Constructing a comfort zone

To paraphrase a cliché - you wait for ever for one initiative to make construction professionals as well informed about wood as steel and concrete, and as comfortable about using it, and three come along at once. It's long been a complaint that architects and engineers come out of education steeped in the data they need to use man-made materials, but knowing next to nothing about timber. Well now the timber industry's given up waiting for the education establishment to do something about it and doing something itself.

First up is the Wood for Good campaign's Wood First Plus initiative, first outlined last year and officially launched last week at a meeting of campaign supporters held, appropriately, at the London headquarters of the Royal Institute of British Architects (p6).

The £180-200,000 project, funded by a cross-industry alliance and Scottish Enterprise, is collating a full range of information about the technical and environmental performance of timber and wood products. This includes life cycle analysis (LCA) data on products' cradle to grave environmental impacts, being compiled by leading consultancy PE International.

The initiative is also drawing together information for use in Building Information Modelling (BIM), the software-based approach for construction planning and design which is set to become the norm across UK building, not least because government is making it obligatory for its projects from 2016.

All this data is being made freely available on a Wood First Plus website, the first elements of which will go live this month.

Opening the Wood First Plus launch meeting, architect and new Wood for Good chair Craig White said he wished something like it had existed when he started out. His practice, White Design, is a leader in timber building, but had to teach itself the technicalities. "We had data on steel and concrete at our fingertips, but no easy route to the equivalent for wood," he said.

TTF head of sustainability Stuart Harker also highlighted that the Wood First Plus site is designed for use by timber businesses to put together Environmental Product Declarations, which are fast becoming "passports to specification". Its data would also help them "navigate the EU Construction Production Regulation and CE Marking".

The second project to help put building professionals in the timber comfort zone is taking place at Edinburgh Napier University (pp18-19). Napier is, admittedly, one education establishment which comprehensively covers wood in its engineering courses. But to date it has had relatively little take-up for its Timber Engineering MSc. Now it is hoping that will change with a scheme inviting timber companies to fund scholarships for students taking the course - and the signs are positive. Since we first reported it, the initiative has secured seven supporters and initial responses from others suggest it will hit its target of at least double that number.

As Andrew Laver of scholarship funder Arnold Laver said: "Longer term it should help our products break through the steel, concrete and glass ceiling in construction".

Finally there is Grown in Britain (p5). This is less about improving building professionals' technical competence in using timber but, in driving home the message that sustainable use of timber can be key to maintaining and expanding forestry and tree cover, it aims to create a new "wood culture" in the UK. That should provide fertile soil in which the new seeds of timber construction knowledge being planted by the industry can really flourish.