How to Verify an Oregon Contractor's License

In every other state this site publishes, one agency answers the whole question. Oregon splits it in two. The Building Codes Division (BCD) licenses the trade: it is the only agency that says a business may do plumbing or electrical work, and the only place that license number lives. The Construction Contractors Board (CCB) registers the business: it holds the contractor bond, the liability insurance and the date the business first registered. The two files share nothing that links one to the other, so a plumber or electrician you are about to hire needs two lookups, not one.

Step 1: check the trade license at BCD

Start at BCD's license holder search. The page covers business contractor licenses, individual licenses and inspector certifications, and offers two ways in: by individual name, business name or license number, or by profession or location.

The name and number search is one text box, labeled "Name or License Number", with a choice of Business Name, Individual Name or License Number. BCD's instruction is to use any part of the name you know (its example: "amer" will include "american" and "americorp" but not "stamert"). One checkbox, "Include Expired and Inactive Licenses", widens the search beyond current licenses. Leave it unchecked the first time, so expired and inactive licenses stay out of the results, and tick it if the name comes up empty.

The location search takes a profession from a dropdown (Plumbing and Electrical are both options) and a city or county, with the note "Select either City OR County, not both." BCD says the display will include license number, status, expiration date, category, type, licensee name, city, state, zip and county.

Three things to read off the result:

• The license type. Most of what BCD licenses is people, not companies: journeymen and inspectors among them. A company doing the work needs a business contractor license, and BCD's published type for those is "PB-Plumbing Contractor" or "C-Electrical Contractor". A journeyman or inspector license belongs to a person, not a company, and this site never publishes one.
• The status. The value you want is "Active", the only status in the file of current licenses BCD publishes. Expired licenses sit in a separate download, and on the search form they come back only when you tick that checkbox.
• The expiration date, and why it tells you little. BCD expires every active license of a trade on one statewide cycle date, so every Oregon plumbing contractor shows the same BCD expiry. It confirms the license is current and says nothing about that particular company.

BCD publishes no bond, liability insurance, phone number or licensure date. All of that is held by CCB.

Step 2: check the registration, bond and insurance at CCB

Go to the CCB Contractor License Search. CCB's own advice is that the most accurate way to look up a license is with a CCB license number, which contractors must display on their advertising, including websites and business cards. Ask for it. You can also enter all or part of the business name or the contractor's last name, or the business telephone number as numbers only, and you can limit results to "Active Records Only" or search "All Records".

CCB is explicit about one trap on its own search page: if you cannot find the contractor by name, do not assume they are unlicensed. Spelling and punctuation stop matches, and its examples are "Andy's" against "Andys" and "S&F" against "S & F". Its note is that sometimes less is better: try a shorter piece of the name, or the phone number, before drawing a conclusion. CCB says its license records are updated every 6 hours, and for additional assistance it lists Customer Service at (503) 378-4621.

CCB lists what a license check can tell you on its consumer tools page: whether the contractor is actively licensed and has a surety bond, whether it submitted proof of liability insurance when first licensed and at renewal, whether it is licensed to work on pre-1978 homes that could contain lead-based paint, whether it carries workers' compensation insurance, and whether it had any complaints or disciplinary actions filed with the CCB in the past ten years.

How to read the CCB result

• The endorsement is not the trade. A CCB record carries an endorsement such as "Residential General Contractor". That is a scope tier, and it never says plumbing or electrical. A CCB registration on its own does not say a business may do plumbing or electrical work; only the BCD record from step 1 does.
• A filled-in bond or insurance line is not coverage. Read the dates. On the file behind this site, CCB's list of active registrations still contained lapsed bond, insurance and registration dates, so our Oregon pages treat coverage as a date comparison. Do the same.
• Do not compare contractors on the amounts. The bond and insurance amounts are the minimums set for the endorsement class, not something the contractor chose. On the file behind this site, 92% of the matched Oregon plumbing businesses carry exactly $1,000,000 of liability cover and 67% exactly a $25,000 bond, so our Oregon pages rank on time registered with CCB instead.
• The names may not match between agencies. BCD publishes a sole proprietor under the person's own name with the trade name as a DBA; CCB records the same legal name and does not carry the DBA. If the business name draws a blank at one agency, search the owner's name.
• "Licensed since" is a CCB date. BCD publishes no licensure date at all, so the year on any Oregon listing here is the date CCB first registered the business.

Trades Oregon does not license this way

BCD issues no HVAC, mechanical or roofing contractor license, which is why this site publishes only plumbers and electricians in Oregon. This site does not verify those trades in Oregon. What CCB says, on its consumer tools page, is that a license is required for any construction business that advertises, offers, bids, arranges for, or performs any construction, alteration, home improvement, remodeling or repair work.

What this site checks before listing an Oregon company

A plumbing or electrical company appears in a ranked list on an Oregon page only when it holds an Active BCD trade license registered in the city and a matched CCB registration whose registration, liability insurance and bond were all still current on the date we downloaded the files. We match the two files on business name and city, and the businesses we cannot match (about nine percent of licensed Oregon plumbing and electrical companies on our file) are counted but never ranked. The full rules are on the methodology page.

None of that replaces your own two lookups. The BCD and CCB records are the evidence.