Industry Q&A
The Brock Commons Tallwood House at the University of British Columbia.
Inside Mass Timber THE CEO OF STRUCTURL AM SHARES THE STATE OF THE BUSINESS
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hile the pandemic has had long-term impacts on inflation, the supply chain, and labor, among other pieces of the residential-construction puzzle, the mass-timber market has been impacted as well. HBSDealer discussed mass timber and how obstacles have been overcome with Structurlam CEO, Hardy Wentzel. The company’s top executive also provided insight into where the company is headed. Here’s what Wentzel had to say about the mass timber market and the future of Structurlam. HBSDealer: How did the pandemic impact the progress mass timber solutions were making in the construction market? HW: The pandemic did have an impact, but we were able to navigate around it. In early 2020, we had several large projects in production, and our clients wanted us to continue on through COVID. They had confidence they would have a workaround solution. That got us through a large part of the crisis, but we are still feeling lingering effects today. Some projects were postponed and delayed, especially the ones that were about to put a shovel in the ground. Those are the projects where people hit the pause button. There have also been ripple effects in regard to the supply chain impact on lumber and the cost of lumber. The cost of the raw materials we buy, such as lumber, has risen. We don’t make the lumber that Structurlam goes into mass construction. CEO, Hardy Lumber is about 50% of our input cost to make Wentzel mass timber — when it goes up three times in pricing, you can imagine how that causes a lot of concern for everyone. We are not a vertically integrated group and we do not have to be. We can buy lumber anywhere. The other part of COVID that impacted us was the
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Januar y 2022 HARDWARE + BUILDING SUPPLY DEALER
construction of our new plant in Arkansas. We put a shovel in the ground in March 2020 and had hundreds of containers of mass timber manufacturing equipment from Europe and North America that were fortunately not held up because of our planning and organizing. So we had COVID implications on our mainstream business as well as building our plant, but the plant is scheduled to start-up in the coming weeks. HBSDealer: How is Structurlam advancing its message about mass timber solutions? HW: A lot of the messaging is happening on many levels. We have sales engineers in all the major markets. They are mass timber specialists who are supported by Structurlam’s technical services group in British Columbia. We’re also able to reach quite a wide audience through our social media outreach and are also seeing more mainstream media outlets cover mass timber and sustainable building. Our mass timber specialists are all engineers or architects who talk to developers and building owners, architects, engineers, and builders. We have a lot of technical support materials to figure out loads, fire codes, sound acoustics, and all of the technical questions about building with a new building material. HBSDealer: What type of edge does Structurlam provide its customers?
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