Constructing a new vision

Summary
¦ TRADA’s new chairman, Dr Mike Cook, is a structural engineer.
¦ He is principal partner at Buro Happold.
¦ TRADA’s aim is to facilitate links between the timber industry and specifiers.
¦ A new programme will target teachers at schools and universities.

Mike Cook’s appointment as chairman is quite a break with TRADA tradition.

The Timber Research and Development Association, to give TRADA its now rarely used full name, ranks among the most august institutions in the UK timber sector. For three-quarters of a century it’s been the industry’s font of R&D know-how. At its hilltop site deep in the Buckinghamshire countryside it has helped set its standards. It has tested its products to destruction, cracked its technical problems and worked with it to drive timber innovation to the cutting edge – and all that time its chairman, naturally enough, has been a senior figure from the timber trade. Now the role has gone to Dr Cook – a structural engineer.

So what, many in the timber trade will no doubt ask, is the big idea?

The response from Dr Cook, a principal partner at international “multi-disciplinary engineering consultancy” Buro Happold, and Andrew Abbot, TRADA’s chief executive, is that this is precisely what it is: it’s part of a big idea for the organisation or, to be precise, a big new vision.

While continuing to offer its time-honoured R&D services to timber companies, TRADA also now plans seriously to develop its role as a technical conduit between the industry and the wider construction sector.

New mission statement

It sets out the core aims of its strategy in a succinct new mission statement.

“Our purpose is to support the development of timber to realise its potential,” it says. “Our goal is for it to be the natural first choice material for construction and for TRADA to be at the centre of that development.”

This, it stresses, is not to imply its focus until now has been exclusively down the timber supply chain, with no regard upstream to the market.

“We’ve had engineers, architects and other specifiers as members since the 1980s and in 2003 made a large part of our website open access as a free technical resource for the entire construction market,” said Mr Abbott. “But now we’re building on the recognition we’ve got along the supply chain. We want to facilitate links; to help the timber industry feel more comfortable relating to specifiers and stay abreast or ahead of their changing requirements and also to help specifiers understand how suppliers work and keep them aware of their latest developments.”

Dr Cook also sees TRADA’s emerging role as “helping to fill the risk gaps along a still fragmented supply chain”. These, he said, make some specifiers, contractors and clients wary about using wood. Instead they turn to other materials where they can get relatively worry-free, technically-assured building solutions from a single source.

After a quick dash through Dr Cook’s CV, it’s difficult to imagine a better choice for TRADA chairman as the organisation develops this role as a two-way innovation bridge between timber supplier and market.

His three-decade career includes top-flight projects worldwide using the full range of materials and he can enthuse equally about building in glass, steel or precast concrete. He did a PhD in inflatable plastic structures and among his headline-grabbing assignments over the years was the swooping glass and steel ceiling over the British Museum central court.

Passion for timber

But he clearly reserves a particular passion for timber and taking it to new heights in terms of building design and engineering. This is partly, no doubt, due to a formative teenage experience.

“In my gap year in 1974 I got a job placement at Ove Arup and they got me working on the Mannheim timber gridshell in Germany,” he said. “For an 18-year-old, it was a tremendous experience. Primarily it made me realise structural engineering was where I belonged, but it also led to my first ever visit to TRADA, which was doing creep and the clamping force testing for the building. Coming across all these clever people doing clever things with wood made a lasting impression!”

Dr Cook took his PhD at Bath University, where one of his professors was Ted Happold, previously of Arup but now heading his own company, Buro Happold. He was subsequently recruited by the latter, setting his course for a career that has mixed engineering, creativity and innovating with wood.

“As well as the attitude that it’s OK to do something that’s never been done before, Buro Happold has always had something of a timber culture,” he said. “It’s not policy that it has to feature in 30% of projects, but there’s an enthusiasm for it – a readiness to consider it as an option. As a result we’ve built up a lot of senior level expertise, led by people like Michael Dickson, Richard Harris and Angus Palmer.”

The timber-based projects Dr Cook has worked on personally include the Wood Awards shortlisters Norwich Cathedral’s hostry and the Alnwick Garden visitor centre. Other iconic timber buildings in Buro Happold’s portfolio include the Weald and Downland Museum and Savill Park gridshells and Sheffield Winter Gardens.

Timber creativity

“Personally I think timber is joyous,” said Dr Cook. “It demands a little more creativity, but that opens the engineer’s mind. It’s a fascinating, expressive material that creates stunning buildings.”

Infecting Buro Happold’s level of timber engagement and enthusiasm across the construction sector won’t be easy and, said Dr Cook, TRADA’s new vision strategy for achieving it through “connections between suppliers, specifiers, producers and users” will have to aim high.

“We have to reach to the top of the food chain, especially in the contractor sector which plays such a pivotal role in building material selection. We need to get to the CEOs of Costain, Laing O’Rourke and such like.”

Equally important, said Mr Abbott, will be exerting even greater influence on government to shape “policy, regulation and standards to enhance appropriate, safe use of timber”.

Another aim is to get to specifiers and end users young and embed timber in their thinking from the outset. This is another topic Dr Cook, who lectures on creativity in engineering at Imperial College, is passionate about.

“The new generation is an absolutely essential target and they’re potentially fertile ground, given timber’s environmental credentials and how important the green agenda is to them,” he said.

According to Mr Abbott, TRADA is already moving ahead on this front with a new programme to “reach out to teachers at schools and universities”.

“It’s an area where we need to create a level playing field with other materials sectors, which have very strong links with education,” he said. “We’ve now appointed Dr Andrew Pitman as our university engagement manager (see p39). He’ll be visiting universities three to five days a week – and he’s already getting very positive feedback.”

As far as the timber sector itself is concerned, TRADA’s aim is not only to keep it up to speed on specifiers’ requirements, but to help it develop the products that meet them. In fact, it goes beyond that. The vision is to come up with concepts and product solutions that shape the market, change specifiers’ perceptions of timber and take it into new areas of application. To underline the importance it attaches to this, it has already this year launched a new Market Development category within the TTJ Awards to recognise companies that push the boundaries for timber and wood products.

“What we increasingly need to do in the timber industry is think in terms of products rather than our role as suppliers of a material,” said Mr Abbott. “That ranges from understanding and communicating how timber can meet the performance needs of a particular product, to actually developing solutions to meet or pre-empt new technical, environmental or legislative requirements.

This part of TRADA’s strategy may also demand greater cross-industry collaboration.

“There could be advantages for the sector as a whole if companies came together pre-competitively at the early stages of product development,” said Mr Abbott. “TRADA can be instrumental in arbitrating this sort of co-operation. Our role is to unlock the knowledge of the industry – to be an agent of change.”

Complete solutions

Greater product focus and development of complete solutions in the timber industry, said Dr Cook, could also help bridge those market risk gaps.

“It will assure specifiers that the risks of using timber products are being managed and minimised along the supply chain,” he said.

He added that the ever-increasing importance of environmental issues in the construction sector makes this the prime time for TRADA and the timber sector to seize the initiative.

“Taking care of the planet is becoming the central tenet of doing business,” he said. “And we’re already seeing in the construction programmes of the likes of Marks & Spencer and Tesco that this is resulting in greater use of wood.”

The combination of timber’s eco factor with TRADA’s new vision, he said, has the potential to create a sea change in attitudes to its use in construction.

“The end result I want to see in three years’ time is more clients coming to designers such as Buro Happold and saying they specifically want their new building in timber and, when you ask anyone in the construction industry whether they see a strong future for wood for their response to be ‘yes, of course!’”