In a new endeavour to advance innovation within the industry, the Canadian Construction Association (CCA) and Cognit.ca are delighted to announce the launch of the Construction R&D Portal and the Construction R&D Showcase speaker series.

The goal of this initiative is to help Canada’s $141 billion construction industry capitalize on the $14 billion of research performed by universities annually.

The Construction R&D Portal will give construction leaders unprecedented visibility into world-class expertise, research, facilities and intellectual property that exist at post-secondary institutions across Canada. The Construction R&D Showcase will link industry executives and researchers with cutting-edge discoveries that can help the industry explore and adopt new innovations.

“One of the key challenges for the industry has been to learn about cutting-edge innovation that is undertaken by academia and the talent behind it. It can be equally difficult for researchers to showcase their research to industry executives or even gain funding for new research,” said Mary Van Buren, president of CCA. “This new single access portal will overcome that challenge by helping our members accelerate innovation by exposing them to the most up to date research available on construction.”

“Cognit.ca was designed to help businesses access expertise, research, facilities and intellectual property at post-secondary institutions across the country,” said Mike Matheson, managing director of Cognit.ca. “We are thrilled to work with the CCA to bring these resources directly to Canada’s construction industry.”

The Construction R&D Portal leverages Cognit.ca’s extensive database of research activities undertaken by Canada’s post-secondary education institutions. The portal will give industry leaders a window into the latest research and discoveries as well as the ability to search Cognit.ca’s database of more than 225,000 research grants, more than 100,000 experts, thousands of pieces of intellectual property, thousands of pieces of research infrastructure and hundreds of research facilities from the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s Research Facilities Navigator.

The Construction R&D Portal can be accessed at cca-acc.com/construction-rd-portal/.

ABOUT CCA

Across Canada, CCA represents more than 20,000 member firms drawn from 63 local and provincial integrated partner associations. CCA gives voice to the public policy, legal and standards development goals of contractors, suppliers and allied business professionals working in, or with, Canada’s institutional, commercial and industrial (ICI) construction industry.

The construction sector is one of Canada’s largest employers and a major contributor to the country’s economic success. The industry, 70 per cent of which is made up of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), employs more than 1.5 million Canadians and contributes 7 per cent towards Canada’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

www.cca-acc.com

ABOUT COGNIT

Cognit.ca is a tool for businesses, non-profits, governments and others who want to access the experts, facilities and/or intellectual property that exist on campuses across Canada. Originally created by The U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities as part of a larger set of initiatives to increase the impact of Canadian university research Cognit.ca is now being developed inpartnership with Universities Canada, and in collaboration with Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI),  with the support of Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and Mitacs.

www.cognit.ca