FII continues to advance wood use and innovative wood construction technologies here at home.
By ensuring BC is an early adopter of new products and approaches to building with wood, including taller buildings, mass timber and engineered wood products, we’re able to further support regulatory change, stimulate jobs in the sector and showcase these advancements across North America and around the world.
FII works with industry and government partners to advance wood use in BC through:
Since April 2021, naturally:wood has grown its follower base by 18 percent to approximately 8,500 contacts (YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, email).
naturally:wood followers:
• B.C. building design professionals (architects, engineers, designers)
• B.C. builders, developers, owners
• B.C./Canadian government: municipal, provincial, federal
• B.C. manufacturers and FII funding recipients who communicate to international audiences
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During the year, FII developed a wide range of blog content on topics such as incorporating mass timber into post-disaster buildings, wood and the circular economy, wood pellets and how B.C. is adapting forest regeneration practices.
Targeted towards professionals in the B.C. construction ecosystem who communicate to domestic and international audiences, this content is amplified by FII via multiple marketing channels including e-newsletters, contributed articles in trade publications and social posts.
naturallywood.com has seen a 143 percent increase in website visits during the year, with material on mass timber, species and projects attracting the most views.
To assist the construction industry in reducing embodied carbon in the built environment, the Canadian Green Building Council—with funding support from FII’s Wood First program—produced a white paper, Embodied Carbon: A Primer for Buildings in Canada. The report focuses on buildings and low-carbon materials including wood and mass timber, highlighting the importance of addressing embodied carbon, as it can represent over 90 percent of emissions in high-performance buildings (vs. operational carbon). Within the first week of its release, there were over 750 report views.
With advancements in wood-based products and building systems comes the need to develop the skills, ability and confidence to choose wood-based products over alternative materials. Training for current and future skill sets is vital if B.C. is to improve the capacity and effectiveness of its wood-related design and built infrastructure.
Indigenous Skills Initiative
In 2021/22, FII’s Wood First program funded the Construction Foundation of BC (CFBC) to expand its K-12 Indigenous Skills Initiative which encourages Indigenous youth to pursue careers in the wood sector. Starting with woodworking traditions drawn from coastal B.C., the program has created a pool of resources that allow educators to connect woodworking techniques with community practices rooted in history, language and culture. In 2021/22, fifteen unique wood discovery projects were added, each featuring a different regional woodworking application using traditional skills shared by community Elders. Among the resources developed for the initiative are the book, Indigenous Skills: An Exploration of Northwest Coast Carving and Tradition, the IndigenousSkills.ca website and a series of instructional videos.
Under the theme of inter-Nation sharing, projects are now being expanded to communities across B.C., enabling schools to create projects that reflect their own unique territory and traditions.
The training provided to educators under the Indigenous Skills Initiative will give thousands of young people in the province a chance to work with wood and explore the relationship between personal identity and the forest.
Indigenous Skills Workshop
446 young people ranging from five years old to young adults participated in Indigenous Skills workshops run by the CFBC in 2021/22. Career exploration and a connection to living and working with forests were themes woven into the workshop presentations, often in the context of a community’s relationship to the forest. These workshops supported the expansion of culturally rooted education opportunities for Indigenous youth attending public schools and created space for celebrating Indigenous knowledge and practice with all students in the public system.
BC Wood’s WoodTALKS™ initiative—an accredited live webinar series—features a broad suite of educational programming designed to educate, inform and inspire participants on the use of wood in design and construction. During the year, the program was revamped to enable B.C. value-added wood manufacturers to host and deliver webinars directly to the specifier community including architects, designers, engineers, developers, builders, and contractors in B.C., Canada, and the U.S. Through hosting a WoodTALKS™ educational webinar, value-added manufacturers can present their company, products and expertise; position themselves as trusted industry leaders; and build their client base.
BC Wood also hosted six, one-hour WoodTALKS™ education sessions during the 18th Annual Global Buyer’s Mission (GBM) held virtually in September 2021, with presentations tooled to meet the interests of the 545 registered participants.
As regular face-to-face business resumes, participants in the program will have the opportunity to deliver sessions in either in-person or hybrid learning formats.
The WoodTALKS™ program drew unprecedented interest in 2021/22 with 2,971 professional building and design specifiers educated on the use of wood products or structural and finishing applications.
The Wood Innovation Group (TWIG) is a network and community of wood-related professionals focused on facilitating creative projects and product development using local resources. A relaunch of the Outside the Box meetup group, TWIG is now leveraging an expanded online presence to incubate and accelerate ideas to help position B.C. as a world leader in sustainable and innovative wood-based products and building systems.
TWIG hosts monthly online and in-person events where participants discuss ideas, share information and find solutions aimed at helping inspire and reinvigorate the value-added wood industry in B.C. Over the past decade, these meetup events have sparked a host of new ideas, products, partnerships and businesses.
With funding support provided through FII’s Wood First program, TWIG hosted monthly meetings in 2021/22 with special guests presenting on a range of wood-based topics, including:
A repository of presentations and projects is available on TWIG’s new website at twigbc.ca.
B.C.’s Mass Timber Demonstration Program (MTDP) is accelerating wood innovation in B.C. by providing early adopters with support for incremental innovation costs associated with the design and construction of mass timber and mass timber hybrid building systems.
Since 2020, FII has been working closely with the Office of Mass Timber Implementation (OMTI) to run the program—so far, 12 building projects are underway, with funding totaling $4,803,500.1 Projects are scattered across the province and include multi-family residential, institutional, commercial and industrial buildings. Lessons learned from the demonstration projects are being shared with municipalities, developers, building and design professionals and academics through a variety of formats and channels to catalyze innovation and inform further research, best practices and skills training.
Maximizing the use of mass timber will support a more diverse and resilient forest sector, advance low-carbon building commitments and secure the province’s leadership in advanced wood product and system technologies and services.
Photo: The Monad Granville Building, a mixed-use rental development in Vancouver, B.C. | Credit: courtesy Intelligent City and LWPAC