TotalPave to Improve Road Testing

Entrevestor.com – Coady Cameron’s thesis for his master’s of civil engineering degree could end up saving municipalities a lot of money.

Coady and his brother, Drew, are the co-founders of TotalPave, a Fredericton startup that aims to revolutionize the way cities and towns assess which roads need to be paved.

The idea is so impressive that the Cameron brothers won the national Nicol Entrepreneurial Award last year for a new technology coming from a Canadian university.

Both men are still students at the University of New Brunswick, and Coady plans to hone the project as part of his engineering thesis. Then they are looking at spinning it out next year, when they graduate. They hope to have a full launch within 18 months.

“Our plan is to get a set of data that we’re comfortable with and to work with a city partner to test it,” said Drew, an MBA candidate.

In an interview at the Bootcamp of the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation’s Breakthru competition last Saturday, the Cameron brothers said municipalities now assess the roughness of roads by subcontracting the task to engineering firms.

These firms have “expensive equipment” and drive over roads to assess their roughness, and whether they are in need of repair, said Drew.

Getting such data is critical because a typical road will maintain its surface for several years, he said, but once the roadway starts to break down it will do so quickly and dramatically.

If a municipality detects the deterioration at the right time, it can make minor, inexpensive repairs promptly rather than paying a lot of money to repave the road.

The latest Canadian Infrastructure Report Card said 52 per cent of Canadian roads are in bad repair and estimated it would cost $92 billion to repair them all.

So how does TotalPave address this pain?

The company is developing software that can be downloaded into smartphones that can then be strapped into several municipal vehicles.

As these cars and trucks drive around on their customary routes, the software records where they have driven and how rough the roads are. It relays this data to a central facility that automatically assesses it and reports on what roads need repair most acutely.

As well as becoming UNB’s first Nicol award winners, the Cameron brothers have begun to garner interest from municipal politicians and engineering departments.

They presented their idea to the Transportation Association of Canada when it met in Fredericton last year, and generally received good feedback.

They have entered the company in Breakthru, which assesses the prospects of young businesses, and are looking for a software developer. They said it is premature to discuss how much money they will need to develop the product.