TradeCheck

How to check a contractor’s license in Oregon

Almost anyone doing construction work for the public in Oregon must be licensed, so the question here is usually not whether the trade is licensed — it is which of two agencies holds the license, CCB or the Building Codes Division.

Type it as it is written on the truck or the quote. What you type stays in your browser — the register is a file your device searches locally, so no search here is sent anywhere.

Short answer. CCB licenses construction contractors, and its license carries endorsements that say what kind of work it covers. Electricians, plumbers, boiler, elevator and manufactured dwelling work are licensed separately by the Building Codes Division.

The registers on this site

Each of these is a copy of the file Oregon Construction Contractors Board publishes itself, refetched daily and dated with the board's own publication date. The search runs in your browser; nothing you type is sent anywhere.

What Oregon licenses, and what it does not

Oregon Construction Contractors Board runs the licensing programs below, which are the building trades it licenses. A trade on this list has a state file behind it, and an empty search result against it says nothing at all about the person you are checking. A trade that is not on the list may still be licensed by CCB under another program, or by another agency, or not at all — the ones people most often look for here are under the next heading.

Trades people look for here and do not find

Electricians, plumbers, boiler, elevator and manufactured dwelling work
The Building Codes Division issues those licenses, not CCB, so they are not in this file and an empty result here says nothing about them. Search the division’s own license holder search. Many firms hold both — a CCB license to contract and a division license to do the wiring or the pipes. Building Codes Division — individual and contractor licenses.
A job small enough that Oregon does not require a license
ORS 701.010 exempts, among others, work on one structure under contracts totalling less than $1,000 where the work is “of a casual, minor or inconsequential nature”. Somebody doing only that kind of work may lawfully have no CCB license at all, so an empty result is not by itself evidence of anything.
A contractor whose license has lapsed
CCB publishes only the licenses it lists as active, so a contractor whose license expired is not in this copy at all — they look exactly like somebody who was never licensed. This is the one thing this page cannot tell you, and CCB’s own search can: it holds the history.

How to check, in four steps

  1. Decide which board holds the license. CCB licenses the contractor; the Building Codes Division licenses electrical, plumbing, boiler, elevator and manufactured dwelling work.
  2. Search the business name or the CCB number. The search runs in your browser against this copy.
  3. Read the endorsements, not just the name. A CCB license carries one or more, each with its own renewal date, and they are what say whether the license covers residential or commercial work.
  4. Finish at CCB’s own search, which also holds the bond, the insurance and the complaint history this copy deliberately does not carry — and the lapsed licenses this copy cannot hold.

Questions people ask

Does Oregon require a contractor to be licensed?

Yes, with exemptions. ORS 701.021 says a person “that undertakes, offers to undertake or submits a bid to do work as a contractor must have a current license issued by the Construction Contractors Board and possess an appropriate endorsement”.

ORS 701.010 lists the exemptions. The one a homeowner is most likely to meet is work on one structure under contracts totalling less than $1,000 that is “of a casual, minor or inconsequential nature”.

What does it mean if a contractor is not on this page?

Less than it would mean on the Texas or Washington pages, and this is the most important thing to know about Oregon here. CCB publishes an active-licenses file: a license that expired last year is not in it as “expired”, it is not in it at all.

So a miss here means the license is not currently active, or the name is spelled differently, or the work is exempt, or the license is a Building Codes Division one. It does not distinguish between them. CCB’s own search does, and it holds up to ten years of history on a license.

What is an endorsement, and why does this page show several?

A CCB license is issued with one or more endorsements, and the endorsement is what says what the license covers — Residential General Contractor, Commercial General Contractor Level 2, Lead Based Paint Renovation Contractor and so on. ORS 701.021 requires “an appropriate endorsement”, not merely a license.

CCB publishes one row per endorsement, each with its own renewal date, so one license can appear several times in its file. This page groups them into one license and prints every endorsement with its date. Where they differ, the card is judged by the earliest — so a license reads as lapsed as soon as any part of it has, which sends you to the board rather than to a contract.

What does this copy not carry?

The surety bond and the liability insurance CCB records, the complaint history, and the name of the responsible managing individual. CCB publishes all of them and this copy holds none of them, so it answers whether somebody is licensed today and nothing more. Finish at CCB’s own search for the rest.

It carries no street address and no phone number either. Those fields are never requested from CCB at all, so they do not reach this site, its build, or anything it stores.

Do not have the number? What a contractor license number is, and what one looks like — including the shapes counted off Oregon Construction Contractors Board’s own file.

Going to the board