New centre researches Canada’s physical infrastructure

Waterloo, ON – With Canada’s federal, provincial and municipal governments facing massive spending needs on physical infrastructure, such as roads, bridges and airports, a newly established centre at the University of Waterloo seeks to provide the knowledge to make the best use of the strategic investment.

The John J Carrick Pavement Engineering Laboratory of the new Centre for Pavement & Transportation Technology (CPATT) recently opened and is intended to bring together leading experts in transportation, consulting, construction and materials engineering.

Dedicated to the memory of John J Carrick, founder and president of McAsphalt Industries, the pavement engineering lab builds on a research program that started in the mid-1960s in the Faculty of Engineering’s civil engineering department.

In studying the preservation and replacement of Canada’s $3 trillion worth of public infrastructure, CPATT’s work embraces structural design, construction and maintenance technology, materials and geotechnical engineering, field evaluation methods, equipment and data processing, intelligent transportation systems and safety, as well as risk and reliability methods.

“There is both an opportunity and a critical need to carry out the research and technology development which will advance the planning, design, construction and operation of our physical infrastructure to a new level over the coming decades,” says David Johnston, the university’s president. “The University of Waterloo’s Centre for Pavement & Transportation Technology will accomplish this mission through an effective partnership between researchers, public sector agencies and private industry.”

CPATT is supported through major funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), Ontario Innovation Trust (OIT), Ontario Research and Development Challenge Fund (ORDCF), along with a number of private and public sector partners.