Lumber Demand Growth Starts Here | SLB May 2026 Newsletter

As school districts seek cost-effective, durable solutions for campus modernization, many remain unfamiliar with how lumber-based structural systems perform in real-world applications. By delivering timely expertise, WoodWorks helps reduce perceived risk and accelerates early interest in project opportunities, creating new pathways for wood use. Recent success stories showcase this work:

• WoodWorks hosted 53 material decision makers on a tour of a Sacramento elementary school with seven new mass timber classrooms (which WoodWorks had supported), strengthening market confidence in scalable K–12 applications through peer-to-peer learning.
• A WoodWorks Regional Director guided a steel-focused design team through acoustic and structural concerns on a child education project, enabling a shift from steel to mass timber for their current project and prompting firm-wide education to build long-term wood design capacity.
• After six years of learning from WoodWorks offerings, an engineer on a high school expansion project in Texas reached out to the local WoodWorks Regional Director, who supported them in converting portions of a steel-framed design to mass timber.

Education projects represent an annual incremental lumber opportunity of 203 MM BF by 2035, with wood’s biophilic benefits and warm, inviting atmosphere providing differentiation from competitive materials. The SLB and USDA Forest Service’s 2025 Mass Timber Competition: Building Sustainable Schools awarded funding to three K–12 schools that show wood construction can outperform conventional systems in cost efficiency, durability, and community impact. WoodWorks’ direct project technical support builds on that effort, enabling K–12 design teams to overcome obstacles such as code challenges or lack of familiarity with wood, changing the way schools are built.

The SLB continues to strengthen future demand for lumber by creating targeted opportunities for architecture students to engage directly with the professionals, products, and projects shaping today’s buildings. The SLB recently sponsored participation for 22 third-year architecture students from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo at the International Mass Timber Conference (IMTC) in Portland, Oregon, connecting these future architects with professionals across design, development, manufacturing, and construction and providing a clear view of how mass timber moves from concept to commercial reality.

The students attended IMTC at the midpoint of a mass timber-focused design studio, where they were developing proposals for a theoretical commercial building in Portland. Rather than learning about wood systems only in the classroom, students were immersed in an environment showcasing current projects, supply chain capabilities, emerging technologies, and the practical considerations that shape material decisions. This exposure helped connect academic design work to the broader industry ecosystem they will enter after graduation.

“We had the incredible opportunity to attend IMTC, where we met industry leaders to discuss the challenges and innovations happening in mass timber,” one of the participants posted on Linkedin. “After hearing [architecture legend] Kengo Kuma speak and having many informative conversations, I am feeling inspired and optimistic for the future of architecture and building technology through mass timber.”

Experiences like this help move students from academic exploration to applied understanding. By connecting future architects to wood design early in their education, the SLB is helping build the familiarity, confidence, and enthusiasm that can influence material selection decisions as these students enter practice and contribute to real projects.

The AWC is protecting the safe use of North American lumber by engaging with building standards that influence market acceptance and regulatory compliance. For example, the AWC is engaged in many ASTM standards that directly influence the wood products industry, including the D07 Committee on Wood, E06 on Building Construction, and E33 on Acoustics. ASTM International sets the test methods and material performance standards that often become the gateway for product acceptance in building codes and regulatory systems worldwide.

AWC staff has had several recent successes in these committees. These include supporting the development of multiple wood standards and moving them closer to completion in D07 and chairing an E06 subcommittee that maintains standards related to panel strength testing and shear wall testing. In the E06 subcommittee, the AWC has pushed against the reapproval of an outdated shear wall test standard that had not been updated in more than 20 years. Early this year, the subcommittee voted in support of AWC’s position, meaning the standard is expected to be withdrawn. This marks an important step in ensuring the use of current, performance-based standards that better reflect modern wood construction systems. 

ASTM standards, and standards of other organizations, continue to impact market access and the safe use of North American wood products. The AWC’s leadership and participation in ASTM standards ensures the provisions are performance-based and fair, ultimately safeguarding wood products’ competitiveness and reinforcing confidence in wood as a trusted, safe building material. 

With unused office space reaching record highs, how can new office developers make their projects stand out with prospective tenants or employees? In two recent project case studies, Think Wood shows that mass timber can help office projects pencil out on cost while differentiating from the competition based on tenant appeal.

At 1501 Mike Fahey in Omaha, Nebraska, architecture firm HDR worked with developer Noddle on a hybrid steel-and-mass-timber spec office project that creates the amenity-rich, sustainability-oriented workspace tenants are seeking. HDR was also the architect behind the Orange County Sanitation District Headquarters, which used a hybrid mass timber structure that met budget while cutting embodied carbon, boosting workplace wellness, and meeting sustainability goals.

It’s no coincidence that HDR was involved in both projects—the firm is making a push to increase the number of mass timber buildings in its design portfolio, going so far as to track such projects in its internal sustainability metrics. In each project, the firm carried a wood scheme and concrete and steel schemes through design—and wood won in both cases. Office projects represent an annual incremental lumber demand opportunity of 299 MM BF by 2035 in the SLB’s strategic plan. Think Wood increases architects’ and developers’ intent to specify wood in office projects and other high-opportunity segments with inspirational storytelling about the sustainability and occupant experience benefits of lumber.