Timber Construct 2024 Conference

Day 1

The Timber Construct 2024 Conference kicked off with a bustling atmosphere of delegates, guest speakers, and exhibitors. Kudos to Andrew Dunn and his team for their substantial effort in assembling such a diverse range of insightful speakers, including several international experts.

The day began with a session on the latest timber engineering developments, chaired by Kevin Peachey from FWPA. This was followed by a key focus session on how timber addresses the housing shortfall, chaired by Kersten Gentle of FTMA.

Jeroen Weimar from the Department of Premier and Cabinet provided an overview of the situation in Victoria. Despite the focus on Victoria, other states and territories face similar challenges. Victoria’s population is projected to grow from 6.8 million to 10.3 million by 2051, predominantly in the Greater Melbourne area. Current housing supply is falling short of demand, with growth expected to come from undeveloped greenfields in outer suburbs and the renewal of existing areas with multi-level housing.

Above: Some of the presentations at Timber Construct 2024 Conference.

Peter Ward from Drouin West Timber and Truss showcased their FutureFit panelised building system. Leveraging over 40 years of experience, their new offsite fabrication method has cut double-storey build times to 2.5 days and triple-storey builds to 3.5 days. Their approach also results in waste reduction, enhanced safety, and a cleaner, faster site.

Next, Tim Newman from Timber Building Systems marked their 10-year milestone with a focus on social and medium-density housing. His presentation highlighted their modular systems, which include wall, floor, and roof modules made of steel, featuring pre-painted cladding, windows, and flashings.

Jeremy Church from NeXTimber followed with insights on Hybrid CLT lightweight framing, including manufacturing floor and roof panels, framed, and shear walls. NeXTimber operates facilities in Tasmania and South Australia.

Tim Newman from Xlam then discussed CLT (Cross Laminated Timber), detailing their capacity to meet market demand and their extensive experience with over 12,000 successful projects.

Nathan Benbow from Australian Sustainable Hardwoods (ASH), who are certified by Responsible Wood/PEFC, covered their range of timber products, including flooring, staircases, windows, doors, and structural timber. He specifically addressed multilevel timber staircases and advanced timber composites (ATC) with connectors.

Above: NexTimber’s stall at the conference displaying their investments to technology and innovation.

A panel discussion on “Conquering Low-Rise Challenges and Future Engineered Wood Solutions,” chaired by Georgia Coutsodimitropolous from NeXTimber, followed. The panel included Sam Green from DAS Studio, Jarvis Anderson from Innovis, and Hannan Jamal from Sarah Constructions. They examined a significant low-rise mass timber building project in South Australia. The project had been a major success with the main points; everyone was involved right from the planning stage, cooperation and collaboration had high levels of engagement, everyone knew their role and what had to be done, and the various teams were not overly cautious regarding their own IP. Sarah Constructions noted reduced lead times, excellent communication and a can-do attitude rarely experienced in large projects. Despite some rain issues, the project achieved some great outcomes, and they would undertake a mass timber build again.

Duncan Mayes from Lignutech presented online on innovative engineered wood solutions. He shared alarming statistics about the construction industry’s carbon emissions which included ‘The build environment and construction industry contributes 39% of global emissions, with 28% of this operational and 11% from embodied carbon emissions’. ‘Based on current global demand for new construction by 2050, if we continue to build at a rate of 90% with concrete and steel, 71GT of CO2 will be emitted’. Mayes emphasised the need to switch to biomass-based materials to reduce emissions and store carbon. He also questioned whether there is enough biomass to make a significant impact and highlighted the need for increased plantations and investment now in order to meet future demands.

The day concluded with a session on “Exploring the Cutting Edge of Timber Construction Across Cultures,” chaired by Phil Tondi from Lipan. This included an online presentation by Yuichi Shinohara of Shinohara Shoten on their involvement in the Tokyo Olympics’ largest timber roof span. Shinohara stressed the importance of early collaboration among architects, suppliers, and builders. Xu Fang from American Softwoods China Office reflected on historic timber use, including a timber pagoda built in China in 1056, and recent approvals for mass timber structures in China.

Above: A timber pagoda in China built in 1056.

Day 2

Day 2 started with a session chaired by Rob du Toit of XLam. Nick Milestone of Mercer Mass Timber presented online, focusing on European CLT and Glulam capacities. He discussed how hybrid steel and mass timber solutions address challenges in large high-rise developments and noted the benefits of these combinations, including simpler approvals process.

Jared Revay, Director of Manufacturing at Timberlab, followed with an update on the Portland (PDX) international airport terminal project, which features a mass timber roof expansion. This was an exciting project with a mass timber roof required to expand no less than 9 Acres. From design & engineering through detailing, sourcing, manufacturing and assembly this project was at the extreme end!

Some of the exceptional challenges; curved roof and skylight areas, largest single and deepest span of glulam beams, reinforced screws and rods, all of which required over 10,000 hours of mass timber detailing. Some noted inclusions were: 1,684 glulam spans, 500,000 custom fabricated 3×6 timbers, 1,200 rod diaphragm panels and 1.5 million fasteners. Jared went onto explain the manufacturing process, delivery to a special covered area near the airport and following assembly in a process that allowed for almost no tolerances, to then what can only be described as like transporting the space shuttle at a slow walking place across to the airport after hours to carefully slot in one section of the roof and lock it all into place in exact position was breathtaking. The structure uses stylish steel support posts to hold the roof structure in place, with minimal numbers to create an exquisite open look and feel (see pic). The end result is stunning and demonstrates what is possible in mass timber.

Above: incredible displays of what mass timber can do from the construction industry.

Perry Forsythe of UTS followed with a presentation on NCC Compliance for off-site manufactured buildings. Perry noted the existing barrier in compliance and how current regulatory practices caused poor workflow, risk and increased cost and impacts affordable housing. The NCC is currently working with industry to improve current regulations to better accommodate off-site construction and to further ‘future proof’ reforms for new innovations.

Specifically, NCC were working to achieve approval of the building design timber structure and pathways that would offer increased speed, reduced risk and provide simplicity. One of the aims would be to reduce the need for inspection and checking of compliance during construction. NCC was hopeful they could present their findings at the end of 2024.

Session 2 for the day was all about conquering timber’s achilles heel – moisture! This was chaired by Mario Savva of Savcon. Nick Hewson Director of Arboralis spoke about managing moisture during construction and the importance of getting this right and not leaving materials outside, unprotected and Jason Teetaert of SMT spoke about SMT developments in the detection and monitoring of moisture in membranes, roof cavities and building floor systems. Their inbuilt systems can be installed at the time of construction to electronically detect moisture or direct leaks, and the system comes with automatic reporting. Mario reflected on some of the poor building practices and how a number of perfectly installed roof membranes are later damaged by heavy construction wheels moving about on the roof without temporary flooring. His main rules were start out dry, keep it dry and allow it to dry.

Above: SMT outlined their design for managing moisture during construction.

Gareth Connell of Cabots’s premium woodcare brands spoke next on the range of products available to protect, preserve and maintain timber during storage, construction and future maintenance. The important points were to follow the manufacture’s instructions regarding coverage and the number of coats and to be aware of precoated timber from overseas – you need to know what it is and what products it will work with and what it might react with. Despite good intentions people make mistakes and the good news, whilst it is best to prevent in the first place, Cabot’s have a range of products to fix an issue and are available to assist with selecting the right solution and technique to rectify timber products.

Session 3 was chaired by Alastair Woodward of TPC/WPV and the panel was assembled to review the mid-rise Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT) campus with some independent student living and transport interchange in Wooden. Despite some early setbacks in the project, an update was provided. Congratulations to John Czechowski of Gray Puksand, George Andrianakos of Robert Bird Group and Nathan Benbow of ASH along with other key suppliers, as the team were working effectively and efficiently to resolve issues and provide solutions as they arose. Most of the early difficulties related to fire protection within the context of a mass timber structure and the timber stairs between floors, which was ultimately changed to steel.

It was noted the final mass timber structure provided a 59% reduction in structural embodied carbon, reduced the timber construction time to just 7 weeks, provided a 75% reduction in labour force requirements during this period, had a noticeable reduction in noise along with working from height risks (see pics). The project including transport interchange is on or close to target for a grand opening in 2025. The project noted the timber construction time was so fast, other parts could not keep pace and one potential consideration for future builds would be some form of pre-construction with delivery and installation on site.

Tim Allen of Taylor Thomson Whitting (TTW) provided a broad outline of the high-rise mass timber structure being built next to Central Station in Sydney. (see pic) The primary structure has a concrete core with a steel exoskeleton and every 4^th floor is concrete, meaning the other 3 are mass timber construction.

The final session for the conference was chaired by Andrew Dunn of TDA and included a presentation and code update from Boris Iskra FWPA. The last proposal to change the local code was submitted in Feb 2015 and adopted into the National Construction Code (NCC) in 2016 and this was to permit fire protected timber in mid-rise buildings in class 2, 3 and 5. The most critical review required now is an update to fire safety codes for exposed timber and consider significant developments following fire testing results in North America on mass timber.

This was expanded on by George Konstandakos of Sumitomo Forestry Australia and Russell Kilmartin of Scientific Fire Services and finally Kevin Narango of US Forestry services who provided results and subsequent changes to building codes and fire safety for mass timber in North America. It was also noted the US military was now building using timber and noted the structural properties in a blast situation. Currently Australia is many years behind and the final summary was Andrew Dunn was hopeful significant changes could be adopted here by 2028.