by Web Editor | Aug 22, 2018 | News
Wood Construction Pushes Forward On Both Sides Of The Border
Mass timber construction is making waves on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, but factors in each country mean a different pace of progress.
The state of Washington is rapidly moving forward on both green construction and use of advanced wood products, but Washington State Department of Commerce forest products sector lead Brian Hatfield said the state isn’t necessarily ahead of its Canadian neighbor. “In some ways, British Columbia is ahead of us in terms of low carbon building materials,” he said.
In 2017, the Washington State Department of Enterprise Services oversaw a pilot project that built 20 kindergarten through Grade 3 classrooms using cross-laminated timber (CLT) in five school district sites in Washington. “We had a pilot district for five school districts, all single-story schools, and those have gone pretty well. They went up quickly and everyone was impressed,” Hatfield said.
The state’s 2016 supplemental capital budget included $5.5 million for the pilot project, which also measures the efficiencies of using engineered wood products through the construction process.
While Washington is taking steps to increase wood use in construction, the Province of British Columbia has pushed for mass timber and wood-focused design for the previous decade. In 2009, the Province of British Columbia put the Wood First Act into practice, which requires provincially funded projects to use wood as a primary construction material. The B.C. building code was also modified in 2009 to allow for wood buildings of up to six stories.
From Journal Of Commerce: canada.constructconnect.com.
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by Web Editor | Aug 6, 2018 | News
The state legislature earlier this year called on the Washington State Building Code Council (WSBCC) to adopt rules for cross-laminated timber (CLT) use when building residential and commercial buildings. The move represents ongoing efforts to bring CLT into mainstream use for residential and commercial construction, which would create commercial value for the small-diameter trees that are contributing to poor forestland health in Washington state.
For state and federal officials, as well as private stakeholders, that change could hasten restoration work by making tree thinning a profitable endeavor rather than a costly project requiring government funding.
The potential CLT offers was articulated by U.S. Forest Service (USFS) Chief Vicki Christiansen at the 2018 Pacific NorthWest Economic Region Summit in Spokane on July 24. “We can use new opportunities for forest product delivery to help us to improve forest conditions, while also creating jobs and sustaining rural communities. We can implement these new practices by working together and being a good neighbor.”
Forest Service Region 6 covers Washington and Oregon and includes 28 percent of all forestland across Washington. In recent years the federal agency has struggled to conduct forest health work due to “fire borrowing” in which those portions of its budget are used to pay for the high cost of firefighting. During last year’s wildfire season USFS spent $2 billion on wildfire fighting, more than half its budget. There were 50 large fires on USFS land and over 411,000 acres burned, costing the agency $130 million. Over 90 percent of those fires were human-caused. In April, federal legislation sought to end the practice of fire-borrowing by allocating additional long-term funding to USFS to the tune of $2 billion starting in 2020.
A 2014 analysis by The Nature Conservancy and USFS concluded that half a million acres of forestland managed by the federal agency in Eastern Washington were in need of thinning and prescribed burns. Along with the new funding, Christiansen said that they can also “align our best practice policies and guidance with the changing markets that are certainly emerging in the Pacific Northwest.”
Read more on this from The Lens at https://thelens.news/2018/07/31/cross-laminated-timber-as-forest-management-strategy/.
by Web Editor | Mar 23, 2018 | News
Washington State legislators changed building codes in new legislation, a move expected to increase in the use of mass timber products in commercial and residential construction.
The Washington Forest Protection Association says the move will boost business for rural communities and forest landowners and will lead to an increase in the use of mass timber products in commercial and residential construction.
Mass timber products like cross-laminated timber (CLT) have been on the upswing in Washington in recent years, with Vaagen Brothers Lumber of Colville. Wash., and Katerra, a California company both announcing CLT factories in Eastern Washington. The material is increasingly being used in buildings around the state, according to the Washington Forest Products Association.
For Katerra, founded in 2015, CLT is an element in a broader strategy for resetting the building and construction industry. The company announced $865 million Series D funding round led by the SoftBank Vision Fund to fund its new plant in Washington, and it has already accumulated more than $1.3 billion in bookings for new construction, spanning the multi-family, student and senior housing, and hospitality sectors. It already has a fully operational manufacturing facility in Phoenix.
“The $12 trillion construction industry is extremely fragmented with tens of thousands of companies using minimal levels of technology. While labor-productivity growth has skyrocketed in the overall global economy, the construction industry has averaged only 1% annual productivity growth over the past two decades,” said Jeffrey Housenbold, managing partner for SoftBank Investment Advisers. New investors in Katerra’s latest the round include the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), a private investment fund managed by Soros Fund Management LLC, Tavistock Group, Navitas Capital, DivcoWest, and others.
Read more on this from Woodworking Network at https://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/news/woodworking-industry-news/washington-state-wil-revise-building-codes-okay-mass-timber.
by Web Editor | Oct 30, 2017 | News
Oregon and Southwest Washington are well-positioned to become a manufacturing hub for cross-laminated timber — an innovative building product sometimes called “plywood on steroids” — according to a new study prepared by Oregon BEST.
The 110-page analysis found Oregon has the potential to create 2,000 to 6,100 direct jobs making cross-laminated timber and related mass timber products, which use adhesives and layered wood to create massive panels used as walls, floors and roofs, or beams. Mid-rise office and residential buildings are now being made with CLT, providing a dramatically lower carbon footprint than buildings using concrete and steel. Some high-rise projects using CLT are in the works.
Studies show CLT also cuts costs, mostly because construction takes less time. That cost advantage is projected to grow. “The cost of wood as a building material and as the raw material for CLT is expected to stay stable in the near future, while concrete and steel prices are forecast to raise with their relative energy prices and carbon costs,” the report states.
Oregon BEST, which commissioned the study along with partners, is a state-supported nonprofit that works closely with academia to nurture the state’s clean-tech industry.
CLT was developed in Europe, and European and Canadian companies got into the field before their U.S. counterparts. But D.R. Johnson became the first U.S. company certified to manufacture CLT in 2015, and is making it at its Southern Oregon plant in Riddle.
From Sustainable Life: https://pamplinmedia.com/sl/376727-262480-plywood-on-steroids-holds-great-potential-for-oregon-economy-environment
by Web Editor | Apr 12, 2017 | News
Washington CLT: ‘The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Wood’
Cross laminated timber, or CLT, is being touted as a revolutionary and environmentally friendly building material that can support structures reaching 12 stories and potentially higher, and could a game-changing economic factor that timber communities have been looking for since the industry began to decline three decades ago.
“It’s the greatest thing since sliced wood; that’s my tag line,” said former state senator Brian Hatfield, Gov. Jay Inslee’s personal pick as his go-to guy for studying ways to breathe life back into the state’s wood products industry.
CLT’s potential economic impact on a timber area like the Twin Harbors is not lost on Hatfield, or 6th District Congressman Derek Kilmer, a Democrat from Gig Harbor.
“God knows we’ve got proximity to the natural resource base,” said Kilmer. “This has the potential to be a real win-win for the area; certainly a win for the economy. The timber industry has been around a long time. We’ve taken some shots to the chin over the last few decades, but I think this provides an opportunity to have the Olympic Peninsula take the initiative and show the world that timber towns can be relevant, and innovative, in the 21st Century.”
What is CLT, and what makes it such a promising alternative to more traditional wood and steel – and even heavy timber – construction? The CLT Handbook, produced by Canada-based FP Innovations in 2013, describes cross laminated timber as “several layers of lumber boards stacked crosswise (typically at 90 degrees) and glued together on their wide faces and, sometimes, on the narrow faces as well.”
From The Daily World: thedailyworld.com.
The monthly Panel World Industry Newsletter reaches over 3,000 who represent primary panel production operations.
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