Construction SMEs significantly contribute to Canada’s economy. Therefore high productivity within the SMEs is highly beneficial for the development of the country. Building constructions and renovations are everyday occurrences which involve the constant need to improve and readapt business practices to market forces and trends of globalization. Consumers and business owners face problems during each project that may result in delayed project delivery or extra cost spending. No one really likes this right?

Machine maintenance is a necessary task to keep production lines or individual machines running in a healthy condition. Predictive Maintenance (PdM) can effectively reduce maintenance cost and machine down time. However, it requires online machine condition monitoring systems to obtain the relevant parameters of the machines.

The project examines the use of recycled plastics sourced from waste landfills for construction and infrastructure
applications such as fence panels, an idea developed by EcoFence. Through the course of this project a
comprehensive study is conducted to evaluate the mechanical and physical characteristics, such as strength
and sound absorption. The measured data is compared to those of conventional fencing materials such as vinyl,
composite wood and concrete.

Foamed concrete is a low-density product, created by blending a cement paste with a foaming agent. The foam is stable during the set-up of the concrete, resulting in fine, evenly distributed voids within the concrete matrix.
In addition to its low density, properties of foam concrete include pumpability as a fresh concrete mix; and sound absorption and thermal resistance (relative to standard concrete) when cast.

The shock absorption properties of synthetic turf playing surfaces are mainly controlled by a granular infill composed of sand and rubber crumbs. Throughout their useful life, playing surfaces show decreasing shock absorption properties. Particle breakage, segregation, compaction and contamination with fine particles have been invoked to explain the aging of playing surfaces. In this project, CT scans of sand-rubber mixtures will be obtained after different numbers of impacts with an instrumented hammer that measures the shock absorption properties.

With the growing demand for energy efficient buildings, conventional steel wall studs are no longer an appropriate choice for exterior walls. Conventional steel studs cause an inordinately high degree of thermal bridging which lowers the energy efficiency of the building. To address this concern, Structa Wire Corporation started the development of an innovative steel stud that replaces the solid steel web in the conventional steel stud with welded wires. The newly proposed steel stud shows promising energy efficiency, by demonstrating a significant reduction in thermal bridging.

Structurlam products Ltd is a renowned Canadian company for its quality mass timber products and ability to fabricate complex design. The company developed a new generation hybrid composite glulam structural element while the performance is still unknown. The proposed research here will investigate the performance of this element under bending and compression. Both the regular glulam element and the hybrid composite glulam elements will be experimentally tested, and their performances will be mutually compared in terms of their loading capacity, deformation capacity, and failure modes.

Hydropower dams are significant investments and their integrity affects many stakeholders. Failure of a dam results in catastrophic events which cannot be mitigated. Seismic evaluation and prediction of dynamic response of dams need in depth assessment which has always been challenging with complex dam-water-foundation interaction. Impounded water considerably affects the response of a dam during a seismic event.

The mining sector plays a huge role in the Saskatchewan economy, in addition to being the largest private sector employer of Aboriginal peoples in the province. It is important economically and socially for the mining workforce to be healthy and productive. Yet we know little about the impacts of physical and mental health on productivity, absenteeism, presenteeism and disability within the industry.

The structural use of timber in North America is largely limited to low-value commodity products used in low-rise residential light-frame construction. There exists, however, much greater potential for timber to be used as a structural material. One solution involves the notion of “mass-timber” such as cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels. The prospect of building larger timber structures creates challenges, one of them is that lateral forces created by wind and earthquakes increase. Two of the questions that arise are: 1) what is an efficient method for hold-downs for CLT panels?