Duke School Center for IDEAS | DTW Architects
& Planners Photo Credit: Jerry Markatos

As school districts seek cost-effective, durable solutions for campus modernization, many remain unfamiliar with the benefits of lumber-based structural systems. By delivering timely expertise, WoodWorks helps reduce perceived risk and accelerates early interest in project opportunities, creating new pathways for wood use. Recent success stories showcase this work:

• WoodWorks hosted 53 material decision makers on a tour of a Sacramento elementary school with seven new mass timber classrooms (which WoodWorks had supported), strengthening market confidence in scalable K–12 applications through peer-to-peer learning.

• A WoodWorks Regional Director guided a steel-focused design team through acoustic and structural concerns on a child education project, enabling a shift from steel to mass timber for their current project and prompting firm-wide education to build long-term wood design capacity.

• After six years of learning from WoodWorks offerings, an engineer on a high school expansion project in Texas reached out to the local WoodWorks Regional Director, who supported them in converting portions of a steel-framed design to mass timber.

The SLB and USDA Forest Service’s 2025 Mass Timber Competition: Building Sustainable Schools awarded funding to four K–12 schools that show wood construction can outperform conventional systems in cost efficiency, durability, and community impact. WoodWorks’ direct project technical support builds on that effort, enabling K–12 design teams to overcome obstacles such as code challenges or lack of familiarity with wood, changing the way schools are built.

MARKET IMPACT

• Increase wood’s market share in the education segment, representing an annual incremental lumber opportunity of 203 MM BF by 2035.