Ep 130 - Keys to successful mass timber delivery

Adam Jones (00:00):

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

Andy Knight (00:23):

Yeah, good day Adam. We are Brother Nature. My name is Andy. I'm the construction manager here. My sister and I started our construction or design and build business. Not really focused in the mass timber industry straight away, but we quickly went searching for something that really set us aside from other builders and designers and yeah, that's where we landed.

Adam Jones (00:52):

Amazing. So yeah. So what led you to go into the mass timber space? I mean you could have done anything, but it seems you've doubled down here and tell us a little bit about what happened there and made you go this direction.

Andy Knight (01:06):

Yeah, I think it came naturally from curiosity, how do we build better? I was luckily enough surrounded by an amazing bunch of peers that all have similar curiosities I suppose. We're always looking at things, why do we do it like this? And often sitting around a table having a beer and solving the problems of the world and just through different people telling us to, why don't you have a look at this? Looking at different methodologies, different products. We sort of one evening landed on mass timber and realistically we were just like, wow, how cool is this? And straight away as a, definitely not an engineer, but understand engineering. We just saw these huge benefits and possibilities and that really started our journey to absolutely launch into this thing. And once we started to understand how good it was and the results of how good it was sustainably and structurally and all of those things, the rabbit hole was well and truly opened. And yeah, we've found it very difficult to turn around since then. It's, it's been heaps of fun. Everybody that is involved in and around Brother Nature has drank the Kool-Aid and everyone is so in for mass timber to the point where they're all doing their own research and bringing things to the table to us. And as a business owner, that's exactly what you want. You really want your people to be passionate about what they're doing and that Mass Timber gives everyone that opportunity.

Adam Jones (03:02):

That's amazing. And how long ago was your first Mass Timber project and maybe just, yeah, what was that?

Andy Knight (03:09):

Sorry, you just broke up there.

Adam Jones (03:11):

When was your first Mass timber project and what was the scars? Is there any sort of things you look back then and you're like, oh God, if that was, because there's obviously that road of naivety you start with. Tell us a bit about that.

Andy Knight (03:27):

Yeah, the road of naivety is absolutely real. I suppose that was back in, we'd been searching for, like I said earlier of what we could actually do. We were looking at sips and all those types of things. There was a few different builders around the place, and this was around 2020 2021, probably even earlier actually. We were looking at these things. We were designing our own developments, but once we'd done enough research and put ourselves in a place where we were confident enough to go, look, we really want to deliver one of these projects, we started shopping it to different clients. It was pretty difficult. I'm not going to lie at the beginning to get a mass timber project going just because I feel like it was a little bit unknown and we absolutely believed in it, but when the consumer's spending their post-tax money, it's a very different decision that they're making.

(04:26):

But we did, we found a client that entrusted us that was really good with it. He could also see the opportunities actually and away we went. We really wanted to build something small. We are a reasonably small builder, small turnover residential, mainly residential small commercial buildings, but it actually happened to be one of our biggest projects ever to start things off, which we couldn't knock a gift horse in the mouth there. We had to take the project and everybody around it was super excited. So we did. And that was eight townhouses on a crazy steep block in regional New South Wales, little town called Dervin,

Adam Jones (05:13):

Dervin Hay. There's a bit going on in Dervin these days, isn't it? A little town, but there's a few projects. Were you part of the other projects there? I think there was a library, was that or maybe not.

Andy Knight (05:24):

No, yep. There was absolutely a library that was the second mass timber building in Ong after Kalama, which is our townhouses. It was really great to see that actually we'd just finished our townhouses and then one of the big boy builders came to town and put one up right in the middle of town, which was really just sort of solidified what we were doing was great and new and to see one of the big contractors come to town and do the same thing.

Adam Jones (05:56):

That's amazing. And so we're going to talk about the new processes you've established and things like that, but looking back to those first projects, what were some of the early learnings or some of the things that you wish you knew before you started that first project that today that's something, a message for anyone who's just starting on their journey, I guess?

Andy Knight (06:19):

Yeah, absolutely. I think the main one, I'm going to put my carpenter's hat on here, just because being our first project, there was only one way that I think it was the right way to deliver it was actually putting strapping on my nail bag that only just still fit and delivering it with my site team myself. So really being involved in the project from the absolute beginning, we thought that we had procured quite well. Nowadays, looking back, it's like our procurement is 100% crucial in every single thing we do, but I suppose I'll go back to putting my carpenter's hat on there. And it's trusting the structure we say to clients often and architects and not lots of people who talk to us about these types of buildings, think about the building like a piece of furniture and it's just much bigger and it's coming through the same machinery as a piece of furniture wheel.

(07:18):

So it is a very, very accurate, precise way of being able to construct a structure. Now on the first project, it was a 50 meter long project, the eight townhouses with a three degree display in between them all, which added a little bit of complexity, but I had my allowances and tolerances the same that you do as a stick frame builder and feeling around it. And then I got caught and was my tolerances had grown and I really just needed to absolutely trust the structure. And I learned that lesson pretty quickly and got it in line and in the end over a 50 meter long building with seven party walls throughout the middle of it, we had a growth in the structure of six millimeters. So that to me is absolutely phenomenal, so accurate. There's very often there's no way you'd get that in standard generic construction.

(08:27):

And that was one of the big lessons for me. It really showed me you really need to trust the structure in these things and understand that that can become part of your processes. And that's amazing because that effectively de-skill the structure. So it's not saying that we need to do that, but it really does take a little bit of responsibility off the installers. All they're really worrying about has been level true plumb and square and the nature of the CLT panels does a lot of that for them. So I suppose the other one is we always say the hardest part about A CLT building is the concrete. So it's just really making sure that that is perfect along the way. And we did a really good job on it and the brickwork and the concrete was very close, but that can really throw out things dramatically if you do have an issue, there's always things you can be nimble on site and fix, but they're not things that you want happening while crane's swinging in the sky.

Adam Jones (09:45):

So given you've specialized in this space, there might be a slightly different role to traditional projects, whether traditional say class one or bigger commercial stuff. How are you set up on projects? Are you the contractor and how do you work with the installers and design teams and suppliers? So where do you sit basically and maybe can after that we can start chatting about what are the things that you try and drive from the start basically?

Andy Knight (10:13):

Yeah, sure. So there's a couple of ways to answer that. We are a design and build company, so we can take your idea. We have a full design team. We are registered architects, we are passive house certified. We can take it from the very inception all the way through to delivery and then help you monitor that building post-construction. We can also take on and we do, we are working with a couple of architects at the moment, other architects outside of our firm. We are currently workshopping a passive house design or whoever, wherever they want to come in. We're also working on a class three, sort of like a hotel at the moment, which came to us as a concrete and brick structure that it is in the alpine area. So it really suited mass timber. We went and we went to all the suppliers out there and we took the structure, we took the design that we already had and we started shopping it around and we went, look, this building really deserves to be mass timber.

(11:23):

It was going to be a much better building if it was. And it definitely had its challenges that we had to work through with all the suppliers and the engineers and the architects had never actually delivered a mass timber building before, so we had to jump in there and really help them and take them on this ride, which sometimes it's kicking and screaming and sometimes it's, yep, we want to be as, absolutely, we're on board here. But I think where we are now, especially with the class three building, is we got it to a point where we're about to, our CC should be dropping today or the day after actually to get started on that. Now that's a huge effort from architect who's never done it, especially with all the compliance, the new compliance regulation with design practitioners. And it's hats off to my project management team who have been able to steer the ship there for them and really drive it because we believe in it so much and they drank the Kool-Aid long ago, those guys. So they're deep and we really do see it as a better way to build, not the only way to build, but it's a better way for the structures that we are building. I think there's opportunity out there for all sorts of different types of hybrid structures and all that kind of stuff.

(12:54):

But yeah, we can fit in for anywhere on that timeline. Sometimes when we are jumping in late, it makes it a little bit harder just because there's things that we have to think about or there's different types of, the engineering's not as good or it's harder to do, harder to achieve spans, harder to get fire rating, harder to get acoustic because it hasn't been thought about from the beginning. But often, especially now with there's lots of really cool consultants, fire consultants, acoustic consultants, really focusing on mass timber. The results are speaking for themselves and in the next two to three years, I think there's going to be some pretty fancy little structures come out of our industry that everyone's going to be pretty proud of.

Adam Jones (13:45):

Yeah, I thought you were going to say fancy structures coming out of the woodwork. That would've been a nice pun intended, but it's, I've

Andy Knight (13:53):

Lost you there, mate.

Adam Jones (13:54):

Oh, that's great. I just gave us a C grade joke basically, which didn't really land when the internet is unstable.

Andy Knight (14:04):

Yeah, I missed a lot. Stop me starting.

Adam Jones (14:08):

Yeah, you're coming through perfect on your side. That's the main thing for the recording. But yeah, so you mentioned design being important at the very start of projects. What are the other things you are thinking about at the very start? If you come in and you're early enough, you've touched on procurement, so maybe you can elaborate on that or same with the install, just general things like this to make the project go smoothly as possible.

Andy Knight (14:38):

So I think I've got where you're going there. I suppose procurement for us, we often say procurement, procurement, procurement because it's been prepared, we can so much in the space of solving problems before it gets to site. We're trying to take away as much responsibility from that site team. They've got enough going on as that we can, A huge thing for us is we build one in 100 models of all of our structures. Now moving forward, what that does, lots of people's brains work differently. Mine works in a tangible model, something I can hold. And what we can do is you can see where you encounter issues with structure or encounter issues with anything really. Once you have that model and you can play with it with your hands and put it in a landscape and you can start looking at, oh, we're going to have excavation issues here or anything like that.

(15:41):

And it really allows the consultants to get around it as well and go, oh, I didn't realize that door was there. I didn't realize that egress was like that for a really low because I make them myself out of MDF or whatever we do. And when you're building it with your hands like that, you learn so much about a structure. Architects possibly able to have that feeling by drawing it in 3D, but me as a builder and my team really like to build those little models and go through them and then that helps. Again, that's something we do really, really early on. So then we can start our systems with, okay, what's next? We get into our program of procurement, procurement, procurement. So it's okay, so we have our structure, let's start looking at Australian standards and all of those, depending on the class of the building, all of what are the requirements for wall sandwiches?

(16:44):

Is it passive house, is it not? Where does our windows sit? And then the beautiful thing about a mass timber structure is that we can order almost everything when we order our structure. It's so accurate. And again, it comes back to the initial thing that I said is trusting your structure, that you can order your windows, you can order your joinery because you know that your structure is plus or minus two mil. So what that does to, let's just talk the program for a job on site, it is, it's massive. It's instead of putting your stick frames up and then measuring your windows and getting them, get another 12 weeks before your windows arrive, that's no longer the case. So you can put a system in place that just gives you a procurement and an ordering schedule so that everything can just lob up on site. The boys always say, we are better off looking at it than for it, so we know exactly where things are and that's with everything. And that's a huge benefit to the whole project getting started early, early procurement.

Adam Jones (17:53):

I love that the mockups. And what have you learned with working with the supply chain? I mean there's always that question mark on competitive tension and when's the right time and all that sort of stuff. So how do you feel, what's the best way of working with supply chain, basically, from your perspective?

Andy Knight (18:11):

Yeah, look, I think the supply chain, everyone's reasonably competitive. It's great that we're just talking about the structure here. I suppose it's great that next timber are coming on board. xla have been phenomenal to us throughout getting us up to speed and teaching us what needs to happen because it's a process that builders aren't used to. So it is good to learn all of that. And there's the international guys as well, the Biers boys are all good, and I think it really does, we have to go to competitive tender anyway, and often it's the case of who is able to deliver the service and what type of service are we looking for. And then dependent on whether it's the client or the architect making the decision as to how they want to operate, that's sort of where we land and we just guide everyone's good, Adam, they're all good products. So it really finds, it's very, I suppose, project specific as to who we land with. 

Adam Jones (19:21):

That's awesome. And so you've got projects when you do your mockup, what is the variation in installation speeds and overall, and is that a big thing? Does it actually, for smaller projects, is it a big deal compared to bigger projects? I mean installation speeds, it's one of the selling points is it's faster and you reduce your cost that way and all that sort of stuff. Do you get that variation and is that a true thing?

Andy Knight (19:49):

Yeah, absolutely. Complexity on anything small panels they can definitely affect. It takes the same amount of time to lift a small panel as it does to lift a giant panel. So understanding that and thinking about it, Ukraine movements is one of the biggest components of your procurement understanding exactly how you want that to work. And it's not necessarily the be all and end all, but you want to be as efficient as possible because the crane costs dollars. We work with mainly one crane company and the guys absolutely love it because it's light. It's a really real achievement at the end of the day for those guys, they really happy about, happy with using the product, it's easy to lift. So I think getting those crane times down as tight as possible is the ultimate goal. But I don't think it is be all and end all. It's easier to build a box than a circle or a sphere. So complexity definitely comes into it, but that's all part and parcel of the project as well. When we get a project, we look at it and say, okay, well when we're helping or talking with the supplier about panelization and that efficiency, it's definitely one of the major questions that's talked about.

Adam Jones (21:16):

Yeah, that's awesome. We've covered a lot of ground of what are the keys to successful project delivery, but I mean I might ask you just at the broadest possible point of view, and we can go back over the same ground we've covered if you like, but what is the keys to a successful project at the high level?

Andy Knight (21:37):

Yeah, for me, the number one success is a happy client at the end of it, with a great operating building, now we see the CLC structures as a real quality product and often it gets talked about in the sustainability space, but in my eyes and the way that Brother Nature looks at it, we look at sustainability being a byproduct of quality. So selling sustainability is a very difficult business to be in because often the first thing that is removed from a project when a budget is squeezed, now budgets get squeezed for any number of reasons. So if that sustainability is a byproduct of just the actual structure, which is a better alternative to something else anyway, it's a successful project. So number one is getting mass timber on board for that project. Secondly, for the fast efficient delivery, again, procurement, procurement, procurement, everything we do is planned, precise and executed as per that plan.

(22:52):

Training of all of our staff and making sure that their training is up to date is crucial on their ITPs. They need to know what they're working with, they need to know what happens if this happens often. As soon as a builder pulls a roof off, it'll rain for a month. It's just the way it is. So we need to have procedures in place and that comes from the top down as to how the boys on site can react fast to make sure that that doesn't become an issue later. Moisture management plans, all of that stuff that needs to be thought about and then transfer down the line to the guys with getting their hands dirty to be able to execute that stuff and make sure that that's a success there. So successes really do begin from the absolute inception of it, from the design of it, and we take all of those little wins along the way and celebrate those little wins often with a beer after work. And then at the end, the client is left with a fantastically, beautifully built, highly performing house or building, and it is no different to any other construction method as well as, but it did happen a lot quicker.

(24:12):

So all of those things, when we stack that, all of those things together, it really is what we see as a no-brainer because we're faster, better, better to live in, better acoustically and just you hit all of those goals and it's a real success.

Adam Jones (24:35):

Yep. That's amazing. And what do you see as the future of timber construction? Andy, if you look at where we are now, the progress, the trajectory, how the industry is evolving, where do you see things heading in the next five to 10 years?

Andy Knight (24:51):

Well, hopefully it means bringing it into a much more mainstream

(24:56):

Now industry is all over timber. Everybody at industry events loves it. Everyone wants to talk to the timber guys. It's the cool kid on the block at the moment, which is fun. But we need a huge amount of education that needs to go to the consumer. People are still unawares of what their houses or houses and buildings in general made up of. The education of the consumer is really where it's going to help it grow. And once we get that right and we are working on things for that, I believe it'll sell itself, which is exciting. I think there's some really cool projects out there. I often see them popping up and there's some great minds in our industry working on it, and that's just super exciting. Love seeing all of the new guys popping up and these new ways of doing things with timber. And I know that lots of people are doing some really cool work with the engineering in the timber and stuff like that. And yeah, I just see it being much more in the five to 10. I think it's going to become much more mainstream, hopefully gets into that, I suppose, volume build space. I'd really like to see that.

(26:21):

Yeah, I feel like there's just so much. There's so far for it to go.

Adam Jones (26:27):

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Just the start, it's been amazing chatting to you, Andy. If people want to find out more about you and Brother Nature, where should they go and what sort of projects and problems to prompting people if they're at what stage and should they get in touch basically?

Andy Knight (26:47):

Yeah, look, the sooner the better to get in touch. You can easily access me via LinkedIn or via our website brothernature.net.au. Have a look through our pages there. There's a few of our projects on there, and there's a great tab about philosophy and some of the projects that we've, there's just some chat around the things that we're looking at and trying to improve and get in touch as soon as possible. The sooner the better for us because we can start helping you sooner rather than later. You don't want to go too far down the line before you think, oh, timber would be a great option here, and we'll hope endeavor to help you as best we can.

Adam Jones (27:38):

Thanks so much, mate. That was awesome. I'll leave the podcast there. Cheers, man.

Andy Knight (27:42):

Cool. Thanks mate.