Trent Soholt, Executive Director of the Nova Scotia Construction Sector Council, explains the regulatory gap that most builders don't know exists, the hands-on tools NSCSC built to recruit the next generation, and why calling one phone number can free up government training money contractors leave on the table every year.
Here is a fact that will surprise most people working in Nova Scotia's industrial, commercial, and institutional construction sector: if you run an electrical contracting company, your workers must hold Certificates of Qualification. You, as the employer, face no licensing requirement at all. None. The contractor-level framework simply does not exist.
Trent Soholt, Executive Director of the Nova Scotia Construction Sector Council (NSCSC), does not dress this up. "there's no licensing for the contractor in the province but for the individual you have to be registered" — he says it plainly on the Atlantic Construction Podcast. That single regulatory gap — verified against Nova Scotia's own Labour and Workforce Development materials — sits at the center of an episode that covers workforce forecasting, augmented-reality safety training, exoskeletons, and how a non-profit with one foot in government and one in industry is trying to fix problems the sector can't solve alone.
Soholt came to the role by an indirect route: municipal project management in Alberta, a relocation to Nova Scotia, then a stint as a researcher that turned into a funding chase that turned into a directorship. When he started, NSCSC had three staff. It now runs twenty.
The licensing gap is a public-safety problem, not a paperwork one
The absence of contractor-level licensing isn't an obscure technicality. If a company employs certified electricians, those workers carry their individual credentials — but nothing in the provincial framework certifies the company itself to take on electrical work. Other provinces have moved toward employer-level requirements. Nova Scotia hasn't.
NSCSC is actively researching what a sensible framework might look like. The council isn't a regulator; it can't impose one. What it can do is build the business case, convene the parties, and put a credible proposal in front of government. That is the institutional role Soholt describes: "the province has said they view sector councils as having one foot in government one foot in industry" It's a position that lets NSCSC facilitate the research and policy development that industry can't lobby for credibly and government can't design without industry input.
The same positioning applies on procurement. When provincial tender language changed last year to require diversity and community benefit commitments from contractors, NSCSC became the practical guide to compliance — not the regulator enforcing it.
Reaching workers before they choose a different path
The licensing problem sits at the top of the regulatory stack. The workforce pipeline sits at the bottom. Both need attention, and NSCSC has built its most visible infrastructure around the second one.
In 2014, NSCSC opened the Trades Exhibition Hall in the Halifax/Dartmouth area — a permanent, interactive facility where youth can try 35 ICI trades across 14 booths. Soholt describes the funding process with the kind of candor that usually gets edited out: "we went back to industry went back to the province went back to the industry and finally got the province to commit" One no from either side wasn't final. You keep going.
The facility is notable for a design decision that sounds obvious once you hear it. A single-day immersion doesn't hold attention. The format that works is rotation — what the team calls Speed Trades, modeled on the concept of speed dating. Youth move station to station, getting a hands-on encounter with each trade rather than watching a demonstration. "what was most successful and kept the young individuals attention is to give them like almost like a speed dating experience" — that's the design logic of the whole program. Groups come from as far as Yarmouth and Sydney. Winnipeg built a comparable facility in 2021, making the Dartmouth hall the second of its kind in North America.
Nova Scotia's compact geography is part of why the model works here. "to put a facility in ontario or alberta geography itself is a barrier to a lot of that experience we don't have that same" constraint. A youth group from any corner of the province can reach the hall in a day trip. That's not true in Ontario or Alberta, which is why neither province had built one first.
When an iron worker says it's scarier than the real thing
The Trades Exhibition Hall is a fixed facility. NSCSC also runs mobile units — trailers that travel to schools and communities. One of those trailers carries an augmented-reality iron-worker-at-heights simulator.
The setup uses a green-screened interior to place the participant on a virtual I-beam 200 feet up. When real iron workers went through it, they didn't find it underwhelming. "every one of them came out of that trailer going that's as real as the real thing" — that validation matters: if the physiological fear response is genuine in experienced tradespeople, it's a credible tool for safety-awareness training, not just a novelty.
NSCSC has also run pilots with exoskeletons — wearable frames that assist lifting by distributing load across the body. The operational case is straightforward. "you can lift that 40 percent difference that you couldn't before and safely you're gonna let people work 10 years longer" — a 40% reduction in lifting load, a potential ten-year extension of a tradesperson's working life — against a skilled-trades workforce that is aging out faster than apprentices are completing, those numbers are worth taking seriously.
The tech pilots also included wearable computers, tablets on site, and a VR sandblasting simulator. Soholt is not an evangelist; he presents these as tools with specific use cases, not universal solutions. Construction has historically been skeptical of technology. What NSCSC is doing is running low-risk pilots so that contractors can see what actually works before committing to a purchase.
The money is already there — contractors just don't call
The conversation about government training funding is where the episode gets most practically useful. Provincial programs like the START program, graduate opportunity funding, and apprenticeship support exist specifically to help contractors train workers. They go underused. The reason isn't ineligibility — it's friction.
"i've had contractors say no it's daunting for me to call the 1-800 number yeah i can call you know trent" — that's how Soholt describes the friction. A small contractor running a three-person crew has time on a jobsite, not time to work through government program portals. NSCSC sits between that contractor and the government program — it knows which programs apply, what the paperwork looks like, and who to call. A single conversation with the council can start a process that recovers training costs a contractor was otherwise going to absorb alone.
The same principle applies to quality management. NSCSC delivers QMP training aimed at foremen and supervisors introducing quality assurance fundamentals for larger infrastructure work. It doesn't certify contractors — it connects them to specialists who can build a formal quality plan when the project scope demands one.
Labour-market forecasting at the project scale
When a major capital project is announced in Nova Scotia, NSCSC doesn't wait for contractors to figure out workforce demand. It models it. "based on past experiences we can then look at what's the labor breakdown going to be by trade" across the project timeline.
The Cape Breton healthcare redevelopment — a multi-phase, multi-site project involving the Cape Breton Regional Hospital and associated facilities in Sydney, North Sydney, Glace Bay, and New Waterford — represents a labour surge of roughly 500 workers concentrated over a defined period. Without forecasting, that kind of demand concentration creates shortages that delay projects and bid up wages unpredictably. NSCSC publishes the modeling so government, contractors, unions, and training providers can plan against the same picture.
It's the kind of work that belongs to nobody if a sector council doesn't do it. Contractors can model their own project; they can't model the aggregate. Government can commission studies; it can't move at the pace the industry needs. NSCSC does both at once, funded provincially and federally, with no obligation to a particular contractor or union.
The help desk nobody knew existed
The through-line of the episode is simpler than the list of programs suggests. NSCSC functions as a help desk for the Nova Scotia ICI sector. Licensing questions, diversity compliance, training funding, technology pilots, workforce projections — one call, one organization, no charge to the contractor. The cost is covered by provincial and federal funding; it doesn't have to come out of a contractor's pocket.
Soholt is direct about the skepticism he runs into. Free help from a government-adjacent organization raises flags for contractors who've dealt with bureaucratic programs that promised more than they delivered. His answer is the track record: the Trades Exhibition Hall that nobody else built, the AR trailer that iron workers called real, the workforce models that inform provincial planning.
For contractors working in Nova Scotia's ICI sector — and for the youth who haven't chosen a trade yet — the entry point is straightforward: nscsc.ca.
Guest: Trent Soholt, Executive Director, Nova Scotia Construction Sector Council (NSCSC-ICI). Atlantic Construction Podcast Episode 16. Watch the full episode. The Trades Exhibition Hall is at nscsc.ca/trades-exhibition-hall. The absence of contractor-level licensing in Nova Scotia is confirmed by provincial Labour and Workforce Development materials; see the Nova Scotia construction starter guide. The Cape Breton healthcare redevelopment is documented at building-tomorrow.ca.