Aims and achievement

Summary
• John White joined the TTF in February 2005.
• The Federation relocated to the Building Centre in 2007.
• The TTF has engaged with other trade bodies.
• Timber’s environmental credentials underpin the TTF’s activities.

A 10-minute stroll through London’s West End is all that separates The Timber Trade Federation’s old offices in Clareville House from its new HQ in the Building Centre. But the relocation underlines major strides made by the organisation since John White took over as chief executive in 2005.

Taking stock on his third anniversary in the post, Mr White is keen to stress that developments at the TTF have been very much a team effort. He can’t talk highly enough of his staff, the input from members and, particularly, the leadership of current president Neil Donaldson and his predecessor John Tong. He makes no bones either about the fact that there’s more to be done and that he’s impatient to crack on and do it. But he’s also not about to downplay recent achievements.

“We’re a million miles from where we were three years ago,” he said. “From being in a precarious financial position, we now have a surplus, membership is growing and we’ve raised our political profile. Initially, we had to do some painful things, including making people redundant. But we’re now a leaner, stronger, more focused organisation.”

Office move

Moving to the Building Centre also forms part of the TTF’s reinvention.

“One of our core objectives must be to raise awareness of our activities with the timber industry’s customers and the major customer is construction,” said Mr White. “Being in the Building Centre puts us right at the heart of things. We have the Construction Products Association and Green Building Council [which the TTF recently joined] on the floor below and events here pull in builders, architects and specifiers virtually every day.”

Structural developments and initiatives in UK building, he maintained, give the TTF even greater incentive to get close to the industry. “The Code for Sustainable Homes, the 2016 zero carbon target for new housing, revision of Building Regulations and growth in timber frame all have vital implications for us,” he said.

On Mr White's watch the TTF has also engaged more with other timber industry trade bodies. Last year at Norton House in Edinburgh Mr Donaldson chaired a summit meeting of sector associations to discuss collaboration in a range of areas. More recently many of the same bodies held discussions on pulling all training in the sector together under the National Occupation Standards scheme. And the federation is also working hand in glove with other organisations in the Wood for Gold campaign lobbying for the use of timber in London Olympics developments.

Wood for Gold, said Mr White, is a prime example of what can be achieved through collaboration. “Sharing objectives and goals, but dividing responsibility between the various organisations involved has enabled us to make real progress,” he said. “We’ve been able to influence the Olympic Delivery Authority on procurement policy and that also helped secure changes in the Greater London Authority’s procurement strategy.”

He believes that other areas are ripe for the industry to act in concert and isn’t concerned whether the TTF is driver or follower in particular initiatives. “We’re not looking to get everything under the TTF umbrella,” he said. “But we should push for bodies to come together. It’s what government, non-departmental bodies and NGOs want from an industry: one voice and agreed positions.”

Naturally enough, the timber sector’s environmental credentials have been another preoccupation of the TTF. In fact, said Mr White, they underpin everything it does.

“However hard they try, other materials can’t come close to timber in terms of environmental performance,” he said. “But if it’s not grown sustainably, none of it stacks up.”

No-one, he believes, can stand aside from the debate or the battle against illegal logging. “As far as consumers are concerned, wood is wood, so a problem with, say tropical hardwood-faced panels, is a problem for everyone.”

Timber Trade Action Plan

This all-for-one attitude is expressed in the TTF’s support for the EU Timber Trade Action Plan – “free money for improving tropical forest management”. It also lies behind Mr White’s advocacy for the federation’s Responsible Purchasing Policy (RPP).

“The RPP is not another form of certification, it’s a tool for risk-rating suppliers, an essential part of the DNA of any business,” he said. “It’s a means of telling customers ‘we’ve dealt with your risk of receiving illegal wood’.”

So far 45 companies have joined the RPP and the debate rumbles on over whether it should be a mandatory element of Federation membership. Mr White clearly wants more to sign up and believes billing it as an integrated part of the TTF Code of Practice, a means of fulfilling the latter’s pledges on environmental performance, could help. “It’s somehow seen as separate and was never intended to be,” he said.

Now he’s got to know the trade better, Mr White says his approach is more “nuanced” and in tune with the “sensibilities of different sectors” than it was at the outset. But the ambition and impatience to move things on remain. “We should be an organisation of 500 members,” he said. “With that sort of resource, we could do a lot more.”

And while the TTF has evolved over the past three years, Mr White’s personal life has moved on too. He and his family have decamped from east London to Saffron Walden and he’s started intensive French tuition to keep up with the EU tropical timber debate. Perhaps in another show of that impatience, he’s also abandoned his 2005 plans to “relearn the piano”. He’s taken up the drums instead.