The notice of project is how the regulator learns that work exists. It is filed before the project starts, by the constructor or prime contractor, and it is the document that puts a site on an inspector’s map. Thresholds are set by regulation — a project value, a type of work such as excavation below a certain depth, tunnelling, demolition, work over water, or the presence of designated substances — and they are provincial, not national.
What it means in practice
- File before, not after. Starting work on a notifiable project without a filed notice is a distinct offence, independent of whether anything else was wrong.
- A copy is posted at the workplace, legible and where workers can read it. The posting is what a joint committee member checks first.
- It names who is answerable. The constructor or prime contractor identified on the form is the party the regulator will address about coordination, so an inaccurate name is worth correcting before anything goes wrong.
- It changes when the project does. A significant change in scope, duration or the identity of the constructor generally requires an amended notice.
- Related notices exist and are separate: notice of an excavation, of asbestos work of a given type, of the use of a suspended access equipment system. One filing does not stand for the others.
What it is not
It is not a permit. Nothing is approved and nothing is issued in return. Filing it does not mean the regulator has reviewed, let alone accepted, the way the work will be done.
It is not a substitute for the site’s own paperwork — the hazard assessments, the site-specific plans, the training records. It tells the ministry that a project exists; it says nothing about how it is run.
And it is not the European déclaration préalable. France’s construction regime pairs a declaration with a coordinator and a general coordination plan that the notice of project has no equivalent of, and Italy’s notifica preliminare under D.Lgs. 81/2008 works the same way. The filing looks similar; the machinery it triggers does not.