A solid-core building envelope system built around the CorCell™ matrix — applied across every plane of the enclosure, purpose-built for the schedule, labour and access realities of health facility construction in the Interior.
CorPanel™ is a composite sandwich panel: the CorCell™ matrix, a cementitious matrix incorporating expanded polystyrene, faced both sides in bonded calcium-silicate board. It is solid through its full section, with no cavity behind either face. Four nominal thicknesses, a fraction of the weight of precast concrete, and a trade sequence shorter than any of the systems it replaces. Foundation wall to roof underlay, set by the engineer of record against your drawings and stamped under his own seal.
A delayed wing is not a line on a schedule. It is a patient transferred out of their own community, and a family driving the Coquihalla to visit them.
Health facility projects outside the Lower Mainland compete for the same constrained trade base as every other project in the province, and then pay to move it. Steel erectors, formwork crews and masons travel, lodge, and bill the travel. Building seasons at elevation open late and close early, and cold-weather concreting buys back the difference in hoarding and heat. A care facility under renovation does not empty out: the work proceeds around residents, on a sequence the operator sets and the contractor accommodates.
The systems that built the last generation of these facilities are not the systems that will build the next one.
The constraint is rarely the material or the crane. It is crew-weeks accumulated on a site far from where crews live — each one carrying mobilisation, lodging, per diem and return.
At elevation the enclosure closes before the weather does. Mountain highway routing caps what can be trucked in one piece, and every trade added to the critical path is a week bought at the wrong end of the calendar.
Wards, suites and resident rooms stay in use throughout. A shorter trade sequence in an occupied wing is fewer disruptions for staff to manage and fewer residents to relocate.
The systems that build hospitals and care facilities each bring their own crew, their own mobilisation, and their own place on the critical path. Set against each, this is what changes.
Shop drawings, fabrication lead time, and an erection crew that travels to site and stays. Sequencing is set by the fabricator’s queue as much as by the programme.
The enclosure is not a fabricated assembly waiting on a queue. Panels are set by a trained installer crew working to the engineer of record’s drawings.
Formwork, reinforcement, placement and cure — on a cure schedule weighted by temperature. Cold-weather work adds hoarding, heat, and the days both consume.
No formwork, no reinforcement placement, and no cure window sitting on the critical path. The wall is complete when it is set.
Cast off-site and trucked in. Piece size is capped by what the highway route permits, and crane and rigging are required at every lift.
CorPanel™ Standard at 150 mm weighs 85 kg/m² ±5 — 117 kg per panel. A 150 mm precast concrete panel is several times that in concrete alone. Hand-set or light-lifted as the project defines, where precast requires crane and rigging at every lift, and the load reaching the structure below is not a precast load.
Mason-dependent, laid unit by unit, and masons are scarce and mobile. A block wall in a remote community waits on a trade that may be three regions away.
Set by a trained and licensed installer crew rather than a certified mason, and set as full-height panels rather than unit by unit.
The interior default, and the longest sequence of all: stud, insulation, membrane, board, tape, sand, prime. Seven passes by four trades before a wall is ready for finish.
The panel arrives as the wall — solid through its section, with no stud cavity behind either face. Joints taped or meshed over, as the engineer of record specifies, then finish. Drywall is optional rather than required, which removes a trade from the interior sequence outright.
A fraction of the weight of precast concrete, set by one crew, across every plane of the enclosure — foundation wall, floor underlay, exterior, interior partition and roof underlay. Fewer trades in sequence, fewer mobilisations to a site that charges for every one.
Construction cost is additive because construction is additive. CorPanel™ consolidates load-carrying, enclosure and a finish-ready face into one element, which removes scopes rather than removing building — with reduced on-site labour and a shorter trade sequence than the systems above. On a project where crews travel and lodge, the sequence is the cost.
Solid, not hollow. Care settings favour solid wall construction, and CorPanel™ is solid through its full section: no stud cavity behind the face of a patient room, a corridor or a clean utility. Deployment draws on the skillset the construction workforce already holds — crews are trained and licensed to the system, not recruited from a new trade.
A multi-storey steel-framed facility in Alberta, enclosed with CorPanel™ while the frame and fit-out advanced around it.
The ground floor and end elevation closed in solid panel while fit-out proceeds on the floors above and behind. The enclosure does not wait for the building, and the building does not wait for the enclosure.
Upper-storey panels picked singly by a boom truck and received by a crew on an aerial platform. A light lift, set to the programme — not a precast rigging operation.
A full-height panel on the line, guided in by a single worker. Wrapped bundles are staged at grade beside the wall they become.
Panels set to the line against the steel frame from an aerial work platform, storey by storey.
Openings and returns resolved on the floor plate where the panel is set, with standard cutting tools — no shop return and no re-order lead time.
Panel returns wrap the column line at grade while the fit-out trades work the floor plate behind.
The enclosure begins at grade while the frame above is still open — the wall line follows the steel rather than the finish date.
Panels staged at grade and cut to size in the yard before they go up.
The face dimension does not change with thickness. What changes is the section, and the engineer of record assigns it.
Every panel presents 610 mm × 2270 mm — an area of 1.3847 m² — at a standard height of 2270 mm (7.5 ft), at every thickness offered. Layout, module and opening logic stay constant across a project even where the section changes from one plane to the next, so one detail library carries the whole enclosure.
| Nominal thickness | Metric |
|---|---|
| 2 inch | 60 mm |
| 4 inch | 100 mm |
| 6 inch | 150 mm |
| 8 inch | 200 mm |
Nominal shipping weight, CorPanel™ Standard at 150 mm: 85 kg/m² ±5, or 117 kg per panel. The tolerance is a worst-case bound rather than a spread. Weight at other thicknesses and for the other constructions is supplied on enquiry against a named project.
Panels are hand-set or lifted as the project defines. Site access, storey, crane availability and crew size determine the method — which matters most where crane time is chartered rather than local.
On a phased or occupied facility, the enclosure sequence is set with the project team and the operator ahead of mobilisation, wing by wing.
Each is a distinct construction with a distinct role. They are specified by name, in the same line as the panel.
Calcium-silicate faces over the CorCell™ matrix. No reinforcement, no mesh, no foam slab. This is the construction referred to wherever a drawing or specification names CorPanel™ without qualification.
As Standard, with a 3-inch polystyrene slab at the vertical mid-plane. CorPanel™ Thermal is a non-load-bearing infill panel, used as a filler panel in the manner of a glass curtain wall.
As Standard, with four glass fibre-reinforced polymer (GFRP) reinforcing bars at 6 inches on centre. The bar specification is instructed to the factory by the engineer of record.
Nothing stated about one construction carries to another. A project may draw on more than one across different planes, and the engineer of record assigns them.
On a hospital or a care facility, the envelope question is an engineering question — and it is answered by an engineer, on your drawings, under his seal.
Corvea supplies the panel. The assembly — how it is applied, at what section, on which planes, and how it resolves against the code in force at that site — is engineered on the project, for the project. That work sits with the engineer, where the responsibility for it belongs.
On every project, the assembly is reviewed and stamped by the licensed structural engineer of record — or the authorized project engineer — at that project’s details, under that engineer’s own seal, to the code in force where it is built.
That is the standard we hold ourselves to, and it is the foundation of liability protection for the owner, the insurer, and the authority having jurisdiction. It also means the panel you specify is the panel an engineer has signed for, on your project, at your details.
Where an owner brings his own engineer, which is most projects, Corvea’s engineer of record coordinates with his — from the first section through to the sealed submission.
A drawing set, a site, and a programme. From those three, the engineer of record opens the technical conversation with your project team directly.
Corvea Inc. · (403) 397-8255 · corvea.co
Name the facility type, the storey count and the planes intended, and the enquiry routes from there.
Corvea is pursuing formal evaluation for the Canadian and United States markets, and makes no representation that CorPanel™ is presently listed, certified, or approved by any evaluation body or authority having jurisdiction.
Corvea™, CorPanel™, CorCell™ and CorLife™ are trademarks of Corvea Group Inc., used under licence.