The construction world’s revolutionary «self-locking connector » project was tested on a prefabricated home site in Levis on September 20, 2022
A valuable experimental step in Laurence Picard’s «Self-Locking Connector» project
September 20 was an exceptional day for Laurence Picard!
The doctoral student in mechanical engineering designed a « self-locking connector» to improve the assembly of different parts of a prefabricated house in the laboratories of Université Laval, under the supervision of professors Pierre Blanchet (Department of Wood and Forest Sciences) and André Bégin-Drolet (Department of Mechanical Engineering).
Accompanied by about thirty people, she saw her project, which will revolutionize the world of construction, come to fruition during a first demonstration on a prefabricated house site in the Roc-Pointe district of Saint-Nicolas on September 20, 2022.
This full-scale experimental stage of the « self-locking connector » project, for which Laurence Picard won an EGGENIUS-RBC ENVOL grant this year and the jury’s second prize of $10,000, as part of the 6th edition of the Génies en affaires competition (march 29, 2022), is the final stage of her doctoral thesis.
According to Pierre Blanchet, the main advantages of the « self-locking connector» compared to those currently available are:
- Â Better control of quality, costs and waste by increasing the level of finish of prefabricated modules in the factory, which can reach up to 80-90% (vs. 60% currently);
- Â Faster construction sites (up to four times faster) because there will be less intervention on the site.
To learn more, read the  ULaval news article
