About On-Site

On-Site

Overview

On-Site is a Canadian trade magazine for the construction industry, published by Annex Business Media and billed on its own masthead as "Canada's Construction Magazine." It serves the general contractors, heavy civil builders, subcontractors, equipment distributors and rental houses, suppliers and industry professionals who build the country's roads, bridges, buildings, utilities and industrial facilities. The magazine appears in print and digital editions and is supported by a daily news website at on-sitemag.com, weekly e-newsletters, webinars and a suite of annual research reports and recognition programs.

The flagship of those programs is the On-Site Top Contractors report, an annual ranking of Canada's leading construction contractors by revenue that the magazine has published since 2007 and that is used across the industry to research and source leading contractors. Alongside it sit an annual Infrastructure Report, a Technology Report, a Construction Forecast and the 40 Under 40 in Canadian Construction list, which recognises the young leaders driving the industry forward. In 2026 On-Site was publishing news daily and feature articles weekly, covering everything from prompt payment legislation and apprenticeship reform to the federal government's fast-tracked major projects.

History

On-Site is a long-running Toronto construction title. Its documented modern history runs through Canada's business-to-business publishing consolidation of the 2010s. The magazine was part of the Toronto-based trade publishing scene that was reshaped in January 2015, when Annex Business Media and Newcom Business Media jointly acquired 67 trade publications and related digital properties from Glacier Media Inc.'s Business Information Group for $19.65 million. By December 2015, On-Site's own media kit carried Annex's leadership — president Mike Fredericks and vice-president Tim Dimopoulos — and Annex staff in production and circulation roles, and its publisher's address was Annex's Toronto office at 111 Gordon Baker Road.

The mastheads preserved in its media planners trace the magazine's recent editorial line: Peter Leonard was publisher through the late 2010s, Corinne Lynds edited the magazine in 2016–17, and David Kennedy was editor in the 2019 media planner, with Jillian Morgan as assistant editor. More recently, Sean Tarry has stepped into the editor's role. The franchise content is older than the Annex era: the Top Contractors report was launched in 2007, and contractors such as Graham have recorded appearing on the ranking every year since it began. Aon partnered with the magazine to deliver the 2016 edition of the report, which ranked contractors by revenue in large and small categories — small businesses classified as under 50 employees — and bundled the ranking with a national directory of leading contractors.

Through the 2020s On-Site has been published within Annex's construction group alongside Rock to Road and Crane & Hoist Canada. In February 2026 the group launched a sister digital brand, Infrastructure Works, a national platform from Annex Business Media's Construction Group dedicated to major public infrastructure projects, announced through On-Site's own pages. The parent company, meanwhile, closed its Simcoe printing plant in the fall of 2024 and moved its magazine printing to Cober under a manufacturing agreement, and completed an employee-management buyout in 2024 that put Annex under employee ownership led by CEO Scott Jamieson. No founding year for On-Site itself could be verified from publicly available sources for this profile, and none is asserted.

Content and Coverage

On-Site's editorial mix is built for working contractors. Daily news coverage follows contract awards, government infrastructure programs, labour agreements, safety developments and company moves across the country — July and August 2026 stories included a $768.6-million Ottawa science campus contract moving into full construction, a $70-billion Labrador energy buildout, Ottawa and British Columbia's $5-billion infrastructure partnership and the replacement of Ottawa's Alexandra Bridge. Feature articles take on the industry's structural questions: fixing Canada's apprenticeship system, the labour shortage and PCL's call for a national workforce strategy, prompt payment becoming a national priority for contractors, artificial intelligence and software in heavy civil construction, and the economics of tariffs and trade turbulence for Canadian builders.

The magazine's topic organisation reflects the breadth of its audience: asphalt, bridges, commercial, concrete, construction materials, demolition, equipment and equipment technology, financing, green construction, health and safety, industrial, infrastructure, institutional, labour, law, leadership, LEED, public-private partnerships, residential, risk management, roads, skills development, software, trucks and women in construction. Regular elements include product coverage, webinars, sponsored industry content under its "On Your Radar" banner and an events calendar.

The reports program is the magazine's signature research output. The annual Top Contractors report ranks Canada's leading general contractors by revenue — submissions for the 2026 edition were extended to May 15, 2026 — and is published in both the print and digital editions. The Infrastructure Report examines spending and key projects, the Technology Report tracks construction technology on and off the job site, the annual Construction Forecast looks ahead at economic factors and trends, and the 40 Under 40 in Canadian Construction — organised with SitePartners in its early years — profiles young, innovative leaders in the industry. The magazine also runs a jobsite photo contest, with the 2025 winners published in February 2026.

Audience and Reach

On-Site is a controlled-circulation magazine distributed to qualified construction professionals. Its 2019 media planner reported 22,579 fully qualified readers, of whom 20,834 were contractors and 1,411 were distributors and rental houses, with the publisher reporting that 100 per cent of readers were request-qualified and 87 per cent had renewed their subscription within the previous 12 months; the 2017 media kit gave a comparable figure of 22,714 fully qualified readers, 21,080 of them contractors. Those numbers are the publisher's own media-kit claims from those years, presented as such; no current independently audited circulation is asserted here. The same kits reported that On-Site's weekly e-newsletters reached 13,000 recipients and its website averaged 9,200 visitors, again as publisher figures from the mid-2010s.

The readership is deliberately senior and jobsite-focused — the magazine's slogan in that era was "professional content for professional contractors" — spanning general contractors, heavy civil and roadbuilding firms, mechanical and electrical contractors, equipment dealers and rental companies, and the manufacturers and service providers who sell to them. The Top Contractors report gives the title a second life as an industry reference: construction owners describe it as a go-to resource for researching and sourcing the top contractors operating across Canada.

Digital Presence

On-Site's website, on-sitemag.com, is a daily news operation. Through 2026 it carried multiple news stories most weekdays — coverage of the Arctic Over-the-Horizon Radar project led by Pomerleau, Aecon and Stantec in April 2026, EllisDon's 75th anniversary, Komatsu's Chattanooga plant milestone in July 2026 — together with weekly feature articles, the reports library, product news, webinars and newsletter sign-ups. Stories from the site are syndicated within Annex's construction portfolio and picked up by industry newsletters; contractor Graham's announcement of its place in the 2026 Top Contractors ranking illustrates how the report circulates through the industry's own channels. The site organises its archive by topic categories mirroring the magazine's coverage areas, maintains a newsletter archive, and serves as the entry point for Top Contractors submissions each spring. Its e-news products are sent under the On-Site eNews banner to the magazine's subscriber base.

Ownership and Organisation

On-Site is published by Annex Business Media, Canada's largest B2B media company, whose portfolio runs to more than 60 brands across construction, manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, food, retail and other sectors. Annex was founded in 1997, began as a collection of local newspapers and industry trade magazines, and from 2003 concentrated on trade publications; it is headquartered in Simcoe, Ontario, and has long kept a Toronto office — On-Site's media kits give the magazine's address as 111 Gordon Baker Road, Toronto, the Annex office from which the title has been produced. Annex's construction group also publishes Rock to Road and Crane & Hoist Canada and launched the Infrastructure Works digital brand in 2026. Following an employee-management buyout completed in 2024, Annex is led by CEO Scott Jamieson. The magazine's recent mastheads have listed Peter Leonard as publisher and, as editor, David Kennedy in 2019 and Sean Tarry more recently; production and circulation are handled centrally by Annex's Simcoe-based audience and production teams.

Contact and Availability

On-Site is published by Annex Business Media; its media kits list the magazine at 111 Gordon Baker Road, Toronto, ON M2H 3R1, fax (416) 510-5140, with the publisher reachable through Annex's Toronto office at (416) 510-5100. The magazine's website is www.on-sitemag.com, where qualified construction professionals can subscribe to the print and digital editions and the weekly e-newsletter, read daily news and features, access the Top Contractors, Infrastructure, Technology and Forecast reports, and submit entries for the annual Top Contractors ranking each spring.