Modelling new business

Building Information Modelling (BIM) could offer significant business advantages to the timber sector. It's a fast-developing field, bringing together information on all aspects of a building to define its construction method, running costs and energy efficiency, through to its end of life.

BIM is a collaborative process. At the design stage, information on materials and products can be included and their impacts modelled throughout a 'lifetime' of use in a building. Eventually it will influence the choices specifiers make. This heralds, as Timber Trade Federation chief executive John White stated recently, a golden age of business opportunity for timber. It offers a chance to embed timber's environmental and energy efficiency credentials, and its recycling potential, at the very heart of building specification.

In its 2011 Construction Strategy, the government adopted BIM as the way forward for gaining maximum cost and energy efficiencies from its building programme, requiring use of "...fully collaborative 3D BIM... as a minimum by 2016". In February, a national survey revealed a third of all construction professionals to be using BIM, and RIBA launched a "BIM Overlay" for architects' plans in May.

A National BIM Library, created recently, already offers data from forward-thinking wood product manufacturers. One of these is Clive Durose Woodturners, which contributed data on its specialist wooden staircases.

"We can interface with BIM systems as we already have the appropriate software for digital design modelling," said managing director Clive Durose. "We can import drawings and output to the required file types.

"We usually deal with main contractors rather than architects, and we get requests for FSC-certified products all the time. BIM represents a considerable business opportunity as you can emphasise timber's environmental advantages over other materials while projects are still in the design phase. We're by no means expert at it yet, but we seem to have placed ourselves in the right arena to promote our business," he said.

What is the relationship between BIM and life cycle analysis (LCA), which provides data on products and materials from their inception to the end of their life? Andrea Charlson, engineer on the materials consulting team at Arup in London, explained: "LCA information feeds into the advice we give to our design teams and clients. Increasingly, material LCAs are being used at the design stage of a building, and are monitored throughout its construction. Another approach is to create a building LCA at the end of a project for use in future comparisons.

"We look to suppliers to have 'cradle to gate' information as a starting point; beyond that any additional information, such as service life and expected maintenance cycle, is very helpful. There are groups looking at the end of life for timber but if suppliers could provide that information we'd certainly like to use it," she said.

Three phases of information "We need LCA information segregated into three phases: initial impacts; ongoing impacts and end of life. We don't necessarily expect manufacturers to have information on transport beyond their gates as that's a big variable. We aim to understand what aspects of the product's environmental impact we could influence beneficially," Ms Charlson added.

"Inputting LCA information into BIM systems is currently the Holy Grail. It will definitely happen; we all want to see fully-integrated systems. For the meantime we'll use whatever information we can find," she said.

David Venables, European director of the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), wants to extend its recently-launched LCA. "To go beyond AHEC's 'cradle to gate' analysis we need the input of manufacturers; we're starting to transfer our data to them now. When we've combined our information we'll have something worthwhile to offer specifiers. We need more people in the industry to start producing LCA data for their products.

"LCA discounts the carbon uptake element of forestry but it's the long-term carbon storage in wood that politicians must realise is the advantage," he continued. "They must encourage the use of wood, as has been done in other countries. We need to focus on communicating the naturally long life and carbon storage of timber products before we investigate 'end of life'. Timber is recyclable so it should only be in worst case scenarios that wood goes to biomass," he said.

"In AHEC's view, any modelling system is good as it provides an opportunity to communicate the environmental benefits of timber. BIM has to be a massive opportunity for business, but we do need to equip our sector with technical information centres. Until then, we'll always be playing catch-up with other materials."