The $2 million Mass Timber Competition helps expand the use of mass timber building solutions by providing project teams with funding to overcome barriers to the use of the material, most notably the costs of analyzing design and engineering alternatives and verifying that these solutions comply with applicable codes. The winners of the 2023 competition will be announced in a ceremony held at the REFRAMED Exhibit in Chicago this October 19.

Of the 2022 cohort, the Evergreen Charter School in Hempstead, New York, became the first to break ground. The 85,000-square-foot, five-story hybrid CLT building will expand the possibilities of mass timber in education by demonstrating how mass timber can provide a warm, inspiring, and biophilic environment for students while remaining cost-competitive with alternative construction types.

Several projects funded in previous years by USDA Forest Service Wood Innovations Grants and supported by matching funds from the SLB are making significant progress—opening up new market opportunities for the softwood lumber industry.

This includes a 14-story wood development in Madison, Wisconsin, dubbed Baker’s Place. Think Wood recently featured the developer, Nate Helbach of The Neutral Project, in a Q&A where he talked about how such low-carbon mass timber projects are of increasing interest to discerning investors. Another one-of-a-kind project to receive funding was an all-wood, three-story building in Portland, Oregon, designed by Waechter Architecture, demonstrating just how much of a building can be constructed using exposed timber components.

In addition to these two projects, blast testing research conducted by science and engineering consulting firm Karagozian & Case is being funded to investigate whether reinforced CLT can meet Department of State protective-design requirements cost-effectively. It’s expected this research will be able to show how mass timber can be used to build blast-resistant structures, opening new markets for building types such as courthouses, embassies, federal facilities, and emergency call centers.

And August saw the launch of a CLT design tool developed by structural engineering firm Equilibrium. The interactive spreadsheet helps engineers design CLT floors, roofs, and walls to meet the latest building codes and standards with greater speed and accuracy.

The SLB is helping fund a growing number of market-expanding innovations in partnership with the USDA Forest Service. This includes the Mass Timber Competition: Building to Net-Zero Carbon and USDA Forest Service Wood Innovation Grants.