either way and will follow whichever structure your project manager prefers.
Yes. We hold RBQ licence 5726-4947-01, active and unrestricted. In Quebec, remediation involving demolition, repair, or alteration of a building is construction work under the Building Act and requires an RBQ contractor licence. We are WSIB-covered in Ontario. Our teams are IICRC-certified, IAQA members, and bilingual in Quebec.
Send photos and a short video from the site and we will come back the same day with a read on what you are dealing with. For a straightforward contained scope that is often enough to put a number in front of the owner. Where sampling is needed to establish what is actually there, the laboratory turnaround sets the pace, and we will tell you that up front rather than after you have promised the owner a date.
We document conditions as we find them: photographs, moisture readings, the extent and location of growth, and laboratory results where samples are taken. That record is what a causation discussion is built on. We report what the evidence supports and will say when it does not settle the question. Under CCDC 2-2020 the formal determination sits with an independent expert the owner retains if the parties disagree, and our documentation is intended to be usable in that process rather than to replace it.
Worth being precise here, because it is often misunderstood. The LEED Indoor Air Quality Assessment credit tests chemical contaminants, formaldehyde, volatile organic compounds, particulates, carbon monoxide and ozone. It does not test for mould, so mould sampling does not earn that credit and we will not tell you otherwise. What we do provide on a LEED-pursued project is pre-occupancy mould inspection and clearance, which is a separate and genuine need when a build has had a water event, and analysis through laboratories accredited to ISO/IEC 17025:2017. If your IAQ consultant is handling the credit itself, we work alongside them rather than in place of them.
Tell us what your package asks for and we will send it in one go. Commonly requested items include our RBQ licence number, WSIB clearance certificate, certificates of insurance with your required limits and named insureds, IICRC certification details, safety documentation, and references. If your process runs through a prequalification portal, send the invitation and we will complete it there.
Yes. On occupied buildings and on sites where the sequence is tight, we schedule the disruptive phases for evenings or weekends. Containment is built so the trades outside the enclosure keep working during the day. Tell us your sequence and we will fit the work into it.
We invoice against your purchase order or subcontract with the project and cost code referenced, and larger scopes can be structured as progress billing across deposit, milestone, and close-out stages. Terms are agreed at the account level, and we are used to working with holdback and the payment timelines that come with provincial construction legislation. Financing is available on larger projects through our financial assistance program.
Send us the project
Tell us the project type, where it is, and what stage you are at. If there is a live finding on site, add photos and we will come back the same day with a read and a price direction. Or call 1-877-566-6653.
"*" indicates required fields
Reviewed by
Jovan Munjiza
General Manager, Mold Busters
Jovan oversees quality control and quality assurance across field operations and the solution center, and leads training for support staff. He has been with Mold Busters for over seven years, with more than 12 years in customer service.
CMI · CMRP · MWDR · CIAQS · COCS · ALST · CMRE | Meet the team →