Special Guest - Chris Evans - Timberlab's Rise in Mass Timber Construction

It's Paul Kramer , back with another episode of the Mass Timber Construction Podcast , and I have a special guest who was on well over three years ago , back in February , in 2021 , when the podcast was in its infantile form and we had a conversation and there was a lot of things they couldn't tell us about projects that were coming up , and now , with the passage

of time , these projects have now come to fruition and I'd like to welcome Chris Evans back from Swinidon slash Timberberlab because he wears these two hats . But of course , timberlab is the main focus for the mass timber element that we've been talking about relative today , but of course it's not separable from Swinerton , right , Chris ?

But you know , Swinerton is our parent company , a great employee owned company , and I think that it's spectacular to be part of a culture that's an employee owned culture and I think that makes it a special place to work and we have a great , great partner with our parent company .

know having Magnum on the show and having a chat with him about what's happening at the manufacturing level and , yeah , all the way through to , you know , the Ascent project . So thank you from me and the listeners .

But we do have unfinished business because the PDX , the Portland Airport Exchange Hub , didn't get developed at the time when we did the episode back in February 21 . How did that project go ? Tell us about the impact that's made and you know any specific significant things that have come out of that project ?

It is , it is a , a cathedral and it is a , uh , I think , a good testament to what , what can be done with , with our all of our building products that we have available and and so spectacular . I I think it's something you just what can be done with all of our building products that we have available and so spectacular .

I think it's something you just have to be there to experience . So fly to Portland , come experience that as the gateway to the wonderful city that's here .

It was a project that we followed dearly through the construction and we were very privileged to get images from your team , when they were permitted to be released of course , to expose it across our social media journal , across our social media journal , and it got significant ratings in terms of not just the sheer magnitude of this sort of cathedral approach to the

construction but the way it was assembled . I mean , there was some pretty difficult technical challenges logistically to get that in right .

And that's really , you know , the joint venture , gc , um uh , hoffman and skanska they they did a spectacular job , really great people on their team that uh worked with the engineering team and design professionals to really come up with a , a plan that could really put public safety and it's uh , you know that that was the paramount thing is looking at the

traveling public and making sure that the experience of the traveling public wasn't affected by the construction . So you know , as someone who flies through that airport a lot , I think they achieved all those goals minimal impact to the traveling public and a really well thought out , very complex mega construction project .

So just the construction nerd in me is pretty excited on what can be done with just thoughtful planning and that project's really a testament to that .

Um , at least from our vantage point and I have to assume that extends to everybody else in the project is just careful , thoughtful about hearing the opinions of all the people coming in to do the work and , uh , putting safety as the the absolute highest priority .

Um , that was a message we we got first , you know , from our first pre-construction meeting on there , and that thoughtfulness went into the design and in the way that that building was constructed . So good , very great team and thoughtful ways of putting planning together .

if you can recall from a few years ago now , what were the sort of challenges in fabrication ? I mean , was it supply lines ? Or because we were in the middle of COVID , right , we were just sort of going through the end of that , or was it ?

You know , the machinery couldn't produce what needed to be done , so the plans had to be modified with anything like that too .

So it's mean a lot of time and energy and time has gone by in that project and from my from our vantage point , I think what we saw is that from the design side engaging and curious and wanting to understand , okay , what are the parameters in which we can design in ?

Here's what our concept is , and then how do we need to tweak that concept so that we cannot just , you know , anything's achievable , I would say just , but anything's achievable for a cost .

I think our experience from the GC perspective probably gave another um , another set of hands on the project who were looking at things in the sense of how do we be schedule smart , uh , budget smart and not , uh , degrade from what the design intended ?

And I that that's kind of how we do our work all the time is we want to um , find ways to save money and understand manufacturing so that we can help preserve design intent without um , without having to spend an arm and a leg doing it in the process .

So you know , there's some really small details on that project which we have our thumbprints on when , where the team sat down and said you know , this is what we're thinking .

We came up with some alternatives uh and thoroughly investigate those and got to the right decision as a team um using uh fabrication constraints , manufacturing constraints and um also manufacturing opportunities you know the opportunities to come in and CNC uh . All the lattice in there .

Uh was a way to simplify the connection detailing and actually make it more cost-effective , and so that , to me , is an appropriate use of uh , of tools and equipment , is to help uh increase quality , but also uh deliver , deliver on a cost effective process . So I see that through it . When I , when I look at the structure , that's what I see .

I see those types of things that we had meetings on back in 2019 . And you see it come through in the final design , which is super fun .

When you were doing portland , you also had the ascent coming online as well and you also had , uh , people like jake concannon , who are from um insurance , the insurance world , coming in and being invited in to look at what you were doing .

And this , this sense of collaboration , continues through what you've just articulated , not only within the partners and the group within the PDX project , but also within your own supply chain .

And it seems to me that this collaboration as an ethos within your company and having an understanding of the end-to-end process I guess formulation for the supply chain , at least for your element that you contribute to is a big strategic element . Would that be a fair summary for what you have articulated to at least me , in many podcasts ?

A lot , a lot of growth is just giving people the opportunity to have the space in which to grow within uh and being relationship driven .

I , I think those are the things that uh are sustainable elements of like good business growth and I think we've tried to foster that within the our , our people , I think the employee ownership structure , you know we , we tend to have team members who want to stay and grow their career , you know , here and and find that home there as a , as a secondary family ,

as a work family . So I think fostering that , and then I think there's also we want to have , you know , fun . You know like work , work , work is a lot of work , but it doesn't have to feel like work all the time .

So finding ways to have fun and smile about what you're doing and I , I think you know where what we've been fortunate with is we have a lot of curious people who are just curious on the way the world works and that's beyond what we're doing in our business but just but just , naturally curious people who want to learn and learn more .

And I think that for me I'm a lifelong learner , I love to get in . If there's a subject I'm not well versed on , the first thing I'm going to do is just try to understand it from all perspectives and try to gain a sense of like , okay , how's this , how's this really work ? And I think we have that throughout our organization .

And then I think that comes through with the way that you know we come into , like service a project is be open-minded and start to investigate . What are some other solutions here that could you know again , preserve that design intent , um , while also just making it efficient .

And you know , uh , there's no sense having a piece on a CNC machine for eight hours just because you can and it that that's not fun for anybody . It what makes sense is to come in and try to find a way to do things efficiently and so that you know we can have an impact on as many projects as possible .

And , and you know , keep , keep having people build . You know these types of buildings and spur that on .

There's been lots of media publication about bits and pieces , but we'd really like to get a scoop , if we can yeah , yeah .

They have two facilities , a lot of capacity within those facilities , and so we're just , you know , the past six months we've been working on this as a secret project , you know , under an NDA and relatively confidential .

So in the past month we've been able to , you know , share the news about it and you know we're bracing for that transition on Monday coming up , for that transition on on monday coming up , so in a few days .

And it's been , you know , uh , from the first interactions with american laminators , I mean , we've known what american laminators can do .

We , we've known that they make um a high quality product , that they really focus on that attention to detail and and making beautiful product , and so we can see that on their finish and the way they finish uh their products to to make a high quality product . But I think back to uh this is going to sound repetitive , but you know it's .

It comes back to the people , it's we . We immediately found , uh , that there was synergy with the people involved and that our team and their team just naturally gelled together . Uh , over the past six months that's been nothing but reinforced and I think that we've we've walked out making not only a good partnership but good friends in the process .

Rural Oregon um uh , communities and and continue to infuse , uh , uh , you know , capital into those communities and help help help grow those businesses um , a little bit more , and uh , so for us it's been , it's been great and we've the process that we've got is we've we've inherited a whole , a whole other family to our team and we're just really excited about

that aspect of it and and and feel there's just a lot of , a lot of synergies that will will , that will be mutually beneficial and help us just really succeed and deliver , deliver , keep delivering good products to our clients .

You know , know , I was just down there last week and they were pressing , you know , 22 inch wide columns on their hydraulic press and you know coming out beautiful , looking amazing , and so it's just an immediate , so it's just an immediate absolute benefit and fit to what we're doing and we just want to continue to expand upon that , you know , and put that in

a good quality mass timber buildings as we move forward .

participant in that , you know , prior to , prior to this . So I think there's excitement from all their team members , excitement for us and and a good balance . We know the mass timber side Well . They know the glulam side Well . We can fit those two things together to help continue that growth for the , for the organization .

It seems like there's a synergistic fit in that , you know , not only is the acquisition , but there's also the contribution of , you know , knowledge and strategy and approach to a market that wasn't their core market previously , and now you're bringing these two things , they're coalescing , uh together , they're coming together , which is brilliant I , you know , I think I

think also looking at the value too .

We opted and preferred to bring on this excellence of like laminating excellence through American laminators as a better decision point than trying to spin up both a glulam manufacturing and CLT manufacturing facility . There's a ton of risk with that , just timing , bringing it online .

So now , with with uh , with this move , we now have a whole bunch of professionals that have been you know , I think the oldest tenured employee has been laminating a product for 45 years , you know . So that's that's .

That's a whole bunch of wealth of experience that we can bring to our team and then leverage that as we come in to certify and spin up the Cross-Laminae Timber Facility . That just is a whole arsenal of wealth and of people that are really knowledgeable in that space to help make sure that we're doing that with absolute excellence from day one .

And that's really , I think , just this other benefit of of where this you know , the strengths that they have really fill in for some . You know places where we weren't strong .

Before we , you know , we weren't a manufacturer , so coming in and doing a key strategic acquisition like this really helps make that , I guess , a less risky venture and helps us have that professionalism that we absolutely need to have in that process .

For that , um , and we are doing the first job with them right now , which is , uh , for a library project in portland , uh , and that's going through production right now , so it's looking fantastic yeah I'm glad to see it's in portland as well .

We haven't spoken about that on the podcast before , but news has been everywhere .

000 square foot . You know cross-laminated timber facility , um , you know european style as far as , like , automation and everything is considered , uh , so just a really fine-tuned automated plant , uh , producing , you know , cross-laminated timber , primarily with , uh , you know , fiber sources in the , in the , uh in the , uh in the Oregon region .

And then , I don't know , excited , excited about it . It's , it's a beautiful uh . You know we're , we're definitely uh in the in the design process .

Now the building and , uh , you know , when faced with , you know , doing like a pre-engineered metal building or a mass timber building , we , of course , you know , chose the timber building because we wanted to stick by , you know .

You know who we are and what we are and I think that that that in and of itself will be a good testament to what can be done in the industrial space , you know , for cost effective industrial frame for that building and we're just overall excited about that project . So we'll definitely keep you well informed as we progress through that .

But I think we would say today , commercially viable in January 2027 , as what that is , and that gives us some contingency time in there to work with to make that very achievable , so we feel good about that .

Um , I , I think you know we're all trying to do the same thing , which is grow the , the use of mass timber and broaden yeah , broaden the overall use , uh , within the whole market . So feel pretty good , uh , feel pretty good with that and uh , so we'll , we'll take orders now , of course .

Can you divulge who ? The equipment is Not yet Damn . What about the glue technology ? Are you going to go the Perbond HBX or are you going MUF or what are you doing for your glue technology ? Can't tell you that yet . All right , that's fine . And what ? And what about timber species ? What do you think you're gonna go for there with feedstock ?

But have the ability , you know , in CLT , to face that with SPF , to face that with Southern Yellow Pine , so that we can give , you know , our clients those aesthetic options that they want to have , but do it in a smart and responsible way . Um , but the , the , the Douglas fir core as a , we'll always be there as the , as the core meat of the panels .

And then , um , that visual face , we have some , uh , latitude and flexibility with .

What projects are you working on at the moment ? We always try and finish with what you're doing right now . I know you've got the big library project coming up , but what else is in the books ?

We're also working on a museum out in Memphis , so that's a really fun project as well . So those are the two outside the library , the two , uh , outside the library . You know those are . Those are probably the two other really notable projects we're working on right at this moment that are going through our manufacturing facility .

Then we have a crew today down in flagstaff , arizona , um , doing a project down there . It's uh , there's a heat wave there right now , but they're in flagstaff , so they're up , uh , out of . Out of . You know , it's a lot cooler where they are by maybe like 20 degrees .

You know timber lab , american laminates and the future that , um , you want to impart .

. And , uh , you know , we're always . We're always available to give , like good , honest feedback of what , um , you know If a project's appropriate for timber or not appropriate . We're generally trying to give people that knowledge right away so that they aren't wasting their time .

If they have a project that's not necessarily suitable for timber , we're a partner and we'll always come in and provide feedback to folks and , um , I think , uh , that that's about all I got today , paul pleasure to be on here and I appreciate it yeah , it's brilliant , chris .

We look forward to hearing more about the technology , the glue technology and the plant that's happening in the future for timber lab , and we'll get you back on for that and uh , yeah , thank you again to the team and yourself .