November 2024

The SLB Announces $1.8M Mass Timber Competition: Building Sustainable Schools

The SLB and USDA Forest Service have launched a new Mass Timber Competition to support projects that accelerate the pace of mass timber adoption in the United States, with a specific focus: K-12 education. The $1.8 million competition is designed to increase the use of mass timber, deepen industry experience with wood construction, strengthen the supply chain, and showcase the benefits of biophilic design.

Funds awarded in the competition support costs associated with the use of mass timber or mass timber hybrid building systems and construction. Funding also helps project teams overcome barriers to the use of a new building material and system, most notably the costs of analyzing design and engineering alternatives and verifying that these solutions comply with applicable codes.

The Mass Timber Competition: Building Sustainable Schools is now open for entries, and applicant teams can apply for funding up to $500,000. Lessons from these projects will be shared with the broader design and construction communities to support project development and replication, including research about cost analyses and life cycle assessments. Education was chosen as a focus area for this year’s competition because of the large opportunity for lumber demand growth in this subsector. According to an FEA study, education has had an annual average of 135 MM SF of construction activity since 2021, with less than 5% built with wood.

Previous Mass Timber Competitions have not focused on a sector or building type. Past winners include Evergreen Charter School in Hempstead, New York, which was featured in a WoodWorks case study and site tour, and Return to Form, an 84-unit multifamily project for which the design team completed a Comparative Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study examining the embodied carbon, speed, and cost of mass timber versus other building systems.

The AWC and WoodWorks Co-Host Panel at NYC Climate Week

Each year, as the United Nations General Assembly comes to an end, New York City kicks off Climate Week, a week of hundreds of climate- and sustainability-focused events across the city. This year’s theme, It’s Time, highlighted the urgent need for climate action, specifically in the areas of energy, the built environment, and finance.

This year, the American Wood Council (AWC) and WoodWorks co-hosted their first-ever Climate Week event, Building with Wood: Nature’s Climate Solution. The event featured an introduction to mass timber, a panel discussion on the entirety of mass timber’s lifecycle, and concluded with a networking reception. The panel discussion was led by Katie Fernholz, President of Dovetail Partners; Alexis Feitel, Team Carbon Unit Director at KL&A Engineers and Builders; and Sandra Lupien, Director of MassTimber@MSU.

The event proved to be a success with over 80 in-person attendees as well as additional online attendees. The audience was highly engaged in the panel discussion, asking a variety of questions and staying for the networking reception to follow up with the panelists and the AWC team. The audience represented a wide range of individuals and companies including nonprofits, Fortune 500 companies, federal agencies, architects, and academics. The AWC has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from the event and has been able to follow up with multiple individuals with additional resources related to mass timber, wood product production, and sourcing. This event is another example of the AWC’s lead role in ensuring that wood products are properly recognized for their low embodied carbon and significant stored biogenic carbon benefits.

Building with Wood was one of many Climate Week events focused on the climate benefits of wood products. Earlier that day at the same venue, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) hosted the final presentations from the seven teams of the inaugural Mass Timber Studio funded by the SLB and USDA Forest Service. The NYCEDC also announced plans to field a second cohort of teams who will receive another $29,000 grant each in 2025, also funded by the SLB and USDA Forest Service. The rest of the week included key events that discussed wood products such as Adapt Together: Urban Neighborhoods Against Climate Change and Nature Positive, Climate Positive Bioeconomy Solutions.

See, Touch, Believe: Mass Timber Exhibit Inspires Future AEC Professionals

When it comes to mass timber, seeing truly is believing—its impact is best understood when experienced first-hand. To make that experience possible, the SLB is sponsoring “Managing Mass Timber: From Forest to Future,” a traveling exhibit and lecture series aimed at showcasing the benefits of mass timber directly to students and faculty at leading engineering, architecture, and construction management schools across the Northeast and Great Lakes regions. 

The exhibit kicked off at Kent State University (KSU), with mass timber experts and KSU construction management faculty Anthony Mirando and Lameck Onsarigo guiding it to five campuses throughout the Fall 2024 semester. The interactive display is designed to efficiently educate students and faculty on every aspect of mass timber—from sustainable forest management to how it all comes together on site as a prefabricated kit of parts—highlighting its advantages over alternative materials.

After KSU, the exhibit traveled to Syracuse University, with additional stops planned at the Associated Schools of Construction Region 3 conference in Chicago, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh for the AIAS Northeast Quad Conference, and the National Organization for Minority Architects’ (NOMA) Annual Conference in Baltimore, where it will reach an audience of 1,500 participants, including 500 students. Many architecture, engineering, and construction management students have never had the chance to experience wood solutions up close. Being able to see, touch, and truly experience the potential of natural materials can reshape their understanding of the future built environment. 

Expanded Focus on Residential Applications Boosts Engagement from Key Audiences

Think Wood’s work to protect residential market share has expanded from a primary focus on decking and outdoor applications to include projects that use exposed softwood lumber for appearance wood and cladding. A recent Think Wood single-family project profile, the Tree House in Jonestown, Texas, highlights a central pine-and-concrete stair uniting two wings of the house, as well as decking and cladding applications. This type of content helps residential contractors visualize additional uses for wood products in homes beyond framing and decking that provide aesthetic benefits in a highly crowded and competitive market segment. Residential project profiles also help our commercial audiences understand the applications possible with wood that they can use in their own projects, as single-family homes have long been considered a laboratory for design innovation in the building industry.

Single-family content remains some of Think Wood’s most popular content not just with residential contractors, but across all audience sectors. Think Wood’s work to defend market share brings in commercial leads while continuing to nurture residential ones. In Q3, the Single-Family Home LookBook became Think Wood’s second-most downloaded resource, bringing in 333 new contacts across all audience sectors. This quick ascent suggests a second edition in 2025 will effectively bring in more commercial and residential users.

Firm Turns to WoodWorks for Support When GC Isn’t Keen on Mass Timber

An architectural firm reached out to a WoodWorks Regional Director after attending several of her seminars. The firm is at the early stages of a project that proposes four mixed-use buildings, each 10-14 stories and 200,000 square feet. The developer is potentially interested in using mass timber, but a local general contractor said one of its key benefits—construction speed—doesn’t really offer savings over traditional high-rise materials. Thinking WoodWorks could help keep tall wood as an option, the architect asked them for support, as well as the names of contractors who might be more positive and architecture firms that might want to collaborate since the project is so large. As an initial step, WoodWorks provided relevant technical resources as well as WIN links for experienced architects, contractors, and partner manufacturers. 

General contractors are a priority audience for WoodWorks as their lack of familiarity with mass timber materials is the reason many projects don’t go to construction. WoodWorks is leading a multi-faceted solution that includes technical resource development, online and in-person education, third-party installation training, and project support. Resources such as How to Successfully Cost Manage a Mass Timber Project are part of a WoodWorks initiative to help contracting companies work effectively in the mass timber space.

WoodWorks Helps Structural Engineer Overcome Mass Timber Learning Curve

Each month, the SLB features a new wood project that demonstrates the real-world results of the programs funded by the SLB. This month features a resilient and sustainable mass timber community center where WoodWorks helped educate a structural engineer new to the material.

Rachel Zanetti, an Associate and Project Architect with FFA Architecture and Interiors, had utilized WoodWorks resources for many years when she attended a WoodWorks workshop on the lateral design of mass timber buildings. Afterwards, she invited her local Regional Director to meet with the team designing a major renovation and expansion of Portland Parks & Recreation’s Mt. Scott Community Center in Southeast Portland, Oregon. 

Although FFA has extensive wood design experience (including 15 projects on WIN), this was the project structural engineer’s first time working with mass timber. Discussion focused on CLT spans and product ranges, acoustic mat options, and the performance capabilities of sealants and finishes. WoodWorks followed up with multiple resources and provided a manufacturer and supplier contact sheet so the contractor could request estimates.

The renovation and 31,000-square-foot expansion, now under construction and projected to use 27.6 bf/sq. ft., prioritized resilience and a vibrant welcoming presence in the neighborhood. The community center has been designed both to withstand earthquakes and provide emergency shelter in extreme weather events. The team is targeting LEED Gold certification. “From informative webinars to building tours to one-on-one technical discussions, WoodWorks provides a valuable resource for designers passionate about learning more about mass timber and pursuing new avenues to grow and share knowledge,” Zanetti says.

Study Finds Mass Timber “Sweet Spot” in 7–12 Story Multifamily Buildings

A comparative study of mass timber construction in three regions funded by a USDA Forest Service Wood Innovation Grant has identified a “sweet spot” for mass timber in 7–12 story multifamily buildings. The Three Regions Mass Timber project, sponsored by Olifant, a company whose work helped launch the SLB-funded Mass Timber Accelerator programs, was featured in a three-part webinar series hosted by Architecture 2030.

The architecture firm SCB, engineering firm LeMessurier, and general contractor Turner Construction collaborated to redesign three multifamily buildings with mass timber: a 5-over-1 light-frame and concrete podium project in Minneapolis, a 12-story concrete building in Denver, and a 21-story concrete project in Atlanta. The study found significant reductions in global warming potential for each of the mass timber buildings, ranging from 16% to 42%, as well as notable savings in construction time. The cost premium for mass timber was relatively modest, ranging from 3% to 6%, with the potential for further cost reductions by optimizing the building designs for mass timber.

“We are really excited to have a third building material to work with,” Ben Harrison, Senior Project Architect and Associate Principal at SCB, said in part two of the webinar. “It really opens up a lot of opportunities to innovate.”

The Three Regions project joins a growing body of comparative life cycle assessments (LCAs) finding significant embodied carbon and schedule savings for mass timber projects with very small cost premiums. With funding from the SLB and the USDA Forest Service, WoodWorks has partnered with KL&A Engineers & Builders to develop a series of mass timber comparative LCAs that addresses the concerns of building designers and gives them confidence that designing with wood is a sustainable choice that benefits the environment. Two LCAs for Return to Form in Denver and the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests Supervisor’s Office in Kamiah, Idaho, have been completed, with two more LCAs coming soon.