Launched to assist the City of Waterloo with a disintegrating household pipe problem in the 1990s, the University’s Centre of Advancement of Trenchless Technologies (CAAT) is closing its doors at the end of this month.
Housed in Waterloo Engineering, the centre headed by Mark Knight, a civil and environmental engineering professor, has addressed critical issues facing underground infrastructure installation, assessment, repair and renewal since 1994.
Last fall, CATT’s governing board began a review of the centre to ensure it was still relevant to its members in a changing and growing industry.
The board consulted with industry professionals including Alireza Bayat, a University of Alberta (U of A) civil and environmental engineering professor and a Waterloo Engineering alumnus whose graduate work was supervised by Knight.
The discussions led to the establishment of the Canadian Underground Infrastructure Innovation Centre at U of A to be headed by Bayat (PhD ’09, civil engineering) and the closure of CATT.
See Building on CATT's foundation for full story.