RJC at the Forefront of Concrete Technical Development in Canada

The fourth edition of the Cement Association of Canada’s Concrete Design Handbook and a newly updated CSA A23.3: Design of Concrete Structure were recently published and, as with previous editions, RJC personnel contributed reviews and research to the technical information in the publications. CSA A23.3 is one of several codes for which RJC contributes leading-edge technical expertise, working alongside Canada’s academic community to set the standards for construction in Canada.

RJC Toronto Principal Dr. Tibor Kokai has been a member of Canada’s “Technical Committee on Reinforced Concrete Design,” the group responsible for development of this code and associated Handbook, since 2000. In Vancouver, RJC consultant Dr. Ron DeVall has been providing technical input to this Committee, particularly the seismic section, consistently since 1984.

Furthermore, RJC employees have contributed to various specific sections of the new code, as follows:

FOUNDATIONS (CLAUSE 15)

Tibor Kokai is once again the chair of the sub-committee responsible for this chapter, personally writing most of the explanatory material.
Dr. Adam Lubell, Grant Newfield and Adamou Saidou of RJC provided technical input and review.

WALL CRACKING (CLAUSE 9)

Tibor’s tenacious work over the past decade on accurately predicting cracking of walls during high winds led to this code edition being the first in the world to address this important topic.

SLAB DEFLECTIONS (CLAUSE 9)

Graham FitzGerald and Kevin MacLean of RJC provided mentorship to a master’s student of Dr. Michael Bartlett of Western University, so Dr. Bartlett and his team could learn about how RJC calculates slab deflections. Tibor, Graham and Kevin provided valuable input to Dr. Bartlett’s expansion of Finite Element Analysis in this edition of the code, which more accurately estimates slab deflections.

SEISMIC (CLAUSE 21)

Dr. Ron DeVall continued his groundbreaking work, along with Dr. Perry Adebar of UBC (and others), to provide further refinement of seismic understanding and the code requirements that were pioneered by Ron and others in the 1984 code.

In addition to their specific sections, committee members must review and vote on all code changes - a significant time commitment! 

RJC is proud that our staff are part of the advancement of concrete technical knowledge and keeping Canada's engineering community at the leading edge of concrete design.