The New Brunswick Department of Transportation and Infrastructure has committed to investing $500,000 a year for the next five years in a local company that’s revolutionizing the way culverts are assessed.
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New Brunswick based engineering company Inversa Systems is the first to transition CAT scan technology from the medical field to infrastructure, allowing for a culverts to be inspected without the need to dig.
“Until this technology became available there was no method to assess voids in the surrounding back fill without digging up culverts,” explained Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Bill Fraser at an announcement Wednesday morning.
“No traffic interruptions, no detours, no heavy equipment, no inconvenience or safety hazards for drivers.”
A pilot project of 15 culverts was successfully completed by the company.
Now the province has formalized the relationship for the next half a decade with Inversa completing assessments of 250 culverts each year.
“The challenges of manning this infrastructure in a city is very different from rural,” explained Inversa Systems President and CEO John Bowles. “In the city challenges might be making sure that your corridors to a hospital, schools and fire halls are strategically looked after, in the rural it might be economic corridors associated with trucking, it might also be that ambulance routes and fire routes are not detoured too long
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“New Brunswick kind of represents our ideal client in that they have both cities and very rural areas,” said Bowles.
Since starting the pilot project Inversa has since launched similar programs in Quebec and Georgia and expects more North American provinces and states to follow suit as well.
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