The SLB Identifies Opportunity in Steel-Timber Hybrid Construction | SLB December 2024 Newsletter

With last month’s release of the Mass Timber Insurance Playbook – U.S. Edition, WoodWorks is addressing a challenge many teams experience on their mass timber projects. While materials such as cross-laminated timber are becoming more mainstream across the country, they do not yet have a history of loss data that allows insurers to accurately assess risk. They’re also relatively new in the U.S. market, and insurance professionals who have never insured a mass timber project are often reluctant to do so. The Playbook is intended to support project teams seeking insurance, as well as the insurance industry as it develops knowledge and data in this space.

The U.S. Edition was adapted by Mike Hastings of M.D. Hastings Risk Consulting from the original Mass Timber Insurance Playbook developed by insurance and building resilience specialists in the United Kingdom in partnership with the Alliance for Sustainable Building Products. It gives developers, design/construction professionals, and insurers a framework for working together to resolve challenges that impact the insurability of mass timber buildings, making it easier to bring more of these projects to fruition.

“Adapting the Mass Timber Insurance Playbook is part of our commitment to helping address challenges related to innovative wood buildings in the U.S.,” said WoodWorks President and CEO Jennifer Cover. “Dodge data shows that, in 2023, more than 1 billion square feet of new construction could have been built using sustainable wood materials by code—and wasn’t. This represents a significant opportunity to reduce the carbon impact of the built environment.”

While not a guarantee, adhering to the principles in the Playbook should help project teams achieve the best pricing, terms, and conditions available in the current insurance market.

In a new video, “Defining Sustainability in Wood Construction,” WoodWorks invites listeners to “take a big step back” to understand the benefits of wood buildings. Starting with the fact that wood is natural, plentiful, and renewable, Senior Technical Director Ashley Cagle touches expertly on all the key issues—embodied carbon, cities as carbon sinks, sustainable forest practices, the link between strong wood markets and healthy forest ecosystems, life cycle assessment, EPDs, and biogenic carbon. It’s a compelling case—stated simply and effectively in just over four minutes.

WoodWorks continues to position itself as a knowledgeable educator for the design and construction industry, not only on wood construction systems and their benefits, but also how wood can be used to achieve lower embodied carbon buildings. The video helps design professionals dig deeper into the WoodWorks library of sustainability resources so they can make informed decisions on building material selection.

An SLB-sponsored engineering faculty development workshop hosted by Cal Poly Pomona brought together 20 faculty members from 18 universities across the country for a comprehensive introduction to wood products, systems, and building types. The workshop, which drew significant interest with 52 qualified faculty applicants vying for just 20 spots, highlighted the growing demand for wood education in academia. This event marked the fifth this year for SLB’s workshop series, which has engaged 101 faculty members across 81 unique programs in 38 states—effectively expanding wood education in architecture, engineering, and construction management curricula.

The Cal Poly Pomona workshop aimed to equip faculty with the tools and knowledge to champion wood as a viable, sustainable building material. The highlight was a field trip to a nearby four-story light-frame housing development over a concrete podium, where attendees saw firsthand the practical application of wood in multi-story construction.

Unlike traditional concrete and steel design courses, which focus on material properties and individual member capacities, this workshop emphasized the broader perspective of wood design. By teaching wood, especially light-frame construction, faculty can help engineering students gain a deeper understanding of how entire buildings function as integrated systems, with specific attention to load paths. This holistic approach better prepares students for the engineering workforce, as they develop insights into how buildings manage and transfer loads—an understanding that is often missing from many engineering programs. As groups like the National Council of Structural Engineers Associations push for curriculum changes, the SLB’s faculty workshops are essential in equipping educators to train a new generation of workforce-ready engineers with a strong grasp of wood’s benefits and practical applications.

“Before attending the workshop, I was not confident in my ability to teach a timber design course,” says Megan Voss-Warner, Assistant Professor at University of Evansville. “Learning about wood and hearing how experienced faculty members have designed their courses helped me build my confidence and grow a new excitement for offering this course to my students.”

To further support faculty in integrating wood education into their curricula, the SLB is committed to providing ongoing resources and tools. These include ready-to-use teaching materials to enhance classroom instruction, an immersive virtual reality tool for hands-on learning about mass timber, and fostering a community of practice for faculty to continue to share ideas and resources. These initiatives ensure faculty are equipped to inspire the next generation of engineers and architects to embrace wood as a sustainable, innovative building material.

In late October, staff at the AWC traveled to Long Beach, California, for the International Code Council’s (ICC) Group A Committee Action Hearing 2 (CAH2), the second public hearing for the development of the 2027 I-codes. The I-codes are developed through a multi-year process of consensus building and several rounds of public comments and hearings. The AWC is highly involved in the development of the I-codes to ensure that wood products and wood construction are treated fairly and not impaired in the building codes. 

CAH2 results were overall positive and favorable for wood use. The AWC’s proposal to incorporate the 2024 Fire Design Specification for Wood Construction (FDS) was approved, recognizing the use of the FDS as an acceptable method for fire protection of wood connections and providing designers additional options to meet code requirements.

Additionally, another AWC proposal was approved that removed the requirement for sealants and adhesives in joints and intersections of mass timber (Type IV-A, IV-B and IV-C) construction where they are unnecessary for fire performance, allowing reduced construction costs. The AWC also successfully testified in support of disapproval of a proposal to consolidate wildland urban interface (WUI) construction classes from three classes to one, maintaining more material choice depending on the extent of defensible space and severity of WUI fire hazard.

However, CAH2 results included an unfavorable approval of a proposal to the International Wildland-Urban Interface Code (IWUIC) that will potentially limit construction material options for lower-severity WUI hazard areas. The AWC is already preparing to submit public comments in response to this approval by the March 14, 2025, deadline.

The results of CAH2 will be made available for public comment in December, and a public comment hearing that includes a vote on Group A and Group B changes will take place in 2026. 

Although office building vacancy rates are rising as a whole, a “flight to quality” trend for employers means that many high-quality new buildings are thriving—creating an opportunity for developers to differentiate their office projects with beautiful, biophilic wood construction. According to a Forest Economics Advisors outlook for the SLB, the office market remains one of the strongest opportunities for lumber market growth, with an incremental annual volume potential in the office and bank sector of 345 million to 413 million board feet of lumber.

Think Wood is developing a variety of resources to show how wood construction can help office developers and designers enhance the occupant experience, boost sustainability, and increase overall value. The latest eBook in Think Wood’s mass timber case studies series highlights 6 Commercial Projects that Pencil Out, featuring replicable solutions that design teams can envision using in their own projects. Earlier this year, Think Wood developed a video featuring the design and development teams from two mass timber office projects, T3 ATX Eastside and the Houston Endowment Headquarters, providing insights and lessons learned on how they used mass timber to enhance their projects.

Another recent Think Wood project profile featured LEVER Architecture’s 843 North Spring Street, one of the first large-scale uses of cross-laminated timber in a contemporary Los Angeles office building. The steel-timber hybrid project saved an estimated 1,357 metric tons of carbon compared to traditional building methods by reducing the amount of concrete needed in the garage foundation, while also providing a more desirable workspace for tenants. 

“Timber is a natural material that people connect with in the same way that people connect to landscape and to outdoor space,” says LEVER Architecture Principal and Founder Thomas Robinson in the article. “It allows people to feel really comfortable being at work.”