What to expectGTEC programAbout the themes

GTEC 2026 – WSP’s premier innovation showcase

Welcome to the official page for WSP’s Global Technical Excellence Conference (GTEC) 2026 — our flagship event celebrating innovation, collaboration, and technical excellence across disciplines.

GTEC is where bold ideas meet real-world impact. It’s a curated gathering of WSP’s top technical minds — our Visioneers — selected from across the globe to share insights, spark dialogue, and inspire action. 

What to expect as a participant

GTEC is a 3-day internal conference designed primarily for our people to feature their work. For 1 or 2 days, we open the doors to our valued clients — innovators and technically passionate partners — to join the conversation.  

Participants will have the opportunity to:

  • Engage with WSP’s global technical leaders across sectors and specialties 
  • Customize your experience by selecting from ~100 presentations 
  • Co-create a workshop tailored to your business needs with on-site experts 

Note: GTEC has no registration fee. WSP will provide on‑site food and beverages; travel and accommodation are not included. Participants must ensure that attending aligns with their own organization’s ethics policy before accepting the invitation.

GTEC Program

Here’s an high-level view of the program that awaits for you.

Join us at an iconic downtown Toronto venue to kick off the event.

Start time: 18h30
Location: TBC

Meet your WSP contact, connect with peers from across the industry, and engage with members of WSP’s leadership team as we begin the GTEC experience together.

This is it — your GTEC immersion is about to begin.

Start time: 7h am

Join us on site, where your WSP contact will welcome you, help facilitate introductions with other experts, and answer your questions before you dive in and experience the event on your own.

Meet Alexandre L’Heureux, President and CEO of WSP.

Start time: 8h am

His vision and leadership have been central to the Corporation’s remarkable growth. Since he joined in 2016, WSP has successfully completed strategic acquisitions, expanded its global footprint, and grown to over 73,000 talented professionals worldwide.

Alexandre L’Heureux will kick off the event by sharing his own perspective on technical excellence.

Preparing for the Unexpected: How to Manage Through Complexity and Change.

Start time: 8h45 am

Chris Hadfield - Astronaut, first Canadian to command the International Space Station and bestselling author.

Drawing on extraordinary experiences in space, he brings powerful insights into leading through complexity, managing risk, and embracing the unexpected.
Chris Hadfield's promises to be an inspiring session. 

Featured themes

Start time: 10h am

During these sessions, you’ll select one of the themes listed below, each featuring six curated presentations that explore the theme in depth and highlight the latest thinking, innovation, and research from our GTEC speakers 
 

  • AI & automation for smarter engineering
  • Carbon‑smart design & circular delivery
  • Collaborative digital innovation 
  • From megawatts to mindware
  • Risk to resilience and value creation
  • Smart infrastructure and asset management
  • Sustainability and decarbonization through digital innovation
  • Water intelligence across sectors

Lunch break

Start time: 12h pm

Recharge your batteries while enjoying an on site networking lunch.

Client Insights

Start time: 1h pm

Industry leaders will take the stage and discuss what technical excellence looks like from their point of view, where consultants add the most value, and where they often fall short. 

About the themes

img themes
The benefits of reliably powering and decarbonizing the AI era by integrating multi‑GW data centers with renewables and storage, grid‑forming and digital substation technologies, hybrid AC/HVDC transmission, grid‑interactive operations, and resilience safeguards across the electric system.
The benefits of harnessing AI, geospatial/satellite sensing, and digital twins to turn fragmented environmental and biodiversity data into decision‑ready intelligence for portfolio monitoring, disclosure & compliance, impact assessment, and nature‑positive design across land, water, and infrastructure systems.
The power of designing and delivering low‑carbon assets by embedding life‑cycle assessment, circular economy strategies (reuse, refurbishment, and material recovery), low‑carbon materials, and performance‑led design to cut embodied and operational emissions while improving resilience and value.
The power of unifying teams, data, and tools to deliver projects faster and smarter, standardizing interoperable workflows (BIM/digital twins), automating handoffs, and embedding cross‑disciplinary collaboration to integrate design, delivery, and operations at scale.
The positive outcomes of applying AI, automation, and analytics to accelerate engineering and project delivery, spanning generative/assistive design, BIM/code automation, data pipelines, and automated QA/QC, to reduce cost, time, and risk while improving quality and repeatability.
Impressive success stories of building integrated digital ecosystems by connecting BIM, GIS, and IoT into living digital twins that unify models and data for coordinated design, faster delivery, and smarter asset operations.
How transforming infrastructure into connected, data‑driven systems by fusing IoT sensing, condition monitoring, and asset analytics with standardized operations enables predictive maintenance, reliability, and lifecycle‑optimized performance at portfolio scale.
The impact of leveraging digital tools, analytics, and automation to drive decarbonization, embedding carbon intelligence (e.g., LCA), performance optimization, and data‑driven decision‑making into design, delivery, and operations to cut embodied and operational emissions at scale.
Success stories on designing people‑centered urban environments that advance equity, health, and community, integrating acoustics, behavioral insights, inclusive mobility, and public‑realm design to create safer, more livable, and resilient cities.
Field-tested solutions that strengthen water‑system resilience across dams, rivers, and mine closure by uniting hydrology/hydraulics and geochemistry with climate‑informed modeling, dam‑break and consequence assessment, and adaptive operations to safeguard people, ecosystems, and assets.
The benefits of end‑to‑end PFAS management, from forensic fingerprinting and fate/transport analytics to rapid monitoring and scalable treatment/destruction, augmented by nature‑based remedies (e.g., phyto‑enhanced barriers) to deliver defensible risk reduction and compliance.
Whether it’s seepage source attribution, drone‑AI environmental inventories, commingled waste forms, wind‑erosion controls, or carbon removal from residues, the narrative shifts from “avoid failure” to “build resilience and extract value (economic, ESG, or social license).

Questions regarding the event?

Contact us