FIRST-M Consulting Limited is a Canadian engineering and scientific consulting company with worldwide experience, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario.

  

F.I.R.S.T.-M. stands for Failure Investigation, Infrastructure Reliability and Safety, and Science and Technology of Materials.

 

The company provides mechanical and metallurgical engineering expertise to industry, business, and government, undertakes failure and risk analysis studies, including non-destructive inspection, and carries out industry-oriented research with a particular emphasis on corrosion prevention and control, environmental effects on mechanical properties and integrity of materials, engineering failure analysis, and materials selection for contemporary and advanced engineering systems. Major scientific breakthroughs and other significant (fundamental) advances that have made a remarkable impact on materials, corrosion, and corrosion control science and technology over the last 35+ years are discussed in the “SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY” section.

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With a strong academic background in science and engineering—including mechanical engineering, materials science and engineering, corrosion science and engineering, physical chemistry, electrochemistry, and engineering mechanics—and nearly 40 years of fundamental and applied research on traditional to advanced structural materials, we take a multi- and interdisciplinary approach to solving complex industrial problems concerning the structural integrity, reliability, and safety of high-risk technologies and engineering structures exposed to technological or natural environments and service stresses of varying amplitudes.

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• Our expertise has been sought by companies, government agencies, research groups, and major research institutions in 17 countries spread across five continents, including Canada, China, India, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, and the United States.

• Our expertise has been recognized by government institutions, such as the Ministry of Transport Canada, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, and the Federal Nuclear and Radiation Safety Authority of the Russian Federation (which is equivalent to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission), among others.

• Our research findings have been used in aerospace, nuclear, naval, military, pipeline, medical device, oil and gas, petrochemical, and infrastructure applications providing vast savings for these industries.

• Our teaching activities revolve around delivering courses on corrosion and corrosion control, engineering failure analyses, materials science fundamentals, materials performance and reliability, materials degradation and failure, materials aspects of oil and gas production, corrosion science for the nuclear industry, physicochemical mechanics of fracture, machine component design, and mechanical engineering design methodology as well as tutorials for specialists in the industry (e.g., on pipeline integrity and corrosion management: pipeline SCC) in nine countries across four continents.

MATERIALS PROTECTION AND PERFORMANCE

We have been studying corrosion and materials performance since the early 1980s, including advanced scientific topics at national laboratories and research universities, providing consultations on aspects from simple domestic problems (e.g., oil spills from domestic fuel oil tanks) to complex space, nuclear, and deep-ocean problems and issues of defense and national security.

The following are a few examples of the completed (major) projects, showing that our experience and expertise allow us to help clients find resolutions to most, if not all, real-world problems in the corrosion and degradation of structural materials. These problems involve design, materials, environments, and operations. We can help to develop an approach to resolution and mitigation.