Monthly Update: May 2019

Recent analysis highlighted how technology can help make construction more efficient and lead to cost savings. According to McKinsey Global Institute, the construction sector is currently the world’s second least digitized industry, behind agriculture. The failure to use data and analytics creates numerous inefficiencies, resulting in construction waste, cost overruns, and schedule delays.

Data advocates argue that data capture in the construction sector is more feasible than ever, thanks to a growing array of mobile-enabled solutions, GPS, and drones. Meanwhile, the effective analysis of data captured can result in a better understanding of costs and timelines, leading to more precise budgeting, more effective time and project management, and more accurate calculations of margins.

Learn more about improving data usage here.

Buildings contain thousands of components, many with different individual chemical compositions and characteristics. To meet the sustainability goals set out for their projects, construction professionals need access to transparent, accurate information about the products they are considering when specifying materials.

To incentivize greater transparency regarding product information, ZGF, an award-winning architecture and interior design firm, has teamed with 56 industry peers to launch the Materials Pledge. The Pledge is an open letter to the manufacturing community, signed by architecture, engineering, and design firms, declaring their intent to design and build with the best materials available that help them positively affect human health and the environment.

Read more about the Materials Pledge here.

D/O Architects in Minneapolis recently designed a pair of cutting-edge condominium buildings focused on the use of innovative building materials. Among these is TMBR, a 10-story building the company hopes to build in the North Loop neighborhood in partnership with lead developer Kroiss Development. If the building comes to fruition, it will be the tallest all-timber residential building in the Midwest.

Kroiss was inspired to build with wood after touring the nearby all-timber office building T3. In TMBR, D/O plans to use sustainably grown laminated wood beams that will be fabricated in a factory and assembled on-site using metal joinery.

TMBR originally exceeded local codes’ height limit for wood buildings but has since gained approval from local building officials and city planning staff thanks to precedence created by the recently approved ICC 2021 standards allowing for taller wood buildings.

Read more here.

Mass Timber Design, MIT’s architecture workshop focused on technology and sustainable building design, has developed a mass timber longhouse prototype. Longhouses were communal dwellings commonly found in Iroquois and other native communities in North America. MIT’s longhouse draws on this history, aiming to serve as a multifunctional building offering shared communal space. The building features a series of beautiful timber-laminated veneer lumber arches.

View images of MIT’s longhouse prototype here.

The Forest Business Network and partnering firms recently released the North American Mass Timber State of the Industry report for 2019, which examines the current state of the mass timber industry and its prospects for the future. A key finding of the report is that increased demand for forest products and lumber arising from the development of mass timber can be met without overharvesting and, therefore, will not lead to deforestation in the U.S. or Canada. Already the quantity of forestland in North America has been stable for decades, and since the 1970s, the U.S. has grown more timber than it loses to harvesting and natural mortality.

Coupled with mass timber’s carbon benefits—both its ability to store carbon and its lower emissions during manufacturing—wood earns its reputation as an optimal material for the construction industry thanks to its renewable, biodegradable, and sustainable nature.

The full report is available for purchase here.

In March, the U.S. Forest Service released Forest Resources of the United States, 2017, which provides exhaustive statistics on the current state and usage of U.S. forest resources, including current and comparative estimates of forest area, volume, mortality, growth, removals, and timber-product output. These statistics combine to provide important insights into U.S. forests’ overall health and productivity.

The report, which is available for download here, will serve as a key resource in support of the upcoming 2020 Resources Planning Act Assessment.

PBS’s respected NewsHour program recently examined the skilled labor shortage in the U.S. and what some states are doing to reverse the trend. The labor shortage is widely regarded as the unfortunate consequence of the nation’s decades-long push for high school graduates to pursue academic degrees rather than attend vocational schools or trade programs. This in turn eroded the image of vocational education and trades jobs, despite their stability and good wages.

According to the Georgetown Center, the U.S. has roughly 30 million jobs that pay an average of $55,000 per year and do not require a bachelor’s degree. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education reports that people with technical educations are slightly more likely to be employed than those with academic credentials and significantly more likely to be working in their fields of study.

California, for example, is working to reverse technical school’s image problem as a means to reverse the labor shortage trend. The state is scheduled to spend $6 million to market vocational education and $200 million to improve its delivery.

Read NewsHour’s story here.

The University of Idaho is the latest college campus to choose mass timber construction as a way to reiterate the university’s commitment to sustainability and innovation. It also gives a nod to the state’s timber industry. The university’s proposed 4,200-seat Idaho Central Credit Union Arena will feature mass timber as a primary structural material and will become the second and largest mass timber building on campus.

According to SLB research, 34 mass timber buildings have been completed or planned on U.S. college campuses nationwide. The U.S. Forest Service, in partnership with the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities, is working to incentivize even greater adoption of mass timber on college campuses via the recent launch of the Mass Timber University Grant Program, which will give up to $1 million to help colleges build with mass timber.
Read more here.

Back in February, we reported on a major technology firm choosing cross laminated timber (CLT) as the primary structural material for its redesigned corporate campus. That firm is Microsoft, and construction is moving full steam ahead. The project is on target to consume 345,000-square-feet, or 2,400 tons, of CLT, which, once completed, will make it the largest wood structure in the U.S. by volume of wood used.

Specifying CLT was only one of many decisions Microsoft has made in order to meet its ambitious sustainability goals. In addition, the project will restore habitat surrounding the campus, store thermal energy, use data to optimize power usage, and source 100% of the campus’s nondrinking water from a combination of rainfall and on-site water recycling.

Read more about the project here.