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WoodWORKS! picking up steam
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From the Prince George Citizen
The build-with-wood momentum of WoodWORKS! is growing across Canada spurred
by the success of the BC program. More and more projects throughout BC are emerging
in wood – schools, sky train stations, airports, recreation complexes,
industrial buildings.
At the same time, however, wood is coming face to face with systemic barriers
that continue to challenge its expanded use in commercial construction. WoodWORKS!
has been involved in some projects where wood lost out due primarily to lack
of awareness and experience in designing and building with wood cost-effectively.
Wood could have done these projects, as other areas of the world demonstrate.
“The work of creating awareness, as well as developing the capacity and
will to do more with wood is quite complex and still in its infancy” comments
John Brink, President of Brink Forest Products and Chair of the WoodWORKS! Northern
Steering Committee. “Training and technical design assistance are key priorities
in the WoodWORKS! program, and with continued support from Forest Industry sponsors
and Forest Renewal BC, we are expanding our capacity to deliver more services
in these areas.”
Since its inception, WoodWORKS! has inspired the use of wood in 21 BC projects
valued at nearly $80 million and generating nearly $12 million in wood product
sales.
The wins for wood are exciting – such as the new Prince Rupert Community
College Campus, the first pilot project under the BC Government’s Green
Buildings initiative.
“Here, we are making a powerful statement about wood’s role as a
construction material for green, environmentally-friendly public buildings”
said Jim Engleson of Canfor, Chair of WoodWORKS! Provincial Steering Committe
“We credit the community of Prince Rupert for making wood construction
a prominent feature of this Green Buildings BC pilot project”.
Another important victory for the project was the construction earlier this
year of the Crestbrook Value Added Processing Plant in Cranbrook. In this instance,
WoodWORKS! was able to provide technical assistance to demonstrate that a wood
system could be cost-competitive with pre-engineered steel.
On the environmental front, the results of the ATHENA" life-cyle analysis
of the Crestbrook facility re-confirm key benefits of wood construction. This
analysis concludes that relative to the steel design, the wood design embodied
39% less energy, produced 20% less global warming potential, emitted 17% less
air and 70% less water pollution, used 12% less resources from a weighted resource
use perspective and produced 11% less solid wastes. Using embodied energy as
a barometer, the majority of the difference between the wood and steel design’s
environmental implications can be traced back to wall, roof and column and beam
structural framing.
“WoodWORKS! is giving us a glimpse of the immense potential that lies
ahead for our wood industry in BC, and the work ahead for BC to achieve that
potential. ” concludes John Brink. “To reinforce the importance of
intiatives like WoodWORKS!, a recently released study has estimated the North
American market for value added wood products and systems for non-residential
construction to be worth 20 billion. Developing a province-wide strategy to
become a leader in accessing that market must become one of BC’s top economic
development priorities”.
http://www.wood-works.org/
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