Geotechnical News • March 2018
33
History of the development of the Canadian Foundation
Engineering Manual/
Manuel Canadien d’Ingénierie des Fondations
Part 1 of 4
Doug VanDine
Introduction to Part 1 of the
Series
In this, and the next three issues of
Geotechnical News
, the History of the
development of the
Canadian Founda-
tion Engineering Manual
(en français,
le
Manuel Canadien d’Ingénierie des
Fondations
) will be chronicled. The
first draft of the manual was published
in 1975, but as you will read in Part
1, its history began well before that. If
you can’t wait to read Parts 2, 3 and 4,
the entire article is on the CGS web-
site (see
.
Background
The British North America Act, which
was passed by the British Parliament
on July 1, 1867, not only created the
country Canada, it also established
the distribution of responsibilities
and powers for each level of govern-
ment in Canada. The responsibility
for building regulations was given to
the provinces and territories, and this
responsibility was typically delegated
to municipalities. Because each
municipality tried to deal with its own
needs and issues, these regulations
often varied from one municipality
to the next. This situation frequently
made it very difficult for architects,
designers, engineers, product manu-
facturers and contractors, as well as
for national programs that supported
construction.
In 1916, the National Research Coun-
cil of Canada (NRC) was established
as part of the war effort to advise the
Canadian government on matters of
science and industrial research.
In 1937, to help alleviate the difficul-
ties associated with the multitude of
municipal building regulations across
the country, the federal Department
of Finance asked the NRC to develop
a building code that could be adopted
by all municipalities in Canada. The
result was the publication of the first
edition of the
National Building Code
of Canada (NBCC)
in 1941 (
NBCC,
1941).
The post-World War II construc-
tion boom required a revised NBCC
and, in particular, one that did not
require houses and small buildings to
be designed by architects or engi-
neers. In response, in 1947, the NRC
established the Division of Building
Research (DBR) and Robert Legget
was appointed the first director
1
.
One of DBR’s original mandates was
to provide research support for the
NBCC. In 1948, the DBR established
the Associate Committee on the
National Building Code (ACNBC),
and within that associate committee
a Standing Committee on Structural
Design was established. Under the
leadership of the ACNBC, the NBCC
was updated and revised in 1953,
1960, 1965 and 1970
2
.
1975 Draft Edition of the
Canadian Manual on
Foundation Engineering
In planning for the 1975 revision of
the NBCC, the Standing Committee
on Structural Design, established a
Subcommittee on Foundations
3
that
consisted of the following geotechni-
cal engineers with their identified
associations as of 1978:
A.G. (Tony) Stermac (Chair), Ontario
Ministry of Transportation and Com-
munications
D.J. (Don) Bazett, CBA Engineering
K.N. (Ken) Burn, NRC DBR
1
The DBR has been renamed several times, but since 2012 it has been known as ‘NRC Construction’.
2
Subsequent to 1970, and continuing to the present, the NBCC has been updated and revised approximately every 5 years.
3
It is unknown whether such a subcommittee existed before the early 1970s.
COMPUTING IN GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING
From the GS Board
Figure 1. Cover of the 1975 Draft
Edition.
