The timber preservation industry in Australia is built on a paradox. We offer decades of performance with preservation treatments that protect wood from decay and insects. Yet, our research and development cycles are often tied to funding periods ranging from one to ten years.
Whilst current treatments deliver decades of performance, we don’t have the detailed data to model the effects of various combinations of preservative formulation, penetration pattern, preservative concentration, and exposure conditions such as climate, geographic location, and microenvironment on performance.
As an industry, we face an important challenge: traditional funding models are poorly equipped to support the very thing that defines our value proposition – long-term durability.
The Durability Dilemma
Determining the true reliability in wood preservation needs time that today’s market doesn’t provide. While accelerated testing may provide data in roughly 5 to 10 years, definitive proof of preservative performance only emerges after 20, 30, or even 40 years of exposure to real-world biological and environmental conditions, and our durability standards expect 50 years of service life from preservative-treated timber.
It is difficult for companies to invest in research that won’t yield a return on investment for a generation. Similarly, non-commercial bodies are often forced to chase “short-term wins” to secure recurring funding. This has created a major gap in our collective knowledge, particularly as climate change shifts the geographic boundaries of wood-destroying organisms.
The Missing Link: Engineering Modelling
Beyond simple product validation, there is a need for high-fidelity data to refine the variables in service-life equations.
Modern structural engineering is moving toward performance-based design, where the service life of a component is calculated using complex predictive models. To paraphrase the infamous George Box, “all models are inherently wrong because they make assumptions, but some models are useful.”
The CSIRO service life prediction models developed by Dr Robert Leicester and his group over 20 years ago are an excellent example. They were developed using a combination of limited field data and expert opinion. Unfortunately, these models have shown limited improvement, mainly due to a lack of additional performance data. Only a dedicated, multi-decade research program can provide the gritty data needed to build service life models, ensuring timber remains a trusted primary engineering product.
Reliable models need good data that represents as much of the material life cycle as possible. The lack of long-term exposure data forces engineers to use high factors of safety or conservative assumptions that can make it harder for timber to compete with steel or concrete. These types of data are difficult to develop on a typical 2 to 3-year project cycle.
Introducing a Timber Preservation Fellowship Fund
To bridge this gap, the Timber Preservers’ Association of Australia proposes establishing a dedicated Timber Preservation Fellowship Fund. This is a strategic, industry-led endowment designed to outlast any single budget or political cycle.
How it Might Work
- Industry Contribution: A micro-levy or voluntary annual contribution from timber preservers, chemical suppliers, forestry, the Government, and interested stakeholders.
- Perpetual Stewardship: The fund would be structured as an endowment. The principal is protected, and the interest funds longitudinal data collection and long-term studies.
- A Fellowship Model: Instead of short-term contracts, the fund would support Research Fellows – dedicated scientists or institutions whose career mission includes/involves decades-long durability research.
This is the ‘early days’, and the legalities and governance would obviously need to be developed.
Why Start Now
By de-risking long-term research, the industry ensures its future relevance. We cannot wait until current preservatives face sudden regulatory shifts or unforeseen failures. A Timber Preservation Fellowship Fund would provide the capital needed to:
- Validate New Technologies: Provide decades-long datasets to inform building designers and engineers.
- Power Predictive Modelling: Supply the evidence needed for advanced engineering software and building codes.
- Target climatic Zones: Currently, there is a single national specification for preservative treatment, regardless of whether the product is used in the tropics or at the southern tip of Australia. Only data will tell us if we can dial back preservation levels or, just as importantly, increase them.
- Climate Resilience: Track how changing moisture and temperature profiles over 40-plus years will affect treatment performance.
- Institutional Memory: Ensure that the expertise held today is not lost when the current generation of wood scientists retires.
A Legacy of Stability
Investing in this fellowship would be an act of industry stewardship. It transforms wood preservation from relatively short-term experiments into a proactive, scientific legacy. By contributing today, we ensure that in 2065 the timber industry still has the data, talent, and credibility to prove that wood remains the world’s most durable, sustainable building material.
I would like to see a foundation that grows as slowly and as surely as the timber we protect.
