The Canadian Construction Association (CCA) in conjunction with Cognit.ca, has launched two initiatives designed to connect construction companies and academics.

The first, the Construction R&D Portal is a database of those research projects, facilities, intellectual property and academics that are performing work relating to the construction space at post-secondary institutions in Canada. Filters on the site allow users to search by articles, intellectual property, researchers and infrastructure to browse dozens of initiatives.

The Construction R&D Showcase, meanwhile, 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.” 

The Construction R&D 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. 

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

Watch the official announcement of the R&D Portal with Van Buren and Matheson below: