Talking up timber

"Don't walk away, do something, today!" a smiling Keith Fryer wrote with urgency in TTJ.

Like Marty McFly, in the movie Back to the Future, I'm not very good at walking away from a challenge so Keith's words were a direct hit and I've been puzzling over what it is I should do.

The timber industry is not my natural habitat. I have a design background, studying art and architecture and working with architects before coming to English Woodlands Timber, but I've been somewhat ensconced for the last 10 years because I have a passion, bordering on obsession, for wood.

I'm a fanatic who thinks everyone should use wood for everything, which, of course, is ridiculous. But I think I could be soothed with a moderate use of timber in a majority of construction/creative projects. I think that's sounds fair, don't you?

That's why I'm extremely interested in why people don't use timber.

The pre Timber Expo ProTimber summit gave us an insight into why. It highlighted that although architects want to use wood, main contractors don't have the confidence to.

What's interesting is that it's not news. Our customers have been telling us that for years. So what are we going to do about it?

Maybe the first thing to do is seize the opportunity gratefully; not let it slide. Do the listening; empathise with the customer.

It's not so hard. I can empathise with architects. Timber is exciting. It performs on many levels - structure, envelope, joinery, finish, furnishing, landscaping. One aesthetically beautiful, relatively inexpensive, easily sourced, environmentally friendly raw material with short lead times and a fantastic lifespan does all of that. We'd be in trouble if it wasn't our raw material!

So what didn't we listen to and respond to that has resulted in their not using timber? The contractors are telling us. We didn't listen when they said they wanted 'proof' so that they could be confident in choosing wood. They need hard facts, definitive information and we don't really do definitive.

Instead, as an industry we contradict each other's information. We supply incomplete, tentative, Technical information which sends heads spinning. So we need to supply the proof.

Timber is hard to 'know' and yet we know our products. We just don't pass the information on effectively and we don't share it.

We underestimate the depth and technicality of our knowledge because it's gained over time (centuries!), through handson experience. Timber wasn't created by R&D like cars or pharmaceuticals with reams of technical info to back it up.

We need to use what we've got to prove our product and we need to be convincing.What's more convincing, the spec of the real thing or the real thing? The proof of the pudding and all that.

We need to use our experience. The job we did last week, last month, last year, last decade. And all we have to do is talk about it clearly and honestly enough for someone to buy it. Literally.

So back to me. What am I going to do to make sure we don't lose?

I'm going to get serious about experience. Case studies. I'm going to be relentless about being specific about what was used, how it was used, how it turned out and I'm going to share this information with anyone and everyone, especially our customers and then, if we're lucky, the next Timber Expo summit will tell us something we don't know.

Now what are you going to do?