Thomas Cavanagh Construction

About the business

Thomas Cavanagh Construction Limited is an Eastern Ontario contractor, aggregate supplier and site developer, with its head office at 9094 Cavanagh Road in Ashton.

The company was founded in 1953 by Thomas Cavanagh, who put a 1948 single-axle dump truck to work after hearing about jobs on the St. Lawrence Seaway project, and used what he earned as a down payment on a second truck. Today it describes itself as a fully integrated organisation of more than 1,200 team members serving Ottawa and the surrounding communities.

The work starts underground. Cavanagh takes stone from more than 65 licensed pits and quarries across Eastern Ontario, runs a hot-mix asphalt plant at Henderson Quarry around the clock six days a week, and batches ready-mix at five plants covering Brockville to Arnprior and the greater Ottawa area. Its heavy civil crews handle mass excavation, site servicing, sewer and watermain installation, road building and provincial highway work.

Above ground the company builds. General contracting, design-build and construction management sit alongside residential site development for home builders, forming and masonry, fencing, home building through Patten Homes and residential and commercial rentals through Cavanagh Realty. Cavanagh also sells and rents heavy equipment from its own fleet and keeps its own mechanics and body shop.

One of the five concrete plants stands on Industrial Avenue in Carleton Place, the town where UAFest is held, and a new ready-mix plant opened on Albion Road in Ottawa in 2026. The new emergency wing of the Carleton Place & District Memorial Hospital bears the founder's name, and the Thomas Cavanagh Foundation, set up in 2019, continues his local giving through bursaries, grants and community projects.

Thomas Cavanagh Construction backed UAFest in 2024 and 2025.