Basement walls are traditionally built with reinforced concrete in Canada. However, concrete may not perform adequately in the long term and concrete has a huge carbon footprint – more than 8% of global man-made CO2 emission comes from the cement industry. The research project is aimed at timber panel walls, a sustainable material, to replace traditional concrete in the basement construction. The research will primarily be carried out on an existing large-scale experimental timber basement wall on the university campus. The interns, supported by the industrial partner, will install electronic instruments and monitor the engineering performance of this experimental timber basement. The timber wall behaviour and soil properties, under the seasonal impacts, will be obtained from the monitoring program. The final outcome of the research will be the empirical earth pressure diagrams on the wall the main influencing factors. The industrial partners will adopt the new material and findings in the construction industry of Canada.