A survey of fire training facilities and programs across Canada led to active participation by members of University of Waterloo Fire Research Group in development of new fire training curricula and to the concept and design for the Waterloo Region Emergency Services Training & Research Complex (WRESTRC), which houses the UW Live Fire Research Facility. This research has resulted in collaboration on the design of various firefighter training facilities (WRESTRC Fire Training Facility, Oakville Fire Training Facility), as well as major consultations with DND on technical performance requirements for Navy fire training facilities. It's work formed the focus of a widely disseminated report on Design of Municipal Fire Training Facilities, as well as a two day Fire Training Facility Design Workshop at UWaterloo with further workshops planned at the WRESTC.
Research with the fire service has expanded into a unique technology/research exchange program with fire departments in Southwestern Ontario, as well as with many across Canada. Instrumented full-scale fire experiments have been conducted with the Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge Fire Departments for combined fire training and research purposes. These involved characterization of large, open pit fires and the burning of many abandoned houses at locations across Ontario. The scenarios have been predicted, with some success in respect to fire growth, using the Consolidated Fire and Smoke Transport (CFAST) model and various other correlations. All the results, coupled with information from the literature and results from the pool fire program, are interpreted in the context of fire training, fire growth and spread, fire suppression and fire fighting methodology.