LOCOG in need of inspiration

From inspiration to frustration – 14 days in the life of the timber trade.

A fortnight ago The American Hardwood Export Council’s European Convention in Warsaw highlighted how it is pushing back barriers on the technical, marketing, and sustainable and legality assurance fronts to build the market for timber.

The audience was told about latest AHEC-backed research to take American hardwoods into more exterior applications. This ranged from looking at the efficacy of hot oil and thermo treatment, to modification methods, such as acetylation, as used in Accoya.

There was also news on AHEC’s life cycle analysis (LCA) project – said to be the most comprehensive ever undertaken for hardwood. LCA calculates a product or material’s total cradle-to-grave eco-cost and is assuming increasing significance in private and public procurement criteria. It is also being built into Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), set to be applied to an ever-increasing range of items. And AHEC expects to have its own EPDs ready for American hardwoods for the UK, France and Germany next spring.

On the marketing front, the Convention heard about the global range of US hardwood promotion. It now encompasses everything from show apartments in China, to student timber design competitions from Bangkok to Barcelona. This year it also included the American red oak Timber Wave structure built outside London’s V&A Museum to highlight wood’s aesthetic and technical capabilities.

Further inspiration came last week in the form of a PEFC UK hosted meeting with 2012 Olympic contractors to mark the success of the Olympic park timber procurement system. This was developed by the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) with the timber trade and eco certification bodies. It involved the creation of a panel of timber companies to channel Olympic deliveriesa and adopted the government’s procurement criteria, accepting FSC and PEFC certification as equal proof of timber legality and sustainability. Within this context it secured a ground-breaking agreement with FSC. Previously it would only give “project certification” to a structure if the proportion of timber in it that wasn’t FSC-certified met its FSC Controlled Wood standard. For the Olympics it agreed to sign off the percentage that was FSC certified, leaving the rest to be covered by PEFC, thus creating the first “dual project certification”. ODA leader of construction products Peter Bonfield said contractors liked the whole approach and that it should be promoted by the timber sector as a procurement model for other projects.

And the frustration? That’s the confirmation from the London 2012 Organising Committee (LOCOG), which takes over the Olympic site from the ODA in January, that it has its own forest products procurement policy, which strongly favours FSC certification.

LOCOG says it is a private firm and can do whatever it likes. Given that a proven, even-handed procurement system already exists, this beggars belief. And allegations are now flying that LOCOG’s FSC preference could cost more. Hopefully it can still be persuaded to change tack. So it’s time to bombard it with the positives of the ODA system and the timber sector’s many other inspirational achievements in ensuring its products are fit for purpose on environmental and so many other fronts (www.London2012.com).