Back in March 2015, I had the pleasure of giving a presentation for the Forest Business Network’s Small Log Conference in Coeur d’Alene Idaho that I titled “New and Innovative Wood Building Products” where I spoke about the major labor shortages affecting the US housing industry as we came out of the great recession and how the US could look at innovative construction methods that had been utilized in both Europe and Japan as a way to help speed up the construction process. I spoke about the Japanese Suteki PowerBuild metal fit bracket system for CNC routed glulam post and beam construction where everything was precut off site for quick and easy assembly on the job site. Visitors from Japan’s glulam and construction industry were also in attendance.
After the conference was over, I sat having a beer with my good friends and industry colleagues from FBN Craig Rawlings, Arnie Didier, Paul Toussaint, and Thomas Waddell talking about how it was their most attended Small Log Conference due to the increased variety of topics and the speakers that presented. We discussed what the “next big thing” could be for FBN’s conferences and how Mass Timber and the use of glulam beams and CLT panels was the wave of the future for construction throughout North America and that our industry was so far behind Europe at that point in time. FBN could become the pivotal force to bring the global wood products industry together to support and exchange ideas on Mass Timber Construction.
The vision was put into play and Portland was decided upon as the venue as it was a central location to the mass timber efforts in North America at that time. The birth of the Mass Timber Conference came to life in March 2016. In 2017 the word “International” was added to the conference name as it became a truly international mass timber conference with both exhibitors and attendees from around the world.
Here we are with the 7th International Mass Timber Conference just finishing up last Thursday in Portland Oregon and the energy and excitement of the more than 2100 attendees was palpable. Every single attendee was there to learn from each other, strengthen existing and develop new relationships and help Mass Timber become widespread throughout North America. Every single moment was electrifying from the opening reception on Tuesday evening, the 6:30am breakfast gatherings, evening happy hours, the learning tracks with over 60 speakers, more than 100 exhibitors and amazing keynote presentations from world renown architects Shigeru Ban and Jeanne Gang.
Some of my key takeaways from the conference of which there are too many to include here are:
• It is not one mass timber company against another mass timber company. It is the mass timber community against the rest of the traditional construction industry. We all need to work together to educate and build each other up and make mass timber stronger together, not try to compete against each other.
• When designing a mass timber structure do not run two scenarios with one being 100% volumetric timber construction (I had to google this phrase) and the other one being 100% traditional concrete and steel construction and compare the two against each other. Instead, you should start with 100% volumetric timber construction and then work back to see where you might be able to save money by adding in some concrete and steel to the timber construction model. This will drastically increase the amount of timber that is used in construction projects and reduce the time architects and engineers spend when trying to compare two different construction methods.
• Manufacturers should focus on being manufacturers and work on lowering their unit costs and increase efficiency of production. Fabricators should focus on being the best fabricators that they can be, and we need a lot more of them across the country as well as regionally. We need more assemblers which are the construction companies that are assembling the mass timber projects and we need regional assemblers to help teach and train other assemblers in other parts of the country. The more projects everyone works on together and help teach and train each other, the stronger the overall mass timber market will be for our industry not just in the US but globally.
I absolutely loved every single moment at the conference last week. At one point on Tuesday afternoon when my wife Olivia called to check in on me, I told her that I was literally vibrating with excitement to see everyone. She immediately told me to “calm down boy, don’t make it awkward”. But as most in our industry know, I have an extremely high level of energy that I bring with me from the time I wake up to the time I fall asleep, and it is difficult for me to tamp that down. Passion is difficult to keep bottled up. And I am passionate about the wood products and building materials industry. Thank you again to FBN for the International Mass Timber Conference! Our industry needed this, desperately!
