Luke Jouppi is the founder and owner of Beaver Concrete, a skatepark design-build company. For the past 19 years Luke has dedicated his professional career to the skatepark industry. Starting while attending university where he ran a city owned skatepark in Ottawa, Luke designed, built and ran the facility for 3 years. The first 4 years after graduating (Bachelor of Industrial Design, B.I.D. 2001) he worked as a skatepark designer with teams in U.S.A., Canada and Australia. Wanting to better understand the process and design opportunities of concrete construction Luke moved to the project construction side of the industry in 2005. For the next 6 years, his work was on sites in different locations in Canada, starting as a carpenter and concrete finisher and moving to a site foreman/ project manager position within 2 years.

 

In 2011 Luke saw an opportunity to improve the skatepark design-build process and started Beaver Concrete. Beaver Concrete was established as a corporation in Sweden in 2012. We are run by a Canadian and employ 8 Canadians along with 4 Scandinavians. All of our work since establishing the company in 2012 has been in Scandinavia but we are looking to return home to Canada to contribute a new approach within the skateboard park industry. The team assembled from the best park builders Luke knew from his time building on Canada and has gone on to involve enthusiastic talent from Finland, Sweden and Denmark. The team now consists of 12 highly experienced and talented skatepark builders, who are all skaters themselves.  Beaver Concrete has been involved in

over 35 skateparks in Scandinavia (more than 25,000m2 of skateparks built) during the last 6 years.

 

Working on many projects in many countries with a wide range of clients, communities, architects, designers and contractors has provided Beaver Concrete with valuable experience collaborating on complex projects with specified timeframes and budgets. Though many people can be involved and time and budgets are always a concern this never gets in the way of quality, innovation and overall passion for each project. At Beaver Concrete all crew members have certain specific roles they are entrusted with but everybody on the team takes part in all aspects of the skatepark build process, everybody can contribute in all areas including, earthworks, layout, drainage, formwork, rebar, concrete work, stone masonry, detailing work. Each person on the crew is very well versed in all these aspects and able to take on any task on site. We firmly believe in everyone taking part in each step and developing all necessary skills for quality and efficiency. We also have had the same team members as a core and have built throughout our growth so that we know we can count on each other be synchronized throughout the build process. Also all team members have say in on-site design development, innovation and additions. Everybody having a vested interest as a skateboarder along with a wealth of experience in developing a design idea through to being built results in a better park for all involved.

The main beneficiary of this approach is the users who are invited to join the process as the park gets built to offer insight and advice as the park develops and contribute any suggestions for improvement.