Ep 147 - Past and future of timber construction and Goodbye from Adam

Adam Jones (00:46):

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks so much for coming on the podcast, Alastair, the very final episode we're going to have on this. And I started the podcast when I was working for you, so we've got a history, but can you start by telling us a little bit about who you are and what you do and your background?

Alastair Woodard (01:03):

Yeah, thanks Adam. And it's a real honor to be on this last one of yours. You've done a fantastic job with all the timber talks. Yeah, look, I've been around a while, so back as a consulting structural engineer, prior to joining the timber industry, we used to do a lot of work in timber. So the person I used to work for, Trevor Huggin Associates, who was an ex Lord mayor of Melbourne, he did a lot of work on historic buildings. So we did a whole range of sort of buildings built originally in Melbourne, sort of tall buildings actually with a lot of timber in them, which is great to see. But yeah, I mean there were a couple of projects in particular, we did the refurbishment of the Princess Theater when David Mariner took it over to get that done and in a really short timeframe and some really sort of interesting timber work within that sort of area.

(01:50):

So that historic building stuff always gave me an interest. And then at the end of the eighties when the building market took a little bit of a downturn, I went back to Monash Uni to do a master's with the Monash Timber Engineering Center and extended that ad into a PhD looking at nailed moment Gusted connections and plywood with box, been portal frames, a big topic I know, but a good practical PhD. And during that time I used to, back then as a sort of an educator and doing lecturers, the lectures and things, I used to give the timber industry a bit of a hard time. They didn't do anything for people teaching timber. And so in fact, they headhunted me out Monash where I was finishing my PhD to join the Timber Promotion Council to set up education programs for the timber industry. And we started doing that initially in Victoria, focused on both the unis and the TAFE.

(02:44):

And after 12 months it was such a successful program in Victoria, it got picked up by the old FWPA at the time and turned into a national program and I sort of did that full time for probably three or four years. I'm really proud to say that program still runs at the moment. So yeah, that's probably almost 30 years ago now. So it's a program that they're still supporting, perhaps not at the level they used to or they need to. But yeah, definitely an important role to do. And then from that point on, I stayed with the Timber Promotion Council, became its general manager and then its executive director till the shutdown in 2005 when I set up my own business with Boris as a business partner, TPC Solutions. And we do work still for pretty much the timber sector. So we do a lot of what I like to call sort of technical promotional work.

(03:35):

So Boris and I are both engineers. We have a good understanding of timber and its use and what we do for the industry from an association sense is we are always looking over the horizon. So industry companies are all about fixed on products. What's happening next month in six months’ time next year, that's what they need to be doing. What we do is look at what's coming up in 12 months’ time, what's coming up in two years, is there an issue, is there an opportunity? And really tackle those sort of things. So fix the issues early before they come real issues, and then help them with the opportunities. But what things can we be doing bit like midrise or something like that. We can chat about different things. But yeah, understanding what the potential is doing whatever r and d is required, coordinating standards and codes, change work, and then doing that sort of specification out to the building professionals that will develop up that market and helping industry at the same time. So yeah, I suppose over my career, a long sort of history with Timber, it is such a fantastic material.

Adam Jones (04:39):

Yeah, a hundred percent. So it's been 30 years and you've seen a lot of things over that time make change. So what has been the driving forces over your career and has it been a constant thing or has it been changing with each generation, so to speak?

Alastair Woodard (04:56):

Yeah, no, no, good question. And 30 years is a long time. I've seen lots of different things happening in different decades, which is interesting, but you'd have to sort of say even over that full period, the driving forces have been really that thought about how industry value adds and how it improves its material performance. And that probably almost starts from when I first joined the Timber Motion Council back in the late nineties, and we did a lot of green saw timber back then. All our houses were just built out of fun season wood. And the big push then was to dry our product to move to kiln dried timber where we actually obviously get a better performance once we do that.

(05:39):

And over that period, it's really been interesting sort of seeing that change around the development and availability of new engineered wood products. Then that's definitely what the future's all about. As it started back then, I mean products like Glue Lam have been around for a hundred years to some degree, but only this last few decades we've really sort of seen them significantly be produced with high performing glues and different types of species. I always sort of amusingly and others of my age will reflect back on this as well, that back in the eighties here in Australia, we developed a product called Scriba that was the old South, a Australian timber corporation at the time. But Rimer was all about taking the fiber in wood and just crushing it up all the branches and everything and then gluing it back together. This really sort of granulated fiber product and did all the r and d, all the market development work showed just what a great product it could be, but really there was no demand for it here in Australia. We couldn't commercialize it. It was like almost too good a product. And typically as happens in Australia, that technology went off overseas, went off to the us and today it's one of their biggest engineered wood products that they market over there as para lamb. We don't see a lot of these big fiber products

Adam Jones (06:54):

Started here and it's gone off.

Alastair Woodard (06:56):

Yeah, yeah, crazy. Yeah, and I guess in terms of some of those more recent changes in engineered wood products, certainly the sort of advent of cross laminated timber and as we've seen that come into the market over the last 10 years or so, that's really changing the way building professionals are now looking at timber and how that's valued and where it can be used. And at the same time as we've developed some of those mid-rise markets potentially opened up opportunities for lightweight timber framing systems in some applications they wouldn't have previously been in. So yeah, it's been some really interesting changes historically over the past 30 years as industry's developed.

Adam Jones (07:42):

And in your role, you've been, as you said, been looking over the horizon, what's coming and then adding, doing some initiatives to unlock the value, what's coming, what are some of the industry initiatives over that time that have actually moved the needle forward and have improved the industry?

Alastair Woodard (08:00):

Yeah, look, there's been a couple of things just reflecting on this conversation. I guess the things that I've been personally involved with and feel have been quite integrally active and seeing them successful. I did mention right at the start that 1995 we first set up the tertiary education program with unis and TAFEs. So with unis, particularly engineering architecture and building courses and the TAFEs as a whole range of different courses from carpentry right up to building, surveying and a whole range in between. But back then the timber sector wasn't doing anything with tertiary education and we approached them about what their needs were, understood what resources they needed. And over that period developed up some really good specific timber resources for engineers, architects, builders, carpenters, which then they had access to. And particularly important as we know with engineering courses, timber often get a good look in generally a core engineering course, steel and concrete, they all do.

(09:00):

Timber might be an elective, it might not be sort of carried at all but look over that period we've definitely been able to get some more penetration into those unis, but it's something you've got to be active in all the time. And as I say, hopefully that education program continues on beyond me retiring. It's been going almost 30 years. Hopefully it goes for another 30 years. Another really interesting one reflecting on that question was some work we did actually, not structural this time, but around appearance products, some work we did back in the mid-nineties around natural feature. So that concept was back then with our hardwood appearance products. Industry thought that what the architects and consumers wanted was what we'd call select grade wood. So it was basically a flooring and furniture that had no feature in it. So it was like sometimes it almost looked like it could have been plastic because it all looked exactly the same.

(09:55):

And we were going, this is crazy, only about 5% of the trees in the forest are select grade. What you are treating with feature is just a downgrade should be as valued as highly as the select grade would. And so we worked with the furniture sector in particular to get really gnarly bits of wood with big knots in it and big sort of gum, veins and pinhole. And they made furniture out of it, which was absolutely stunning and beautiful. The consumers just loved it. And we would go back to our industry who thought that was waste and go, this is the stuff, the furniture sector, once it took probably five or six years to convince our own industry that what they saw as low-grade wood actually hit a really high grade value. And so we changed the codes to get rid of select standard merchant grade to get select medium feature and natural feature and started to really promote that as it sort of something of high value and then it moved into the flooring sector.

(10:48):

So today you get all sorts of flooring products with lots of levels of different feature in it. So to really sort of reflect back on that was a bit of a hard challenge with industry to change the way they looked at things, but was a much better use of actual, our resource opened up probably 80, 90% of the resource to new high value opportunities. So that was a good one on the appearance side. And I'd have to say, I think the work that we've been doing supporting wood solutions, which is that sort of industry-based program out there, providing information to building professionals to make sure they use and specify the work properly. I mean what we've been involved with that since that program got up and going in 2009, so that's almost 15 years we've been active doing different things for that. And that's now a really well-known brand out in the marketplace that building professionals really value, sort of really proud of the work that happened there.

(11:44):

I mean actually as part of wood solutions. And another thing which I reflect back on with a lot of pride is the work we in 2014 around floor cassettes. So back then, but we couldn't understand why in the residential framing sector that builders particularly on things like sloping sites and flood prone zones, thought a concrete slab built in the ground was a good idea like on sloping sites at just a huge cost to flatten the site and all the issues that come with it. Obviously in a flood prone zone, you'd want to be building above the flood levels, but we couldn't work out why the builders were shifting over to concrete slabs and they simply made it clear it was an easier system to do one contract, really simple to do it with the concrete guys, they could screw 'em around on price a bit.

(12:34):

It was one contract. So it suited the builders. And they said to us, if you want to actually start to get some of that ground floor market again, you've got to offer what the concrete slab guys offer. And that's a working surface on a site on a specific date for a specific cost one contract supply and install. So we actually went back to the frame and truss sector and worked up the concept of a floor cassette. So something that would fit on the back of a truck might be three meters wide, 12 meters long, something that's really quite simple to come out to install. And we worked with a few of the frame and truss guys to offer the design and the installation and that really sort of started to take off at the time, but industry didn't really pursue that ground floor market because other opportunities came up.

(13:18):

So that's interesting that those floor cassettes we developed for the ground floor market have really taken off now for upper story floors in things like compartments where you're getting a lot of repetition or townhouses, things like that, we're still to go back and sort of grab back that ground floor share market on sloping sites and flood pro zones. So I hope we do that as an industry. It just is a better solution. But definitely floor cassettes are now commonplace, everybody does use them. So yeah, I reflect back on that one being a really positive thing. And then obviously the midrise market development back in 2016 where we put together the program to do a pilot study of that and start to develop up the market in Victoria. And for a period there, we had a really solid mid-rise team on board, which I think you were part of for a while, which really did a fantastic job taking the market from pretty much zero knowledge on how you do this stuff to educating up building professionals and our own industry about building mid-rise buildings, whether they're lightweight or mass.

(14:25):

And that market just is going to continue to take off going forward. So yeah, it's been a few of those things in the past, which I'm really proud of. And just at the moment, you're probably aware we're bringing industry together around a new, what we're calling the Future framing collaborative. So we want to bring anyone that has an interest in lightweights, low rise residential construction. So up to about three stories together within a a program where if you have expertise or interest that this is where you come together to really understand and develop the market. And there's some specific code change work that we need to get done. We need to be bringing out some good practical systems solutions also to counter some of the work that the lightweight still framing sector is active in at the moment. So I'm really sort of pleased to say that the industry's coming in behind that one and hopefully that'll really take off over the next couple of years. So yeah, each decade seems to have thrown up something a little bit different, but sort of looking back on it in hindsight, some really valuable sort of work done for industry. Yeah,

Adam Jones (15:31):

A hundred percent. And I feel like when you eventually retire, you probably won't, to be honest, I think you're talking about it, but knowing who you are, but I feel like there will be a lot of us taking it for granted some of the initiatives that are out there. And I think I've had some people in our podcast, so we've got people in our generation, but do you think there's a gap? There seem to be, I don't know, a missing gap or something right to hand the button over. It's actually great for people our age. You do get big opportunities in big timber companies, right? But yeah, what are your thoughts on that?

Alastair Woodard (16:08):

Yeah, no, you're right on the money. When I joined the industry, so when I came out of Monash back in the mid-nineties and joined the Timber Promotion Council, I reckon there was about 80 technical people just doing generic technical work. So whether they were in the state associations like the TPC, and each state had a similar association, the Timber Promotion Council had about 15 staff just working on technical promotional work. And there was the same in New South Wales, Queensland, there were organizations in Tassie, south Australia, Western Australia, we had a whole heap of people within C-S-I-R-O doing this type of work. So I reckon we had about 80 people just doing national technical representation today. We would've four or five. So we almost lost two generations. Industry really just hasn't supported that growth. And as part of this future framing collaborative, where the key element of that one is about technical capacity building.

(17:01):

So industry has understood that we need to start bringing in the new generations. We need to have a framework there where people can see that they can come into this and have a career path. There needs to be something solid they can come into like they used to. And what we really need to be doing is is getting people in their twenties, people in their thirties and their forties and their fifties, and then old people like me in their sixties that can pass on the knowledge and we need a sort of clear ability to build off one another, learn from the different generations and be able to tackle these technical issues for industry. Because at the moment, that's all gone. I mean, there's technical people in the companies, which is great, and they've invested in that quite heavily the last couple of years. But their KPIs are all about selling the company product. That's exactly what it should be. So somebody's still got to do that generic handling, the issues, looking over the horizon stuff. And hopefully the next couple of years we can get that in place and make the timber sector a really exciting place for people to come and work because definitely it is as we move towards this understanding of the environmental impacts of materials, I mean, timber timber's just a standout, so why wouldn't you want to come and work in that sector

Adam Jones (18:11):

A hundred percent? And another one I think about is how difficult it might be to, you've always got that analogy of cut the pie, we're competing against each other. And that's a mindset, I guess every initiative that you pull it is grow the pie. And we're working as a collective. I mean this is going well off script, but it's really interesting to think about what are the politics of that and how have you gotten some initiatives across the line? Because even the future framing initiatives, the mid-rise sector, you're pulling a lot of previously competitors around the table at the same time.

Alastair Woodard (18:46):

Absolutely. My thought has always been about collaboration, as you know, get your best value when you've got a team of positive thinking people looking at what can we do not, what can't we do? You don't want anchors. You want people that can look to the future. And generally, our industry is very fragmented, both with different types of products, local production, imported production. But at the end of the day, wood products are what we're all about. So we're really one industry just like BlueScope. It is one company. I mean, that makes it easier for them. One company we're hundreds of companies. So yeah, collaboration has always been absolutely key with the areas of interest I have in developing innovation. And I always find it really stimulating and interesting that you can bring together people that are often highly competitive selling products, but you can sell 'em on a vision or a theme, something that we can all see needs to be done.

(19:41):

And when you get them thinking that they're all really happy to work collaboratively together. So I mean, initially when we did the cassette floor system back in 2014, which was really important to have the nail plate manufacturing organizations within the frame and trust sector involved prior to MiTek and multi now and back before then, they hardly talked to one another. They wouldn't mix it all on things that were technical opportunities. But when we got our technical group together, they were just fantastic helping one another, talking about what we should be doing because the reality was we had none of that market. So they weren't in competition that the competitor product there was concrete. It wasn't timber in any way at all. So yeah, the more we could actually work together and the develop the market, the better it is for everyone. I mean, once you've done developed the market, you've got 20, 30, 40, 50% of it, then you're in competition, but you're not in competition when you've got none of the market. So yeah, collaboration's always been probably the key thing that excites me, how you bring people together to achieve a common goal.

Adam Jones (20:44):

And the other big driving factor, I mean all timber begins with photosynthesis sucks, CO2 out of the atmosphere, and everyone's got that mega trend under their belt. And I know it's something that you've been in a lot of working groups and a lot of initiatives trying to drive things. So what are your thoughts on that megatrend? And is there still latent capacity to actually leverage that even more than we are right now?

Alastair Woodard (21:09):

Absolutely, absolutely. And right at this moment with this fixation on CO2 and globally, how are we going to reduce CO2 emissions and greenhouse gas emissions? It is the biggest once in a generational opportunity for forest and wood products. You will never get a better opportunity than this when the big baddy out there. CO2 is something that as you just mentioned, through the growth of your product, you can break that down using free solar energy of the sun. You release the oxygen we breathe, you store the carbon in the woody mass of the tree for the life of the product. Like what greater story have you got just on that physical bit of carbon storage? But as you know, my interest has been beyond that in this area. I've always had a strong interest for probably 20 years in lifecycle assessment and how you fairly and scientifically look at products and their impact on the environment.

(21:59):

And 15 years ago when I was doing some pro bono work as the CEO of the Australian Lifecycle Assessment Society, the fixation of everyone back then, the building professionals and government was all about operational impacts. So how do we reduce that? I mean, fair enough, that was the low hanging fruit. But back then we were saying, no, no, you can't just cherry pick and look at operational impacts. You've got to look at a full lifecycle approach. And it took a long time for people to move beyond operational impacts. And it's really interesting at the moment to see that the past 18 months there's been this real interest upfront and embodied impact of materials and this real interest at end of life in the concepts of circular economy and how you reduce waste. It's not waste. Waste is simply the input of a new product into a new application.

(22:48):

So it's gratifying to seeing, they're looking at a broader approach, but it's frustrating again to see that they're still cherry picking. They haven't pulled the full life lifecycle approach together. And reality is that timber looks really good across that full lifecycle. I mean, acknowledging upfront, all that sequestration that you get when you store that carbon in the wood, as soon as that tree is then harvested and it starts to move into the manufacturing process, the physical manufacturer of a wood product is generally very low in emission bodied emissions compared to alternative materials anyway, particularly concrete, aluminum, steel, those sort of things where they have extremely high emissions. And then once you actually produce that bit of wood, like it comes out of the mill gate, wherever that's from, and it goes into some sort of manufacturer that the way we can actually build our buildings with wood systems is very low in emission.

(23:42):

So you compare the construction of a mass timber building or a lightweight timber building that's prefabricated in a factory and just assembled really quickly on site with the alternative concrete building, which takes 3, 4, 5 times as long to build, has hundreds and hundreds of track movements to physically construct and build that concrete building. It's just so much more a low emissions approach for construction. So another big tick for timber. And then the fact that at the end of life when that building has come towards the end of its first life, if we've got the design for deconstruction, which is really much easier with things like mass timber where you're screwing it together, you can just deconstruct all that wooden, use it somewhere else. And as I keep saying to people, it is just a fact, if a big lump of CLT at the moment is worth X amount per cubic meter or square meter in 50 years’ time, it's going to be worth more than that.

(24:39):

It's just got to do the way things go up. So assuming that that bit of wood could still be used structurally, and it probably could, you could test it to ensure that it can go into another life, or even if it wasn't used structurally, a big chunk of CLT, you'd definitely use that in some other type of appearance product. So that ability to reuse our wood at the end of life if we can't reuse it anymore. And in its solid form, it could be a flooring, it could be windows where you're definitely reusing it to physically recycle it into a new material, like crush it up, make it into something else, make it into a strand product. Or if you can't reuse it and recycle it anymore, you can actually, assuming we're not on a hundred percent renewables by then, you can actually burn it to recover the energy to produce electricity and produce power and displace a non-renewable fossil fuel.

(25:25):

So another good outcome at the end of life, or if it's all about CO2, is people sometimes don't realize you can take that lump of wood, whack it in landfill, and if there's no oxygen, it'll stay bound up forever. So if it's all about CO2 storage you're trying to achieve, then there's a really easy option to end of life. And what frustrates me is we have this discussion about LCA is ridiculous political positions like we're seeing in Europe at the moment where the assumption is when you put a bit of wood in landfill that all the carbon and CO twos emitted again, which is just scientifically completely wrong, but it's just a political decision. So that's where I get passionate with all of the sustainability discussion that people have as a scientist and an engineer. People have got to be using the science, you can't use the politics.

(26:14):

We see politics really negatively affect things all the time. Yeah, stick to the reality of it, get the best outcome, and that's good for us, good for our kids, good for our grandkids, it's good for the earth. So I mean, wood is such an interesting material on all this. In fact, I've just recently authored a paper funded by DAF and the Gippsland Forestry Hub with support of FTMA steps towards the greener future, which talks all about lowing body to mission materials and construction systems. And we've developed up 23 recommendations over four themes of action, focusing on government policy, voluntary initiatives, what the timber industry needs to be doing itself and education. I can make that available. It's on the wood prosecutorial website if people want to download it. But we're taking that out now to a whole range of different government groups, voluntary groups, our own industry to really get their head around what this all means in terms of lower emission materials. And for our own industry, as I said at the start, reinforcing that this is the biggest once in a generation opportunity for wood products to really get the community and the building professionals to understand what an amazing product it is. So yeah, really interesting times at the moment.

Adam Jones (27:27):

Yeah, absolutely. With you there. I talk all day about that one and the risks of those untruths getting out there is almost as managing is you object objective, truth is what it is. So it needs management basically to optimize it all. So as we're getting towards the end of the podcast, Alister, you've been around a while and you're passionate about bringing the young people in. As we was saying before, you brought me in into TPC when I was at a young snapper at WSP. What advice do you have for young people entering the industry or who have interest in actually joining it?

Alastair Woodard (28:07):

Yeah, well love to get passionate people like you, Adam, that come in that can really see the bigger picture and understand the benefits of the product. I mean, we definitely need more generations coming in. I would've thought that this new generation of people, the new building professionals are much more aware of the environment and we'll certainly see that a lot of these environmental regulator interests move into regulation and specifications. So I reckon new people coming in just really understand the product you're working with. I mean, from an engineering perspective, that's a no-brainer. You've got to understand the products, again, whether it's timber, steel, concrete, but there's just so much to offer with timber, a few challenges for us going forward. We do need to still as an industry, make sure we're educating our undergraduates, our people at uni and our students at the TAFE level about the benefits of timber. We can never stop that. And then we do need to educate people at the quantity surveyance to be able to actually clearly cost of building to get a fair comparison. How much does it cost to build that building to full construction? Not a comparison of material. So yeah, I mean there's a whole range of areas where new people coming in the industry can really give some sort of positive impetus and not just on the production side, but right through to the building professional side.

Adam Jones (29:32):

Yeah, amazing. And looking forward, what do you see as the future of timber construction? The future of our industry

Alastair Woodard (29:40):

Now, I've got to think just hugely positive with all the things we've talked about. I mean, it is really a material of the future that we've been using for, since we started building houses, since cavemen started pulling down trees to build them. And it really is such a positive industry to work in. I think we do need to get more wood in the ground. There's no doubt about it. We need more production wood. There's the benefits of that in terms of the CO2 and the carbon its stores, but we need soft woods and hardwoods with both structural and appearance products we need to be dealing with. I think definitely as we spoke before about engineered timber products, that's going to be the future. So we need to see more of those both strand type products like Parem I mentioned before, and veneered products probably is a bit silly that we take a round log and cut it up into rectangular bits.

(30:35):

It gives you a much better recovery and you can physically glue those veneers back together to almost customize and produce the type of material you want. So I've just got to imagine that's the way industry will continue to move in the future. All of those engineered timber solutions and those offsite sort of elemental prefabrication solutions. So how do we do things more effectively offsite, which improves the builder's productivity onsite, and they're prepared to pay for? I think that there's just so much opportunity and scope going forward. It just needs a whole new generation of people coming in to take it forward. And hold hands passing on the knowledge and then helping 'em out. So it's a pity, this is your last web podcast you're doing because this has been such a great tool in informing people like all of the amazing people you've spoken to. So yeah, well done to you. I know it was your own initiative you came up with and you've kept it going to mouse a big pat on the back to you.

Adam Jones (31:31):

Well, thank you, Alastair. This did start with me. I remember I was like, came up with the idea with you to the sheepishly, like, oh, I should do, I was doing a podcast elsewhere and you encouraged me to do it and then put my own. The proposal I put together for Eileen at the time would've been an absolute shocker. I didn't even know what a proposal was. But anyway, I'll put that through and pitched it a little bit awkwardly again, and Eileen pulled the trigger as well. So yeah, it's been a great journey and thank you for everything as being part of that and making all of this happen.

Alastair Woodard (32:05):

Great. Fantastic working with you and look forward to more in the future.

Adam Jones (32:09):

Thanks so much.