Future generations of timber frame and truss — responsible for supplying more than 80 per cent of Australia’s current housing — could rise to four or five storeys under research being run by the Future Framing Initiative, with the work testing the existing system to a 15-metre upper bound across the townhouses, apartments, schools and aged-care facilities Australia must build to clear its housing shortfall. That is according to Future Framing Initiative research lead University of Tasmania’s Professor Louise Wallis, who told FTMA’s National Conference that her team was mapping the maximum reach of the existing 90 by 35 millimetre stick under current wind-load and earthquake conditions.
“Literally it’s up to 15 metres,” Wallis said.
The research had picked productivity as its starting point from a series of around 30 candidate projects flagged by the Timber Technical Advisory Group, Wallis said, with eight sub-projects now underway under the productivity stream alone. The first phase was working out how far the current system could be pushed under existing conditions, with the next phase due to look at the bracing and framing changes needed to raise buildings.
Wallis’s team had visited around 40 frame and truss manufacturers across the country last year before designing the research, with the variety of timber stacked outside each shed and the different products chosen for wall frames versus roof trusses among the patterns the team set out to test. Eleven different timber types are now being made into test frames at the University of Tasmania, with the rigs running end-restraint and sheathing scenarios in both controlled-climate and exterior wall conditions — including configurations with noggings removed entirely.
State housing groups were now talking about knocking over 40-year-old stock and rebuilding at two to three times the original density to deliver the next decade of dwellings, Wallis said, with state governments pushing to get builders back into the market. Timber and builders worked together brilliantly on detached construction, Wallis said, but the moment a project went up a few storeys all the red tape came out at once and timber struggled to stay in the mix.
“It’s really hard to get timber into the mix,” Wallis said.
Australian Timber Development Association CEO Andrew Dunn told the panel the Future Framing Initiative would publish its mid-rise lightweight-framing standard as an FWPA Industry Standard rather than route it through Standards Australia, as the formal process was too slow to deliver within the programme’s 2028 National Construction Code window. Industry-published standards were the same as Australian Standards but were published and resourced by the industry, Dunn said, with the programme also working towards the first major rewrite of AS1684, Residential Timber Framed Construction, in more than 25 years.
“This is a generational opportunity to fix roadblocks and modernise timber framing,” Dunn said.
The research, conducted at the University of Tasmania, is funded by Forest Wood Products Australia (FWPA) as well as the Australian Forest and Wood Innovations (AFWI), with AFWI Deputy Director Dr Patrick Mitchell telling delegates that the $100 million federal commitment was to rebuild forestry and wood-products research capability after 25 years of decline. With co-investment partners, the combined research pool now sits above $200 million, spanning tree breeding through to engineered wood-products development, with Mitchell calling AFWI a long-term proposition rather than a one-off.
“Researchers turn money into knowledge, and innovation is turning knowledge into money,” Mitchell said.
Meanwhile, FWPA Head of Built Environment and Head of the WoodSolutions Programme Kevin Peachey said the new codes and standards would be pushed through WoodSolutions, the channel was ready to take the Future Framing Initiative’s technical outputs and present them to the people writing timber into projects: “We’re ready to go. We’re just looking forward to all of the hard work.”
