GUIDELINES FOR INDUSTRY CONFIDENCE

The Mass Timber Insurance Playbook (MTIP) provides guidance for all parties on how to secure an equitable insurance policy for both the construction and operation of mass timber buildings.

To confront the challenges of securing insurance for mass timber buildings, not-for-profit sustainability organisation, the Alliance for Sustainable Building Products (ASBP) has been awarded a grant from the Accelerator Fund from Built by Nature to create an industry endorsed guidance and Playbook for developers, investors and designers.

Built by Nature is a network and grantmaking organisation with a mission to accelerate the timber building transformation in Europe with a view to reducing carbon emissions. Co-funding for the Playbook and in-kind expertise are provided by global insurance broker Marsh, and Zurich Resilience Solutions, part of Zurich Insurance Group.

The main authors are Phil Callow, a 20year veteran of the global construction insurance market, both as a broker and underwriter across the London and Asian regions and Jim Glockling. Jim is the recent Technical Director of the Fire Protection Association (FPA) and ex-Director of the RISCAuthority with 30 years’ experience, researching, evaluating, certificating and developing tools, standards, product and methods, in support of resilience within the insured commercial and military estates. The project is managed by the team at ASBP, led by their Director, Simon Corbey Msc MRICS, with input from Eurban and Gardiner and Theobald.

Extensive industry research has identified the difficulties of insuring timber buildings and the Playbook aims to be a relevant and practical resource to help overcome these challenges, with early-stage engagement of all parties a key element of success in the design and planning processes.

The perspectives of the client, designer, architect, insurer, broker, lender, fire service, fire engineer, and building control, can be different, requiring language, definitions, and actions that might be alien to some but must be understood if progress is to be made.

Buildings with combustible structural elements and a sensitivity to water, can radically alter a building’s risk profile, and challenge the fundamental principles and methods of insurance loss estimation both during construction and whilst in operation. Reliance on, and compliance with building regulations and design codes (historically the explicit goal of many designers) is not always meaningful to insurers and clients, such is the difference between life-safety and the pursuit of an acceptable level of property / business protection.

The MTIP explains the needs and requirements of insurers for the benefit of anyone seeking to purchase insurance for either the construction or operation of a mass timber building. Its explicit aim is to support the increased use of mass timber in construction and the embodied carbon reduction it can enable, in a manner that maintains a level of building resilience that protects the client’s business, will act to obtain the best response from the attending fire service in the event of a fire, appreciates all perils and associated contributing factors, and will be insurable. Compliance with building regulations and design codes is assumed.

A starting point for the MTIP is to understand:

• Who are the Authority’s Having Jurisdiction (AHJ’s)?

• What are the challenges that need to be addressed?

• What are the key differences between life safety and property protection objectives? – Setting Voluntary Objectives www.asbp.org.uk/project/masstimber-insurance-playbook

• What is Estimated Maximum Loss?

Responding to the UK insurers’ white paper ‘Insurance Challenges of Massive Timber Construction and a possible way forward’ produced by RISCAuthority, the Playbook uses well adopted resilience reasoning embedded within the RIBA framework to address the potential current imbalance between sustainability and resilience to fire and other insured perils including escape of water and flood. RIBA have agreed to act as peer reviewers and will link to the Playbook post launch.

The Playbook will encourage early and ongoing dialogue between the client, designer and insurer with a view to producing buildings that can be considered for insurance on a more equitable basis as traditional construction methods.

It is uncommon for the provision of insurance to be such a barrier to introduction of a new building method but the use of combustible materials, like timber, as the main structural components of buildings that might be large and span many stories inevitably raises the anticipated potential scale of loss to fire and water exposure events. In association with the use of timber, newer methods of assembly can also introduce combustible voids between fire compartments, which, if breached, can allow fire to develop and spread out of view and out of influence of normal detection and suppression systems.

Whilst example solutions to key issues are mentioned for guidance, the playbook is non-prescriptive, affording the designer all of the normal freedoms to resolve the identified issued by the most appropriate means that satisfies the needs of all stakeholders. Use of the MTIP cannot guarantee insurability but through improving the risk profile and early engagement with insurers every opportunity for a satisfactory outcome will be explored.

The Playbook was road tested in a number of stakeholder workshops earlier this year and the project team is now seeking widespread industry endorsement, with the launch on 4 May 2023. For more information and updates, please see the ASBP website and sign up for their free monthly newsletter.

This feature was authored Dr James Glockling, Glockling Consulting, Phil Callow, Mass Timber Risk Consulting and Simon Corbey, ASBP.

IMAGES:

01-02. The Mass Timber Insurance Playbook aims to be a relevant and practical resource to help overcome difficulties of insuring timber buildings