Who would ever have imagined that the concrete industry would be adopting IoT and AI-powered technology? The journey for Giatec began in 2010; a new-age concrete revolution that started off when friends, Pouria Ghods and Aali R. Alizadeh, both Ph.D. graduates in civil engineering with a focus on concrete, realized the stark contrast between academic advancements in tools and research and the reality of bridges built just a few decades earlier collapsing and taking lives as they fell. They applied their acquired knowledge and invested their passion into a vision for more durable, secure, and sustainable construction in September of 2010.
Building a New Road to Innovation
Giatec, a startup success from Ottawa, has now expanded into an MNC and is redefining the construction sector by bringing cutting-edge testing technologies to the forefront of every job site. At Giatec, they are committed to giving opportunities to a diverse workforce as they believe in the significant role diversity plays in our society’s growth. They have followed their motto of diversity, sustainability, and innovation to attain immense success in domestic and global territories.
The company has been determined to create stronger and safer concrete structures after spotting a significant vacuum in the market. As the team expanded, they maintained their commitment to diversity because they understood that only a diverse group of imaginative people could produce a workforce of the highest caliber.
Giatec’s ecosystem of hardware and software products puts cutting-edge smart testing technologies and real-time data collection at the forefront of every job site, fostering innovation throughout the lifecycle of concrete and giving construction workers a whole new level of safer efficiency while lowering concrete’s carbon footprint.
Awards and Recognitions
- Giatec joined as a member of the Associated General Contractors of America (AGCA) in June 2023.
- Giatec was also recognized as a finalist in the CanadianSME National Business Awards, 2022, which was held on May 5th, 2023, at the prestigious Metro Toronto Convention Centre.
- The company won the Employer Excellence Award in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
- It received the 2019 and 2020 Growth List Canada’s Fastest Growing Companies awards.
- It made it on the Globe and Mail Canada’s Top Growing Companies for the last 4 years in a row.
- It has additionally won multiple Best Ottawa Business Awards in from 2019 to present.
All About Concrete Temperature and Maturity
- Concrete is the second most-used substance on Earth (behind water). While the idea of building with concrete may seem like an easy enough concept, there is a lot of very specific science that happens behind the scenes to ensure concrete buildings, bridges, or highways are durable enough to last. Concrete production has also played a surprisingly large role in rising global temperatures over the last century.
- Monitoring the temperature of concrete curing is one of the most important steps in the construction of a concrete structure. This ensures the concrete does not reach temperatures that are too high or too low, allowing proper strength development and improving of the durability of the concrete.
- The concrete maturity method is a non-destructive aproach to estimate real-time early age strength gain of concrete. It uses the temperature history of the concrete curing to estimate the concrete strength. This helps projects save days, sometimes weeks, off their schedules.
- With a solution ecosystem encompassing advanced IoT sensors that are changing the face of concrete data, combined with predictive AI-based models, Giatec is focused on monitoring concrete, from production to curing, allowing people to build faster and safer while reducing the concrete related carbon footprint.
Taking Diversity Seriously
Giatec believes that the diversity of their team has been the key to their success and has built the foundation of their company around this value. This earnest effort placed on building a diverse workforce have been especially evident within in their recruitment drives. Their team stands at 100+ workers, immigrated from 15 different countries, speak more than 20 languages, and are 38% female. This is a true example of a modern-day business that runs on inclusive ideologies. 50% of their leadership staff is female, and 75% were born outside Canada. The numbers speak for themselves as to how focused the company has remained in bridging the gaps in the technology and construction industry by valuing diversity which adds to a variety of creative minds.
Milestones achieved by Giatec Scientific Inc.
- Since starting its journey in 2010, the company has been pouring passion and vision into bearing an innovative and sustainable change in the concrete industry. They launched their first product in 2011, which was a sensor that detected corrosion speed in the steel/rebar inside the concrete.
- The SmartRock sensor was launched in 2015. This is a wireless sensor for measuring temperature and strength in real time. This was a fabulous achievement in terms of innovation and excellence as it was the first ever wireless concrete testing sensor of it’s kind to ever be developed.
- Giatec 360™, an advanced web-based dashboard that monitors and manages the amount the concrete pours, was launched in 2018. This moved up the level for a concrete analysis. Overall, it upped the game for SmartRock sensor with its data analysis, instant reports and user management tools.
SmartMix™ was launched in 2021, bringing an AI-poweredmix management software to industry concrete producers and allowign them to optimize their concrete mix designs and analyze mix performance to reduce C02 emmissions.The company’s latest innovation is the SmartRock Pro sensor, teh 1st fully self-callibrating concrete strength monitoring sensor. This newest sensor measures concrete strength using multiple advanced sensing methods without requiring input from end users.
Today, Giatec is a global company currently bringing its suite of hardware and software products to 10,000 construction projects across 85+ countries, driving innovation throughout concrete’s lifecycle, and reducing concrete’s carbon footprint.
If you want to learn more about their innovative range of products and equipment, visit their website: https://www.giatecscientific.com/.
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