Major investments in housing are leading to an increased need for new and renewed infrastructure such as roads, bridges, treatment plants, and parks. These community assets are essential for maintaining everyday life by ensuring safe and reliable access to services for all residents. These community assets provide essential services that residents rely on.

Local governments, who collectively own about 60% of the public infrastructure in Canada, are tasked with the responsibility to deliver capital projects that meet both climate resilience and sustainability outcomes.  


Utilizing the established PIEVC climate risk protocol and the Envision® sustainable infrastructure framework, the AssetAdapt+ initiative will build capacity and empower communities to procure and deliver capital infrastructure assets that embed climate adaptation alongside social, environmental, and economic sustainability outcomes.

About AssetAdapt+

AssetAdapt+ is a joint initiative between the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering (CSCE) and Climate Risk Institute (CRI). The AssetAdapt+ initiative is empowering regional and local government staff through capacity building, and will involve a series of activities over the next two years (2025/2026):

• Introductory webinars, raising sustainability and climate resilience awareness among public asset owners.
• Comprehensive training, for a deeper dive into the fundamentals of the Envision sustainability framework and PIEVC resilience protocol (with an added option to complete further training towards earning a professional credential in sustainability and/or resilience).
• Development of a water/wastewater peer cohort, working alongside peers and mentors during collaborative charrette events, to define requirements and develop scopes of work for procuring professional services that proactively advance the sustainability and climate resilience outcomes of their selected upcoming capital water/wastewater project.
• A procurement workshop pilot, that will package the learning and insights from the cohort into an abbreviated workshop for scaling up learning across communities and project types.

About Envision & PIEVC

Both the Envision® framework and the PIEVC protocol are included as recommended means to address the resiliency requirements of the federal Climate Lens. Envision and PIEVC are complimentary and can be integrated to offer a holistic assessment of both sustainability and climate resilience outcomes on capital projects.

 The Public Infrastructure Engineering Vulnerability Committee (PIEVC) was established in 2005 by Engineers Canada to consider how the impacts of climate change might affect Canada’s public infrastructure and to support practitioners in assessing and addressing related risks.  In 2020 the PIEVC Alliance took over management of the PIEVC Protocol and related resources and training. More details about PIEVC can be found on the PIEVC Program website.

Envision is a global framework and rating system that has been applied in Canada since the framework’s inception in 2012. It offers a holistic, comprehensive point of reference to examine the sustainability and resiliency performance of all types of infrastructure. Envision can assist asset owners, and their design consultants and contractors, in delivering infrastructure that tackles communities’ most pressing challenges, including improving quality of life for everyone, creating quality jobs, increasing economic growth, supporting climate resilience, reducing emissions, and cultivating social equity and cohesiveness. More details about Envision can be found on the Envision Canada website.”

CONTACT US: For more information, please write to assetadapt@csce.ca.