Concrete Canvas wins engineering award

Concrete Canvas founders Peter Brewin and Will Crawford are to receive the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Engineering Better Lives Award for their work on climate infrastructure technology.

The award, created to mark the Academy’s 50th anniversary, recognises engineering with potential to deliver wider societal benefit. Concrete Canvas has been selected for its flexible cement-loaded composite mat technology, which is rolled out in situ, hydrated, and left to set into a durable concrete layer.

The company’s products are used for erosion control, containment, surface protection, drainage, channel lining, water infrastructure, rail, highways, mining, construction, and security applications. The Royal Academy of Engineering said the material can be installed up to ten times faster than traditional concrete and with 60% lower carbon emissions.

Concrete Canvas has built a network of more than 60 partners across six countries over the past two decades. Its work includes water channel regeneration activity in Kyrgyzstan, where it has agreed a regeneration plan covering 525,000km of water channels. The company is also building its first production plant outside the UK in the Chuy region of northern Kyrgyzstan.

The recognition comes as water infrastructure and climate adaptation move higher up the construction workload. Extreme weather, ageing drainage assets, leakage, erosion, flood risk, and canal deterioration are creating demand for solutions that can be installed quickly, with less plant, less wet concrete, and reduced site disruption.

Concrete Canvas operates in the space between conventional concrete, geosynthetics, sprayed materials, and modular lining systems. The product is particularly relevant where access is difficult, programme windows are short, or water management assets need rapid rehabilitation. In drainage channels, culverts, embankments, slopes, and containment areas, speed and durability can be as important as material cost.

For contractors, the practical gain is reduced site complexity. Traditional concrete lining can require formwork, mixing, curing time, skilled labour, plant access, and protection from weather or water ingress. A roll-out material changes that sequence, simplifying logistics and allowing smaller crews to complete works in locations where conventional methods would be slower or more disruptive.

The carbon argument is also becoming more commercially relevant. Materials used in infrastructure maintenance have historically been judged on cost, durability, and installation practicality. Clients are now adding embodied carbon, circularity, whole-life performance, and resilience to that assessment. Lower-carbon alternatives are strongest where they also preserve programme certainty and asset performance.

Climate resilience is likely to increase demand for these kinds of products. Water assets are under pressure from both scarcity and storm intensity. Irrigation channels, drainage systems, flood defences, rail embankments, highways slopes, and industrial containment structures are all exposed to weather patterns that are less predictable than the assumptions built into older infrastructure.

The award also demonstrates how construction product innovation can move from niche application to export-led infrastructure. Concrete Canvas began as a specialist material, but its use in water-channel rehabilitation and international climate infrastructure now places it within larger questions around resource efficiency, adaptation, and construction productivity.

Public bodies, utilities, and major infrastructure clients tend to move cautiously where asset life and maintenance liability are involved. Technical certification, case studies, installation training, warranty support, and lifecycle data will determine how far the technology moves into mainstream specification. The Academy recognition gives Concrete Canvas a high-profile endorsement as construction is asked to deliver more resilient infrastructure with fewer resources and lower emissions.