John Park retires

Andrew True, his colleague at WTS, writes: John Park is retiring – completely! John has written 21 articles for Talking Timber, entertaining, thought provoking and topical. He has also had input in almost all of the 61 articles so far published – no mean task considering the diverse nature of the topics discussed.

John has had a long and distinguished career on the periphery of the timber trade, and has an equally long-standing relationship with the Wood Technology Group of IOM3 (formally the Institute of Wood Science).

John Park writes: It’s been an interesting 50-year career, starting at Bucks College in 1971. During that time I’ve seen major timber engineering companies disappearing, the rise of environmentalism and more recent developments in engineered wood products which, sadly, brought with it too much cynical marketing as companies chose to denigrate other wood products as an acceptable means of promoting their own. One can understand why competing material sectors do it, but wood products manufacturers? Besmirchetting I called it and if you google it, it’s there, only once I must admit but give it time, all new words start somewhere!

And all old industries started somewhere, as well; trading in timber to supply those industries must have a history longer than all other raw materials. Wood science and standardisation took a while to catch up and my 30 years representing Canadian interests in the UK has afforded me the opportunity to be directly involved in the latter. In my dozen-or-so committees, both BSI and CEN, over the years I have amended a few words, sentences and paragraphs, had great ‘fun’ with ‘target size’, tried (in vain, it would seem, to date) to bring a semblance of order to EN 14250 in which every stick of timber and the finished product (trussed rafters) is a ‘member’, trying to address plywood natural biological durability for almost the entire 30 years only to change my mind completely as we were working on the revision of EN 13986 and failing miserably in trying to get the plywood trade to understand the error in their use of CE2+ and inappropriate slavish adherence to WBP.

But now the times they are a-changing. Perhaps whilst one day the many issues with plywood will eventually be resolved, wood is, at last, not only getting the respect it deserves but also an increasing level of understanding. After raising the issue during a CEN/TC175 meeting, my first draft of what has become EN 16449 ‘Calculation of the biogenic carbon content of wood and conversion to carbon dioxide’ should now be included in at least the bibliography of all wood and wood products ENs and now carbon dioxide is at the heart of increasing the use of wood in the built environment.

As to what the UK might do as regards wood and wood products standards now that we have ‘taken back control’, remains to be seen, but whatever it is it will necessitate product standards committees working either on existing or new documents for which there will be a need for a new generation of committee members – forward thinking employers should already be determining which of their employees might admirably fit that bill!

I haven’t made a fortune but have I made a difference? It would be nice to think so but I prefer the focus to be on the material that I love and which has kept me gainfully employed for all my working life, not to mention all of you, now and in the future.