Ep 104 - Case Study: Mass Timber Innovation Hub at the University of Newcastle

Adam Jones (00:09): 

So thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Ali, can you start by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do? 

Ali Habibi (00:16): 

Yeah, so I'm Ali Habibi, I'm a structural engineer. Northrop, one of the principal and the shareholder of Northrop and also now I'm an operational leads for our nationally for a structural division. But at the same time, I love timber so that's why I'm one of the timber engineers at Northrop and leading a team that love to work on sustainable material and sustainable buildings. 

Adam Jones (00:44): 

Yes, and you're one of the many people, well not too many, but you do a good presentations and then you do one good presentation and all of a sudden you're on the speaker circuit doing all the conferences and eventually you come on the podcast. So that's usually how it works. 

Ali Habibi (00:58): 

I've been lucky enough to be honest, to be tap on the shoulder with someone like you to attend this. But yeah, I enjoy sharing the knowledge and also learning from others because in my opinion that's our responsibility to share our knowledge if you want to gain from others, I hope I try to do it. Hopefully, people will find it useful for that 

Adam Jones (01:21): 

Yeah, a hundred percent. So one of the major overarching topic we're speaking about today is the Mass Timber Innovation Hub at University of Newcastle. Can you describe just a little bit about this project and also leading into some of the drivers and maybe why timber was chosen for this project? 

Ali Habibi (01:38): 

Yeah, so this project was one of the interesting one because it is the first timber office and teaching space for University of Newcastle. University of Newcastle has a big sustainability aspiration as well to provide an elegant exposed structure, that's part of the brief. The university also wanted to have the project included the desire to create world-class sustainable facility that demonstrates a commitment to social, environmental and economic, economical leadership. So to be honest, that was a big things and help to put timber in place. This happened before we get on the job. It is like a, let's say forest story timber office teaching space, but it's similar to office, it's columns and beams, glulam columns and beams, and CLT slabs with beautiful facade. It was innovative facade and also there are other sustainability initiatives that put in place from other disciplines as well. 

Adam Jones (02:56): 

Yeah. What were some of the major challenges of this project? 

Ali Habibi (03:01): 

So in my opinion, this project is not different to any other timber projects. One of the big challenge is services coordination normally in a traditional way for any type of concrete or steel buildings. Even with timber, the consultant services consultant start the job. They finish at 70% documentation tender documentation, builder get involved as a DNC things and then they will select the services subcontractor late on the job. Unlock is concrete buildings that you could easily say okay, so all the services go under, I don't need to do anything with that. For timber services coordination is very important. Any penetration is into the beams or slabs need a certain detailing from a structural point of view. So that coordination was a key challenge but I always say any challenge come with opportunities. So we proactively come on to Beam 360 to do clash detection with the services team. 

(04:11): 

To be honest, a big credit to Hanson Yen who was the builder, that they were the lead and manage that clash detection and they did a great job but that was one of the big challenges. The other thing is lack in timber supply, we have different suppliers. In Australia, XLAM, we have, pretty good company also overseas we have number of different suppliers and unfortunately not all of them, they have the same sizes. Lack panelization is a big thing for example, for this job because instead of lack normally 2.2 meter with CLT panels we had to go to 1.25 for example CLT panel. Why it is a challenge because from earthquake point of view you need to have a kind of monolithic slabs to bring the loads back to the lateral stability system. So designing those panelization and come with the good ideas, not adding other lateral stability but also we achieved to delete two of those big bracing, which was a big saving for the university as well as the builder. 

(05:26): 

The other thing is program of fabrications, you know, like you know is unlike concrete building that you design it and the next day they go and they select number of different crews come to site, not the next day but like in a much shorter period of time you need to allow for, okay, so how much shop drawings will take then fabrication, then delivery, especially with this job come from Austria and other challenges. So you need to calculate backward and design in a way to be able to achieve those deadlines. So that's definitely is another challenge which we successfully with Hansen Yuncken and EJE as an architect and also the whole team we achieved to meet the deadline of the project. 

Adam Jones (06:12): 

I might drill down on one of the points you raise about different suppliers with different grades. But for a concrete building you can just specify concrete strength and forget about it. But for this specifying grades it sort of may or may not limit some of the supply chain, but at the same time you're trying to maintain the performance. I mean, how do you go about what grades to specify considering the flow on effects from you know, choices at the beginning of a project. 

Ali Habibi (06:40): 

Yeah, so that's a very good question. What we normally do for any design, we put two options in front of the client that it's a mean value for like let's say Australia's supply and overseas supply and we sell, like this is two options, this is pros and cons like here you could have a wider panel, longer panel from XLAM, but like elastic modulus is lower than what that you might pay a bit for thickness spot, you gain this and that and then they will go and check the price. We don't go based on one because if you go based on one then you need to do a lot of like coordination later, later on especially for office building. When you have a bigger span for residential, you don't have that problem that much because the span is small. It doesn't matter what elastic modulus you use for deflection. Sorry for any like a technical word that I'm using, I'm not sure that's everyone listening to this is a <laugh> is engineer. I try to avoid any jargon right in this spot. Yeah. 

 

 

Adam Jones (07:47): 

Yeah. That's so good. I'm, I'm also interested Ali, about the, what about, think back to the first time you did a post and beam building as an engineer. I'd imagine it might have taken a little while compared to, you know, where you do it now. Is it much quicker with the experience? Like say for other engineers who haven't done it, the first one might be intimidating, but once you do your first, is it much more straightforward or is it there still lots of challenges that just inevitably come up all the time? 

Ali Habibi (08:14): 

Definitely, like any other project, the experience help you a lot. Thinking a bit upfront about the problem and put it on the table is important. The good part of it that you could support other teams that they haven't done timber building. So for this project, I won't mention name, but they were certain consultant that they never done at timber buildings and we were trying to be helpful and go and say like, oh you think that you could need to think about these things, you know, and listen, learn, you learn from the previous projects, help you a lot especially if you are a good listener and listen to not only to your client but also to other trades, to installers and manufacturer and understand their limitations, you know, and even building services that I mentioned. Like, you get to know, like okay, this type of building, what sort of dock do you need to think about in advance before even they come where you roughly think the services will go. Definitely, that helped a lot and make the product much more efficient. Yeah. 

Adam Jones (09:27): 

It makes total sense. So for an engineer's perspective, what do you see as the role changing and what about more specifically the modeling and fabrication process, you know, from my previous experience, sometimes there can be a scope gap there and repetition of modeling and all that. So how do you see as the most best way of who handles that and the delivery of a model through to fabrication? 

Ali Habibi (09:52): 

I think this is definitely, I identify, I identified as a gap there. Like, people that they know about the term LOD 200, LOD 300, LOD 400, this level of detailing and design in let's say Revit and drawings. Unfortunately, people that new in timber, they think they could do the same level of detailing that they do for concrete. So oh, we draw our beams and columns, we get the details later on, this is not how timber works. So you need to think about how the connection works together upfront. You need to think about how the fire work in this scenario and design it. That's why you need to spend more upfront work compared to traditional way doing it. Then you get to the certain point. We normally for any jobs that we do, we actually, to be honest, from commercial point of view, two fee, two fee proposal in we say look, we will, this is our fee for do LOD 300, which we draw beams and columns but the connection will be in 2D format if you want LOD 400. 

(11:02): 

I think we are the only one that we offer at the moment in as a consultant obviously manufacturer, they do this to say like, we can do more in 3D, understand where the screws going. Is it going to have clash video because in 2D you cannot check that one. Basically, our model and drawing will be ready to immediately go for shop drawing. We've done one project here, we've done LOD 400 law school for Macquarie Uni, which we were engaged to do that actually we were in the four and that was a really good lesson-led understanding. You need to understand a lot from the supplier limitation and supplier to supplier might change so this is definitely a gap, but if a consultant educate themself in this space, you could offer some savings for the clients in terms of time, and also especially this time that many of the supplier are busy with lots of like a demand out there. You could help them as well to offer that, but that's definitely the biggest difference in concrete. Most of the time they ask us to use LOD 300, we will resolve the detailing later on. Here, that's a gap, you know, and even if you don't do it then you spend a lot of coordination time between you and supplier to answering their questions. Yeah, that's what we just recently started almost a year ago. We are offering that to our clients as well. 

Adam Jones (12:32): 

Yeah, that's fantastic. I can imagine that's a really valuable offering and for people new to this space might, you know, or I guess people with experience realize the value in what that is coming from an engineer handling that responsibility. I believe this project also had exposed timber. Can you just touch on the fire design and compliance? Yeah. For the project? 

Ali Habibi (12:56): 

Yeah. I think I will start with compliance. The first things that I found some people will get nervous about, oh, how it's going to work from compliance point of view. Fortunately, our BCA code and NCC allow us to do a performance solution and this performance solution is nothing new. We are still used in some areas for concrete buildings. This is no difference. It would be very hard for buildings like this office building with biggest span frame building to go deemed to satisfy. It's almost impossible unlike some of those low rise where see that you might do that. For performance solution, you are allowed to do different things and for these type of buildings we use Eurocode more often than Australian code. Hopefully Australian code get more input into that and becomes competitive with Eurocode. Not the only reason. The other reason, if you use spruce for example, materials being tested in Europe in that Eurocode, you'd better to use that here for example, we have one job which is a really good job advanced manufacturing research facilities that we use Australian supply and we are using Australian code but it's still, you need to go performance solution because it's not there. 

(14:17): 

That's the first things that I think everyone need to know, but it's not something new. As I said, you use that for a steel and concrete before in certain area. The other things from fire point of view, unlike concrete building, you said, okay, fire engineer, it's to you tell me what to, like, you don't even talk to them that often. For timber, we write the whole chapter for them. We always put the structural fire giving them to our fire engineers friends and we go and talk to them, understand their limitation and that for this building we wrote the whole chapter for fire engineering and I've done it. We've done it for any other projects as well and that's helped us also to understand how it works from fire engineering point of view. That's a key. You as a structural engineer, you cannot just leave it to fire engineer to do that because then you will be limited to what kind of connection you use or how your building works during fire. You need to learn from them how it works, but also put your input into that fire engineering report 

Adam Jones (15:29): 

So you do a bit of performance solutions, so design based on char rates. The reason I ask a question as simple as that, because I see there's maybe a belief out there that every single tiny thing needs to be fire tested and the FRL to turn by fire test and there's no room for engineers doing char rate design and working out the FRL that way. I mean what's your perspective on that? 

Ali Habibi (15:52): 

A hundred percent. I agree with you. I always say like, why you are not asking this question for concrete building. Have you ever put a big concrete building in fire and test how that specific element works? In my opinion, there has been enough work from, especially for glulam to give you a specific fire rating. What we normally do, we look at the overall picture, which is normally fire engineer does that, but we work collaboratively with them. Say, look, if this part of the timber will burn out, what will happen to a structure? Is it a still stands and get let the people to go out of the building before anyone get killed or had a serious damage? Some people will ask us like, oh, what will happen to this building after 90 minutes? Can you use it? I say, look, if you have 90 minutes fire in a concrete building, can you use it? 

(16:48): 

How much of it you can use it? If the whole thing is in is yes, concrete will spoil off, all your post-tension or steel will be exposed. Yes, you possibly could do, but you need to do a lot of rehabilitation, but if it is in a small little area in more opinion, timber is much easier because you could take one of the element out and replace it with new for post tensioned slab, it is very hard to do that. Saying it is the same challenge in my opinion, it's just educating people that this is not something that we take risks. There has been a lot of R&D, research and development project of, I've been engaged with Griffith University doing some work and testing with them with fire and few other research center to go, but we also, every day, not every day it's a lie, every week or month I read a new journal paper or any new things about the fire compliance of timber because you need to educate yourself. 

Adam Jones (17:54): 

Yeah, absolutely. That's such a refresher, refreshing perspective. What are some of the challenges on this project and more generally that you think, you know, isn't that lessons learned category or things that are still a challenge right now that need to be still worked upon? 

Ali Habibi (18:11): 

Yes. I think the first thing for me is lesson learned is listen, listen, listen. If you want to get better a timber building, listen to installer, listen to builder, listen to manufacturers. Sometimes some of their feedback might not be very pleasant for you, but you'll use it for the next job and try to work collaboratively. You cannot say, oh, this is another trade I don't care about that. You need to see, okay, I designed this, it works on paper. Can installer go and put his hands down there to put this screw in or this bolt in? If not, how could I change the design in a way because unlike concrete buildings, there are not many rooms for installer to put the team because everything comes with CNC machines, in fraction of millimeters perfect connecting together, so you need to think it of a, let's say IKEA, how mad it will be that you buy something from IKEA but you couldn't fix the connection together. That's one thing and also from builder point of view in terms of timing, understanding of cost implications for any changes, you go through it and when to put things on, in my opinion, that's a big lesson learned and the other things is what we did and we learned sending people in to Europe to manufacturing facility for a couple of weeks and that's and go and see other facilities to learn all those hands-on experience that you cannot learn it in the office and reading books. In my opinion. That's been very helpful for us. 

Adam Jones (20:04): 

Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Well, it's been phenomenal. Speaking to Ali, one of my final questions, few is how do you see the future of mass timber construction evolving and where is it going to go in the next five, 10 years and beyond? 

Ali Habibi (20:17): 

Yeah. Exciting news for Australia is Brisbane Olympic in 2032 is the first Olympic. That's the aspiration is to have negative carbon footprint. That means a lot of good news for timber industry and sustainability in general for Australia, so I think we could make a lot of help in this space to bringing some of those timber project in line. We've already done one a stadium, Eric Tweedale Stadium, that we won, all possible timber award last year, but that was a smaller scale. We can do bigger in that sport facilities, but as I said, there is lots of other buildings around that you could bring timber as one of those good factors to go negative carbon footprint, but in my opinion, one of the areas that I'm really keen to do and we doing with some other builders and developer is hybrid system. In my opinion. We need to know there is limitation for any material. 

(21:21): 

Timber has certain limitation. Timber is not the prescriptive solution for everything, so we need to understand the limitation and try to come up with number of hybrid systems, steel and timber. Concrete and timber. We are doing one job at the moment. We've finished one job and we are doing another jobs that it is hybrid system. Get the best out of each material is the future in my opinion and learn about, like okay, so where timber works the best, where other material works the best, not go head to head with other trades, let's work collaboratively each can get the share of the market and also get the future of the world. You know, like, Think about the future of our world for our children. 

Adam Jones (22:08): 

That's so good. What a good note to end on. It's been great speaking to you, Ali. If people want to find out more about yourself or Northrop or anything you want the listeners to go and check out, where should they go? 

Ali Habibi (22:20): 

We have a good website, but it's LinkedIn is one of the things that we normally try to be active as a company, go through it, but if anyone wants to talk to me, I'm happy to put my email address and mobile phone out there. 

Adam Jones (22:36): 

Ooh, that's a mobile phone. That's unusual. That's a good one. No, it's generous. 

Ali Habibi (22:43): 

Yeah, Normally it's good to help others because you will get some help later on, so I'm happy to help anyone, normally has question. It is because it's for good cause in my opinion. We need me and you and many others that active in timber space. We need to be advocate for this beautiful material out there. 

Adam Jones (23:04): 

What a great note to end on. Thanks so much, Ali. We'll leave it there. 

Ali Habibi (23:07): Cheers, mate. Thank you. 

Adam Jones (23:08): Cheers 

Ali Habibi (23:08): Bye.