ICBA celebrates 50 years of serving open shop construction this year, and we are looking back every week at some of the significant moments, milestones, and people who helped ICBA become Canada’s largest construction association.
Today, we look at how ICBA has expanded beyond the B.C. Lower Mainland in recent years.
Here’s how ICBA’s “Greater-than-Greater-Vancouver” story has unfolded—and why it matters.
When we said ICBA would show up where builders actually work, we meant it. Over the past few years we’ve pushed hard into the Island, the Interior, the North, and—big milestone—set down real roots in Alberta. The goal’s simple: bring our full kit (advocacy, training, benefits, wellness, events) to contractors beyond the Lower Mainland and make it easier for them to win work, build teams, and grow.
ICBA President Chris Gardner (left) congratulates ICBA Alberta President Mike Martens on the launch of ICBA Alberta in 2023.
In the North, the turning point was bringing Energy Services BC into the ICBA family in 2016. That merger, centered in Fort St. John, gave us a stronger foothold across the Peace—and a direct line to the oil and gas service community that keeps so many Northern projects moving. It wasn’t a paper exercise; it plugged us into dozens of companies and a regional conversation about LNG, pipelines, and critical minerals work that will define the next decade.
The North has also become home base for our regional push thanks to Prince George’s Mike Davis—our not-so-secret weapon who’s been telling the story of Northern opportunity with the credibility of someone who actually lives it. From media hits to shop-floor conversations, Mike’s helped us knit together owners, contractors, and communities across a huge geography so they can find work and solve problems faster. And we’ve kept showing up at marquee Northern gatherings: our “Celebrate the North” reception at the BC Natural Resources Forum remains one of the hottest tickets in PG—because getting 500 decision-makers in one room moves needles for our members.
On Vancouver Island, we went from “we should do more there” to a 350-person Meet the Generals in Victoria that quite literally launched new business relationships—and new ICBA members. The format is simple and effective: put generals, developers, and trades in the same room with real projects to discuss, and watch deals germinate. Feedback from sponsors and attendees was emphatic: do it again. We will. To make it stick, we added on-the-ground capacity—hiring Jordan Kersch as our Vancouver Island coordinator—so members have a direct line to ICBA support between events. (More to come there as we grow the Island roster.)
ICBA’s Mike Davis and ESBC’s Art Jarvis seal the merger of the two associations under the ICBA brand in 2016.
The Interior tells a different story—leaner operations, shrinking bid pipelines, national competitors parachuting into Kelowna—but the prescription is similar: convene, connect, and equip. Our regional listening tours surfaced exactly where contractors are feeling the pinch and where they’re adapting (public-sector pivots, maintenance work, smarter materials). That intel is shaping our next steps, including exploring a Kelowna edition of Meet the Generals.
And then there’s ICBA Alberta. We didn’t tiptoe in. Under ICBA Alberta’s founding president Mike Martens, we put real steel in ICBA Alberta’s spine – building a superb team, buying an office in downtown Calgary, and creating programming that looks and feels like ICBA. We advocate with purpose, offer training that helps crews right now, and have benefits built for construction’s hour-bank reality. The Alberta hour bank has grown faster than expected, client retention is exceptionally strong, and our brand of straight-talk advocacy has found its lane. Our BUILDEX Calgary Construction Leaders’ Breakfast is now a calendar-setter, and more B.C. contractors are asking us to help them decode the Alberta market. That cross-border connective tissue is turning into real opportunity for members on both sides of the Rockies.
Why does all this matter? Because regional growth isn’t a vanity metric—it’s how we shorten the distance between a contractor’s problem and our ability to help solve it. When LNG Phase 2, Cedar LNG, Ksi Lisims, or Interior infrastructure ramp up, our members won’t be meeting us for the first time; we’ll already be shoulder-to-shoulder, with relationships, training, and benefits running. And with ICBA Alberta rolling—complete with its own training slate, benefits support, and membership engine—we’ve created a two-province platform to help open-shop builders pursue work wherever the opportunity is.
This is what scaling looks like: show up locally, listen hard, convene the right people, and deliver the same ICBA value stack—advocacy, training, wellness, benefits—region by region. It’s not about being everywhere; it’s about being exactly where our members need us, with the right tools, at the right time.
