• Steel prices are through the roof, and the Australian timber industry has never been in a better position to grasp new opportunities for a greater share of the large-span structural market. But is it up to the task? Jim Bowden asked the question in this June 2008 story.
Australia’s biggest steel maker, BlueScope, the global leader in the supply of metallic coated and painted steel structures, has warned that massive costs of iron and coking coal will likely push steel product prices beyond current record levels.
Business in the building sector for manufacturers and suppliers of steel framing systems and building components has been battered by price hikes – more than 150% in the last two years, up 20% in May, and expected to rise by another 20% by August-September.
Many advertising programs for steel trusses have been cancelled, and at least six steel product shops have closed in recent months.
BlueScope chief executive Paul O’Malley hit the rivet on the head: “With iron ore prices set to rise at least 65%, and coking coal prices expected to double, there is no doubt steel product prices will increase further in the next six months.”
So, how can the engineered wood products industry capture this opportunity?
“It’s an opportunity for sure, but I’m not sure the timber industry is in good enough shape to handle it,” says Bruce Hutchings, managing director of Timberbuilt, which has been designing and manufacturing large-span timber buildings for more than 20 years.
“If it was a case of being in shape for the task, then I’m afraid many in the industry wouldn’t pass the fitness test,” he said.
Hutchings, who supplies complete building systems for portal frames to span 40 m or more and has specialised in laminated veneer lumber (LVL) since it was introduced in Australia 22 years ago, says the industry has failed to invest in new technical resources.
“Individual companies have not maintained the infrastructure nor developed it to provide the kind of timber engineering skills needed to turn this opportunity into reality. These are the hard facts,” he said.
Hutchings pushed further: “This is a very short-sighted industry, and it doesn’t hurt to spell it out. Our business has invested heavily in specialised equipment, new CNC technology, innovative designs and connection systems, and has developed capacity along the way – without a lot of support from the industry.”
A timber engineer quick to recognise the huge new market opening for wood as the gap between timber and steep prices widens is Gregory Nolan of the Centre for Sustainable Architecture with Wood at the University of Tasmania.
“This has done at least two things – it has made design professionals and builders open to consider construction options other than steel for a range of non-domestic projects. And it has improved (even further) the relative economy of timber structures for a wide range of building forms,” he said.
“After discussing this with a few fabricators, this seems too good an opportunity to miss. Past ‘flowerings’ of timber construction in non-domestic building came from steel being unavailable or priced out of the market.
“The vital questions are how to best support industry members wishing to take up this opportunity and to bring home the economic benefits of timber construction to key professional groups.”
Nolan said opportunities would evaporate if there was not:
Fred Bosveld of Spantruss Systems in Tasmania agrees. “The market is just sitting there waiting for us. We should now be focusing on large, wide-span roof structures in the rural and warehouse sector. Let’s push the price advantage as well as the green advantage,” he said.
“The biggest hurdle from a marketing point of view will be making the engineers and specifiers aware of what the industry can do. Many of them can’t work out how it all fits together; they have no detailed drawings or new reference material.
“We’ve got to go out and teach the engineering fraternity what we can do with wood.”
Bosveld says another hurdle is the fragmentation in the industry. “Everyone keeps playing it close to the chest.”
Executive officer of the Frame and Truss Manufacturers Association, Nick Livanes, sees high steel prices as presenting exciting opportunities for the timber fabrication industry to take a greater share of the warehouse, small industrial, and rural buildings markets.
“The other more hidden opportunity is the move into alternative framed housing using portal ‘barn-type’ structures. These have a niche market in North America and Europe.
“But apart from a few like Fred Bosveld in Tasmania, Bruce Hutchings of TimberBuilt and Tim Gibney of Imagineering, there are few exponents of alternative timber construction in these areas.”
Angelo Guerrera, Carter Holt Harvey’s marketing manager for structural and flooring systems, says the steel frame supplier’s crisis is timber’s golden opportunity with ‘sitting duck’ markets for portal frames and warehouse applications.
“Industry needs a champion to drive the program, to drum up business with specifiers and take a fresh approach,” Guerrera said. “We have to do what the steel boys did – provide comprehensive guides and design templates for engineering students, develop literature that really targets end-users and go out on building sites and show them how to do it.
“We need to develop literature that accentuates the ‘positives’ of wood construction versus the ‘negatives’ and we must simplify the specification process of wood structures.”
“Industry needs a champion to drive the program, to drum up business with specifiers and take a fresh approach,” Guerrera said. “We have to do what the steel boys did – provide comprehensive guides and design templates for engineering students, develop literature that really targets end-users and go out on building sites and show them how to do it.
“We need to develop literature that accentuates the ‘positives’ of wood construction versus the ‘negatives’ and we must simplify the specification process of wood structures.”
Guerrera says there needs to be an extensive education of designers, students, contractors and building officials by emphasising wood’s structural reliability, cost competitiveness and durability.
“Organisations such as ours can create the building blocks for these education programs,” says Ric Sinclair, managing director of Forest and Wood Products Australia.
“The relationship of architects and engineers is one which historically has produced an ‘information gap’ resulting in a great deal of lost opportunities for both professions,” says John Webster, an engineer and former lecturer in timber design at the University of Tasmania.
“This gap has to be closed if we are to progress in the application of timber engineering in architectural design thinking,” Webster says. “A dialogue must be established whereby engineering research endeavour is informed by applied design-based needs of architects and vice-versa.
“However, there are fundamental reasons for the historic development of this gap. Most students and staff are attracted to study architecture as art and tend not to be interested in the empirical design detail and the detailed resolution of structural problems.
“Architecture students also tend to explore radical new solutions to solve architectural design problems – solutions based more upon intuition than research and fundamental principles.”
John Muller, an industry consultant with more than 30 years’ experience in timber manufacturing and wide-span structures, says environmental considerations have acquired more importance in the specification of materials.
“Technical and economic aspects of building materials are still the primary considerations for specifiers, but increasingly, they are considering the environmental effects when selecting appropriate building materials for their designs,” Muller said.
“Architects, engineers and designers require accurate information to assess the true environmental consequences of the materials they specify.
“If engineered wood products are to achieve their potential, the industry should begin to attack the misperceptions of wood construction.”
A research program undertaken for a Master of Architecture degree at the University of Tasmania sought to establish a precedence of Australian design practice in timber by examining timber structures built with spans 30 metres or greater.
In a review of timber engineering conference proceedings since 1989, a total of 945 papers reflected a gap between engineering technical research aspirations in timber and the transfer of this information to a wider audience.
In addition, the direction of timber engineering research did not appear to be strategically driven by concepts that related to a ‘big picture’ of possible futures.
The review demonstrated there is a rich history of long-span timber design in Australia, if anyone cares to look. The research exposes far more questions than it could have answered. The most intriguing is why these structures, so large and apparently successful, have been almost completely forgotten by Australia’s design professions and by the timber industry.
These successful timber structures have been, up until now, largely unknown and completely unstudied.
As it confronts another great opportunity, there is one lesson the industry must learn from this demonstration of past practice. It can no longer afford to lose the expertise it has developed.
