by Web Editor | Jun 29, 2018 | News
Offsite design-build company Katerra and India-based manufacturing technology company KEF Infra have announced a merger that will see the newly formed KEF Katerra begin conducting operations in India and the Middle East. KEF Katerra, according to MEP Middle East, already has $3.7 billion in bookings.
Both companies use offsite manufacturing and technology as part of the “end-to-end” building services they provide. KEF Infra also uses robotics and automation in its manufacturing business and produces items like pre-cast concrete, prefabricated bathroom pods and aluminum and glazing facades. Katerra said it will also employ KEF Infra’s pre-cast technology in the U.S. market.
In addition to housing, the company will focus on building community infrastructure assets like hospitals and schools. Post-merger Katerra will have a total of 20 offices and 3,400 employees around the world.
Earlier this month, Katerra sealed the second of two acquisition deals in as many weeks. Those transactions, intended to increase the companies’ design capabilities in the U.S., saw the company enter into agreements with Portland, Oregon-based Michael Green Architecture and Lord Aeck Sargent in Atlanta. After those deals were complete, Katerra had 31 U.S. state architecture licenses plus credentials in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, and saw its staff size double. Green’s area of expertise is in the use of mass timber, and it designed the T3 mass timber office building in Minneapolis. One of Lord’s focuses is sustainable, urban projects.
In addition to its plans for growth through mergers and acquisitions, Katerra also said it would open six manufacturing plants by March 2019, including a Spokane, Washington, facility that will produce mass timber. The 250,000-square-foot plant is expected to generate 4.6 million cubic feet of cross-laminated timber annually. The five other Katerra plants will manufacture standard wood panels and trusses.
From Construction Dive: https://www.constructiondive.com/news/katerras-new-company-with-indian-manufacturer-kef-already-has-37-billion/526840/
by Web Editor | May 4, 2018 | News
The International Code Council’s (ICC) Committee Action Hearings in Columbus, Ohio, have concluded with a clear endorsement of building codes that will enable the use of mass timber technologies in buildings ranging up to 18 stories. Though taller mass timber buildings are currently being built under various local codes, this move by the ICC ensures that model code provisions will be available to many more building officials.
Mass timber structures are generally built with large panels made of cross-laminated timber (CLT), nail-laminated timber (NLT), glue-laminated timber (Glulam) or structural composite lumber (SCL). The greater availability of CLT has provided new options for builders.
“The strength and fire resistance performance of mass timber structures is well understood and supported by substantial testing and data,” said Stephen DiGiovanni, P.E., Chair of the ICC’s Ad Hoc Committee on Tall Wood Buildings and fire protection engineer for the Clark County (NV) Department of Building and Fire Prevention. “As taller mass timber buildings become more widely deployed, it’s important that the International Building Code and the entire family of I-Codes remains at the forefront of emerging construction technologies, and continues to provide building and fire code officials with the tools they need to ensure the safety of the public and first responders.”
All buildings under the International Building Code (IBC) must meet specified fire performance standards, whether built of steel, concrete or mass timber. The 14 code provisions passed out of the ICC Committee Action Hearing established new fire resistance standards and procedures for mass timber that are more rigorous than comparable steel and concrete structures.
From Civil+Structural Engineer: https://csengineermag.com/code-officials-move-update-ibc-tall-mass-timber-buildings/
by Web Editor | Jan 29, 2018 | News
New mass timber products are becoming more widespread and encouraging builders, designers, and engineers to search for the best applications for mass timber initiatives. A few of the mass timber building products available today include:
• Cross-laminated timber
• Nail-laminated timber
• Glue-laminated timber
• Dowel-laminated timber
As they test the capabilities of these materials, designers are looking to existing mass timber buildings around the world for examples and inspiration.
Canadian and European researchers and architects began experimenting with the design of mass timber buildings in the 1970s. European timber projects have shown that weight matters with structural systems, and mass timber structures weigh up to one-third as much as their concrete counterparts. This fact has made wood construction a viable prospect in places where building height and weight are limited, such as city utilities, subway tunnels, and underground rail yards.
Due to their lighter weight, mass timber buildings are more resilient in seismic zones. They carry less inertia, so the possibility of destructive swaying goes down. This approach was recently applied in the Brock Commons tower, an 18-story college residence designed for the University of British Columbia by Canadian firm Acton Ostry Architects.
The 173-foot-tall tower combines glue-laminated columns, cross-laminated timber floor slabs, dual concrete cores, and steel connectors. The cores help to counteract wind-generated and seismic forces while anchoring the mass timber building in place. It meets structural and fire-safety regulations by utilizing a specially designed set of interdependent finishes and building materials.
From CRL: https://c-r-l.com/content-hub/mass-timber-buildings-credibility/
by Web Editor | Jan 5, 2018 | News
Learning From Europe And Canada’s Timber Building Industry
If the steady stream of newly announced mass wood projects is any indication, mass timber building technologies are poised to take the American construction and design industries by storm over the next few years. As products like cross-laminated timber (CLT), nail-laminated timber (NLT), glue-laminated timber (glulam), and dowel-laminated timber (DLT) begin to make their way into widespread use, designers, engineers, and builders alike are searching for the best—and sometimes, most extreme—applications for mass timber technologies. But rather than reinvent the wheel, American designers can look to experienced mass timber designers in Europe and Canada for key lessons as they begin to test the limits of these materials in the United States.
European and Canadian architects and researchers have long been at the forefront of mass timber design, starting with early experiments in the 1970s. By the 1990s, researchers like Julius K. Natterer at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, were developing initial CLT prototypes. Natterer’s work has been buttressed by that of many others, including research performed at the Norwegian Institute of Wood Technology under Thomas Orskaug and experiments conducted at the Technical University of Munich under Stefan Winter.
One key lesson European timber projects teach is that when it comes to structural systems, weight matters. On average, mass timber assemblies weigh between one-third and one-fifth as much as concrete structures, despite equivalent structural capacities. As a result, mass timber buildings are much lighter than concrete ones, a positive for building in tricky urban situations, for example—where underground rail yards, subway tunnels, and municipal utilities place limits on how heavy and tall buildings can be.
London-based Waugh Thistleton Architects (WTA), for example, recently completed work on Dalston Lane, a 121-unit CLT midrise complex located above a tunnel serving the Eurostar train line in the city’s Hackney neighborhood.
For the project, the architects worked with timber-engineering specialists Ramboll to develop a stepped tower cluster rising between five and ten stories tall. CLT panels are used for the external, party, and core walls of the building, as well as the stairs and the building’s floors. The variegated massing is due directly to the architect’s use of CLT construction, which resulted in a lighter building that allowed the designers to build taller without more extensive foundations. The resulting building, with its staggered massing, better maximizes daylight infiltration into apartment units. The added height allowed the architects to add 50 more units to the project than originally permitted, a testament to just how light CLT can be.
From The Architects Newspaper: archpaper.com
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by Web Editor | Oct 11, 2017 | News
As a crane lowered a glulam beam and construction workers on either end deftly guided it into connection with two upright wooden columns, a tour group member shook his head and said, “It’s like Lincoln Logs.”
Kind of. Which may in part explain some of the attraction of builders and designers to the potential use of strong, precisely engineered, carbon-storing wood beams, columns, wall panels and floor decking. As Chris Evans, a Swinerton Builders project manager put it, wood is the first building material people use to make the forts, homes and hideouts of childhood.
These days, builders and designers are joining mill owners, university researchers and policy makers in taking a fresh look at advanced wood products, “mass timbers” and what’s come to be called “tall wood” design. Advocates believe it can replace concrete and steel in mid- to even high-rise buildings, and provide an economic jolt to rural Oregon in terms of forest management and mill jobs.
In Hillsboro, Evans and Swinerton Builders are overseeing construction of the largest known U.S. building to date that uses cross-laminated timber, or CLT, for flooring, and glulam posts and beams. The Oregon headquarters of First Tech Credit Union will be five stories high and have 156,000 square feet of office space. Swinerton Builders is the general contractor.
Another tall wood building planned for Portland, called Framework, will be 12 stories high and will have five floors of affordable housing. That project was awarded a $1.5 million federal design competition grant to help with seismic and fire testing and certification.
From Capital Press: https://www.capitalpress.com/Oregon/20171005/nations-largest-mass-timber-building-under-construction-in-oregon
