Building by the Book

New funding from Built by Nature will see a €200,000 grant help develop a Commercial Timber Guidebook.

To foster cross-sector industry alignment on solutions to ensure the widespread adoption of largescale mass timber offices, the Built by Nature Fund has awarded a €200,000 grant to a diverse UK consortium focused on unlocking the barriers to structural timber through the development of a technical Commercial Timber Guidebook.

The project lead is engineering consultancy Elliott Wood, joined by implementing partners Waugh Thistleton Architects, fire engineers OFR Consultants and insurance specialists Lignum Risk Partners – technical and design experts in the built environment known for their advocacy of structural timber.

The development of the Commercial Timber Guidebook has additional backing and input from some of the largest investors, developers and asset owners in the UK including Stanhope PLC, Related Argent, Lendlease, British Land, Derwent London, Landsec, MUSE, Berkeley Estate Asset Management (BEAM) and Hines.

The involvement of developers is significant, as the Guidebook seeks to show that a wide-ranging coalition of the biggest industry stakeholders in the UK can reach consensus on how to mitigate risks of large and complex timber developments, while demonstrating the industry’s technical competency to insurers and developers.

The Guidebook will establish common ground and a realistic route for the wider adoption of structural timber in commercial buildings through consensus on defined design principles, mass timber building typologies and technical design measures. With agreed guidelines and clear framework in place as to how risk can be quantified and mitigated, the Guidebook can address the challenges and costs around insuring timber structures, the single largest barrier to mass timber construction in the UK.

The project will also complement existing projects targeting insurance barriers through direct engagement and leverage recognised industry networks such as the UK Green Building Council, Better Buildings Partnership and the Institution of Structural Engineers for dissemination of the Guidebook.

Built by Nature is a network and grant-making fund accelerating the timber building transformation, connecting key actors across the built environment and forest communities to spark city-scale projects and amplify stories of ground-breaking timber and biobased projects and solutions. Through collaboration with its major partners and frontrunners, Built by Nature aims to change perceptions around timber construction and reshape the built environment system. The Built by Nature Fund awards grants to the teams and solutions that can increase the uptake of sustainable timber and improve its climate impact, overcoming some of the most challenging barriers.

Built by Nature CEO Amanda Sturgeon said: “This is an exciting, important project given the scope of its cross-sector collaboration and the involvement of major UK developers. The Guidebook can be a milestone on the roadmap to wider acceptance of timber by creating a clear, peer-reviewed framework for overcoming the insurance barriers. And by securing the endorsements from major developers, asset owners and designers in the UK, we can create better policy conditions for mass timber offices and bring the market significantly closer to large-scale insurability.”

According to James Souter, Structural engineering director at Elliott Wood: “The scale of the opportunity we’re addressing is huge, and we need to bring all the right people together to address the different facets collectively. Gaining the backing of Built by Nature is a major step forward in making the guide a reality, we’re over the moon to be taking this project forward.”

 Mass Timber Insurance Playbook

ASBP and partners have released new guidance to enable a collaborative approach between construction teams and insurers, opening the door to more equitable insurance for mass timber buildings. Mass timber has the potential to reduce the embodied impact of construction versus more conventional materials such as concrete and steel. But, since the Grenfell disaster, mass timber projects have sometimes faced difficulty securing insurance.

The Mass Timber Insurance Playbook is a direct response to the challenges developers have faced, providing guidance for all parties involved in arranging insurance – for both development and operation of projects.

The Playbook was written by insurance and building resilience specialists, to help stakeholders in the insurance and construction industries to understand each other’s priorities and language. The aim is to enable constructive communication, to help overcome gaps in understanding that sometimes hold back mass timber construction. It provides succinct background and context to the insurance market on what is relevant for underwriters and on the responsibilities of developers and contracting parties towards risk identification and mitigation when executing a project.

ASBP was awarded a grant for development from the Accelerator Fund from Built by Nature. The Playbook is now available as a free download from the ASBP and Built by Nature websites. There is an in-person ‘Meet the authors’ event on 21 June at Zurich Insurance, London with the Playbook’s authors and contributors.