SmartLam Teams With RedBuilt

by | Jun 26, 2020 | News

SmartLam Teams With RedBuilt

SmartLam North America and RedBuilt announced a partnership to supply cross-laminated timber (CLT) products and solutions to architects, engineers and contractors for projects using the mass timber building technology.

RedBuilt will serve as exclusive distributor of SmartLam CLT in the Pacific Northwest, West Coast and Southwest, which includes nine states: California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Montana.

The companies state they will offer the first integrated solution for mass timber building, with highly trained technical sales and design teams, all deeply familiar with mass timber design, manufacturing and installation. “These teams will guide architects, engineers and contractors through the entire design and construction process to streamline workflow and eliminate guesswork.”

The SmartLam/Redbuilt partnership will offer a wide array of structural engineered wood solutions, including CLT, GLB, Open Web, I-joists, LVL and connection hardware from a single source, simplifying the building process.

Since establishing North America’s first CLT manufacturing facility in 2012, SmartLam has been a pioneer of CLT in the U.S. SmartLam operates two modern production facilities in Columbia Falls, Mont. and Dothan, Ala. The Columbia Falls facility also serves as corporate headquarters.

Casey Malmquist, CEO and Founder of SmartLam North America, is thrilled about this partnership. “SmartLam sees great potential in developing the market though our partnership with RedBuilt. Our team is excited to support and grow the relationship by offering the absolute best products, unmatched service levels, and seamless project delivery to our joint customers throughout the Western U.S.”

Since 1958, RedBuilt has been an industry leader in innovative and customized, wood building solutions. Headquartered in Boise, Idaho, RedBuilt operates four manufacturing plants, five design centers, with technical sales team members posted around the country to provide local support.

Don Schwabe, CEO and President of RedBuilt, shares the excitement and benefits of the partnership. “Mass timber is a natural extension to the RedBuilt offering, and Smartlam is the natural choice as our supplier. Our customers are getting the best of both worlds. From design to delivery, they know we will get it done on-time, on-spec, and on budget.”

SmartLam has announced plans to build several CLT facilities across the country.

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Katerra Opens State-of-the-Art Mass Timber Factory

by | Sep 23, 2019 | News

Katerra Opens State-of-the-Art Mass Timber Factory

Katerra announced the grand opening of North America’s highest volume cross-laminated timber (CLT) factory. Located in Spokane Valley, Washington, the 270,000-square-foot-facility will increase supplies of CLT, a fully renewable structural building material that sequesters carbon for a building’s life and can be used in place of steel and concrete in buildings up to 18 stories.

Katerra’s state-of-the-art CLT facility reflects the company’s technology-first approach, incorporating advanced geometric and biometric scanning of lamstock, an on-site kiln for precise moisture control and artificial intelligence to further improve safety and reduce waste. Katerra has deployed these innovations to result in a consistent, high-quality product. Katerra’s factory also features the largest CLT press currently in operation globally, offering customers unmatched design flexibility.

“CLT perfectly embodies Katerra’s guiding principles for product development – it is technologically advanced, sustainable, and offers meaningful cost and time reductions,” says Michael Marks, CEO and co-founder of Katerra. “We have invested in creating the largest capacity CLT factory in North America because we believe deeply in the potential of CLT and want to see this great material advance to the mainstream.”

Katerra’s new CLT factory occupies 29 acres with easy access to rail lines and interstate highways. At full operation, the factory will employ 105 people with an annual manufacturing capacity to provide thousands of apartments, student housing units, and more than 11 million square feet of floors and roofs.

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MSU Building Using CLT, Glulam Products

by | Apr 8, 2019 | News

MSU Building Using CLT, Glulam Products

 

The Michigan State University STEM Teaching and Learning Facility will be the first in Michigan to use mass timber wood products, rather than concrete and/or steel, for its load-bearing structure. The $100 million facility will be constructed of glue-laminated wooden columns and cross-laminated timber (CLT), a relatively new product for the floors and ceilings.

“We compared mass timber with other framing methods and were intrigued by how far wood has come as a building material,” said John LeFevre, MSU’s Planning, Design and Construction director. “A major advantage is the speed of construction – the panels can be assembled very quickly.” The new building will be constructed around the former Shaw Lane Power Plant. Two new mass timber wings will offer 117,000 sq. ft. of modern teaching labs, responding to STEM course demand, which has increased 40% in the last 10 years at MSU. The building is slated to open in fall 2020 with classes beginning in January 2021. The wood panels are being manufactured in Quebec and will arrive on campus in April.

Currently there is no CLT manufacturing in Michigan, although it’s a prime place for future development. In addition to economic development, the building will have environmental benefits, especially for locking up carbon that otherwise would be in the atmosphere and contributing to climate change. “I am excited to see the educational, research and outreach opportunities that the building itself promises to many academic units and to our land-grant mission,” says Ron Hendrick, dean of MSU’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. “It is an interdisciplinary platform encompassing forestry, construction management, biosystems engineering and beyond, and can serve as a catalyst to develop this new technology in Michigan.

“Having a CLT manufacturer in Michigan would not only create green jobs using sustainable resources, but also provide the financial resources and incentives that are needed to restore and conserve healthy, diverse and productive forests that provide so many other benefits,” says Debbie Begalle, state forester and chief of the Forest Resources Division of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

 

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The monthly Panel World Industry Newsletter reaches over 3,000 who represent primary panel production operations.

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New Strength And Safety Tests Pit Timber Against Concrete And Steel

by | Dec 5, 2018 | News

Thanks to innovative construction materials like cross-laminated timber (CLT) and laminated veneer lumber (LVL), wooden buildings are no longer mere houses made of sticks.

Attracted by the aesthetic and environmental benefits of timber, structural engineers have overseen a lumber comeback, from Landlease’s International House development in Sydney’s Barangaroo district to Brisbane’s newly completed 25 King, which is the world’s tallest commercial timber building.

But with ambitious projects in Tokyo, Chicago, and London eyeing far greater heights for timber as a building material, engineers and the public need to be assured wood can match up with concrete and steel when it comes to safety and stability.

That’s why Griffith University’s Associate Professor Benoit Gilbert has been putting timber to the test, using high-tech machinery to better understand how timber behaves in a variety of situations.

Gilbert’s current tests focus on progressive collapse, a term that describes the severe failure of a structure due to something going wrong in one part of it. That could be a gas explosion, a fire or if a car were to collide with the building.

Read more on this from Create at https://www.createdigital.org.au/strength-safety-tests-timber/.

Support For Tall Timber Reaches New Heights In ICC Building Code

by | Oct 31, 2018 | News

Prescriptive requirements for wood structures up to 18 stories were among the additions preliminarily approved for the International Building Code following the work of the International Code Council’s ad-hoc Tall Wood Buildings Committee.

Wood is widely recognized as a carbon-neutral building material, but its use as a structural material has been mostly limited to residential and low-rise buildings due to its combustible nature. Through recent advances in manufacturing and engineering, wood in the form of mass timber products is increasingly attracting interest as a structural system for tall buildings.

Portland, Ore., recently saw the completion of the eight-story Carbon12, currently the tallest wood building in the United States. Still, progress has been slow in this country as compared to Europe or Canada, where the 18-story-tall Brock Commons, in Vancouver, stands as the tallest timber structure in the world. One significant issue inhibiting widespread adoption in the U.S. is prescriptive building codes, which currently limit the height of wood buildings to 85 feet, or six stories. In December 2015, the International Code Council (ICC) formed an ad-hoc committee to study the impact of tall wood buildings on the building code with the membership voting on the adoption of proposed changes on Oct. 24.

The ICC’s International Building Code (IBC) classifies a high-rise building as any building with an occupied floor 75 feet above the lowest level at which fire department vehicles can access. The 2018 IBC defines heavy timber structural members as Type IV construction, which also includes a range of wood products, such as solid sawn timber, glue-laminated members, and composite wood members. The term mass timber, however, comprises both heavy timber as well as engineered products, many of which the IBC does not reference, such as cross-laminated timber (CLT).

Heavy timber construction is currently limited to a height of 85 feet. Architects can design taller wood structures, but they must demonstrate that the design meets the prescribed code and performs as well or better than a similar concrete or steel structure. This can be a costly and time-consuming process, requiring extensive testing and documentation on the part of the design team and building owner.

Read more on this from Architect Magazine at https://www.architectmagazine.com/technology/support-for-tall-timber-reaches-new-heights-in-the-building-code_o.