Construction

Construction research protects Canadians at home, at work and everywhere in between. NRC is creating better cities by developing more efficient construction materials, improved indoor environments, national building codes, safer structures and more durable and effective public infrastructure systems.

The Industry Sector

Responsible for building the nation's physical infrastructure, the construction sector has a major bearing on the quality of life of Canadians. With revenues of $171.8 billion in 2006, the construction sector produces 12% of our GDP. It employs over a million Canadians, in 260,000 enterprises, most of them with five employees or less. Fragmentation in the sector contributes to a low R&D investment, at less than 0.1% of revenues. 

Drivers of change for construction industry include: labour shortage and global competition; greenhouse gas emission reduction; consumers requesting healthier indoor environments; and water issues.

For over 60 years, NRC has provided significant scientific efforts in support of the construction sector through its NRC Institute for Research in Construction. With the key sector approach, NRC will generate additional innovation opportunities to industry by leveraging its extensive expertise across various disciplines and institutes throughout Canada.

Technology Platforms

• Product/Technology Development  
• Systems and Components
• Health and Safety
• Support to Regulatory and Marketplace Systems
• Performance Evaluation
• Computer-assisted Construction Technologies

NRC Key Sector Multi-Institute Opportunities

• Sensor arrays linked to decision management tools for indoor health monitoring in commercial spaces: this three-year project is led by the Information and Communication Technologies key sector. It will enable researchers to work together on integrating sensing hardware, wireless communication interface, and software-based analysis and feedback systems into a demonstration system.

Institutes involved in this activity are: NRC-IIT, NRC-IRC, NRC-IMS, NRC-SIMS and NRC-HIA.

• Facilitating the introduction of fuel cells and hydrogen devices into alternative energy systems for buildings: as a first step, this activity will help assess technology readiness and identify gaps in deployment of fuel cells and hydrogen technologies used in the Canadian construction sector. It will lead us to better understand how NRC could accelerate and strengthen its role in addressing the various barriers to the adoption of fuel cells and hydrogen-related technologies in the green building and off-grid power sector.

Joint initiative with NRC-IRC, NRC-IFCI, NRC-ICPET, and NRC-IRAP

• Prefabrication, modularization and preassembly: prefabrication of systems, modules and components, as well as robotization of various tasks in factories hold the promise of increasing productivity and efficiency. This two-phase study will ascertain and better define the technological and business/market barriers and identify areas of opportunity for NRC.  

NRC-IRAP, NRC-IRC and NRC-Business Support are working together on this initiative.

Fact sheet: