Engineering works

Summary
• Interest in engineered timber is increasing as demand for sustainable products and off-site manufacturing grows.
• The TTJ Achievement in Engineered Timber Award, sponsored by Osmose, was introduced last year.
• The inaugural award was won by Kingspan Off-Site's Lighthouse.
• The award is open to new products and applications of engineered wood in construction, joinery and manufacturing.
• The TTJ Awards take place at the Park Lane Hotel, London, on September 18.

As the use of timber in construction grows, fuelled by demand for sustainable products and off-site manufacturing, so do the technology and sophistication of timber solutions.

Since we introduced the Achievement in Engineered Timber Award to the TTJ Awards last year, TTJ and its sister publication Timber Building have devoted many column inches to developments in the engineered timber sector.

Formby Pool, which won Gold in last year's Wood Awards, is a monument to engineered timber products. Kerto LVL provides the structural elements, forming the pillars, the pool roof deck and, in combination with steel rods, the blow-string trusses. The other flat roof areas consist of OSB decking supported by engineered timber I-joists.

Glulam

Abroad, glulam has been used to stunning effect in two recent projects. In Pier 2E at Charles de Gaulle airport in France, an internal birch glulam ribcage of 150 beams supports ash-veneered plywood panels, while in Canada, 15 100m-span glulam beams provide the structure for the 2010 Winter Olympics speed-skating oval. The beams are covered by a wood wave structure made from more than one million board feet of pine-beetle kill wood topped with plywood.

It is products and projects like these that TTJ wants to recognise with the Achievement in Engineered Timber Award.

For last year's inaugural award we received a large number – and wide range – of entries which the judges Peter Wilson, director of business development at the Centre for Timber Engineering, Napier University, and Dr Luke Whale, director of TimberSolve, narrowed down to a shortlist of three. These were iLevel Trus Joist for its Spatial Roof, Stewart Milne's Sigma House, and Kingspan Off-Site's Lighthouse, which carried away the award.

The judges described the Lighthouse as “ground-breaking technology which takes the industry out of the comfort zone”, and a development that was “challenging other parts of the industry to think the same way”.

If you have a product or project that you think pushes the boundaries of timber engineering then we would like to receive your entry.

Entry criteria

The Award, sponsored by Osmose, is open to both individual products that take engineered wood to a new technical level and open up new market opportunities, and to particularly interesting, technically demanding or ground-breaking applications in joinery, manufacturing or construction.

• Entrants should send us the background to the development of the individual product or the rationale for using engineered wood in a building or joinery or other manufactured item.

• For products, please also provide a description of the development process, technical specification and information about the applications of the product.

• Information about the performance of the product in the field, and feedback from the market from specifiers or end users, if available, would also be helpful.

• For applications of engineered wood in construction, joinery or manufacturing, please provide details of the product or products used, how they have performed and the benefits they have provided for the building or finished manufactured or joinery item.

• Photographs of products and applications should also be provided, if possible.

• For an entry form, click on the file section on the right, or email kfallwell@ttjonline.com

• The deadline is Friday, August 1. They should be sent to Mike Jeffree, editor TTJ, Progressive House, 2 Maidstone Road, Sidcup DA14 5HZ.

The Achievement in Engineered Timber Award will be judged by an independent panel. The presentation will be made by host and guest speaker Charles Kennedy at the TTJ Awards 2008 on September 18 at The Park Lane Hotel, London.