BC Housing CPD points: the 20-point rule and the fastest way to meet it

A BC general contractor licensee needs 20 CPD points per one-year licence term. Informal learning earns 1 point per hour of instruction, formal learning earns 2, up to 20 unused points carry into the next term if your CPD nominee stays the same, and the points must be reported in the BC Housing LRB portal before you renew. The fastest route to all 20 is a single on-demand pass you can finish on any device in a couple of weeks.

The rule in one table

The authoritative version of all of this is BC Housing’s own CPD page. Read it once a year; it changes.

What counts as CPD

CPD has to be relevant to the business of residential construction, and BC Housing organizes it around the core competencies in Schedule 6 of the Homeowner Protection Act Regulation: relevant enactments (the Building Code, bylaws and statutes you build under), construction management and supervision, construction technology, customer service and home warranty insurance, financial planning and management, legal issues, and business planning and management. Business ethics sits alongside them. A course, seminar, webinar, trade show session or in-house training can qualify if it is instruction in one of those areas and you can prove you attended it.

What does not count: reading on your own, watching a product video, a supplier lunch with no instructional content, or a course you already claimed. BC Housing also sets limits on some categories of informal activity; check the current page before you lean on one category for most of your points.

Formal vs informal, in practice

The 2-points-per-hour rate sounds attractive, but it is restricted to accredited post-secondary institutions (universities, colleges, BCIT and the like) and the industry associations BC Housing lists. Formal courses usually run on fixed dates, often in person, and usually include an exam. Everything else, including nearly all online training, is informal at 1 point per hour. For most small builders the practical plan is 20 informal hours. More on this in formal vs informal CPD.

The nominee and the carry-over

Points belong to the licence, but they are earned by one person: the CPD nominee named on the licence. If you build under a company, the nominee is usually the owner or the person running the sites. Two rules follow from that. First, the nominee has to do the training personally; a site super cannot do half and the office manager the other half. Second, up to 20 points carry forward into the next term only if the nominee stays the same. Change the nominee and the carry-over is gone. See choosing a CPD nominee and carry-over rules.

When the points are due

Your licence term is 12 months ending on the expiry date printed on the licence. The 20 points have to be completed in that term and reported in the LRB portal before you renew. There is no grace period on renewal, so a builder who leaves the points to the last week is gambling the licence on a webinar schedule. The renewal window opens 60 days before expiry; most builders who get caught out are the ones who start looking for courses inside that window and find the next live session is after their expiry date. The full process is in how to report CPD in the LRB portal.

The fastest way to get 20 points

Add up the time, not just the price. A live webinar is one or two points per session, on a fixed date, usually mid-morning on a weekday. Getting 20 points that way is ten to twenty sessions spread across a year, each one a half-day off site. An on-demand catalogue removes the scheduling, but if it is sold module by module you are still picking courses, paying per module, and building your own record pack at the end.

The shortest path is one pass that already covers the full 20: buy once, watch 15 to 20 minute segments when you have the gap, and get a certificate per course with every field the portal asks for. The Builder Pass CPD Pass is 12 courses, 26 hours of instruction, across all seven competencies and ethics, for $299 plus GST. Twenty-six hours at an hour a day is about a month of lunch breaks; most builders do it in a couple of weekends. The spare 6 points carry into next term if your nominee stays the same. Prices for the other routes are laid out on the price comparison page.

Keeping the proof

Every point you report needs a record behind it: course title, provider, completion date, hours, learning method and competency. BC Housing audits up to 3% of licensees a year and gives you 30 days to produce the records, and the retention rule is three years after the end of the term. Keep them in one place from day one. If your provider does not give you a record with those fields, ask for one before you report the points. Our audit guide covers what the audit asks for.

A simple annual plan

1. Confirm your licence expiry date and your CPD nominee in the LRB portal.
2. In the first month of the term, buy the training that will cover all 20 points so the deadline is never in play.
3. Complete it in short sessions; log each certificate as you get it.
4. Report the points in the portal as you go, not the week before renewal.
5. Renew inside the 60-day window with the points already showing.

That is the whole requirement. Twenty points, one nominee, reported before renewal, records kept three years. The pass does the first part in one purchase: get your 20 points.