Several strategies are needed to maximise the potential of Australia’s timber industry to help to address national housing shortages, a panel session has heard.

At a recent event hosted in Melbourne, Forest and Wood Products Australia launched the More Houses Sooner: Australian Housing Demand & Timber Use Scenarios to 2034 report.

As noted in an earlier article, that report warned that domestic timber shortages during the second half of this decade are likely to constrain the nation’s ability to deliver enough homes to meet new demand and address existing housing shortfalls.

During the event, a panel session explored the strategies which are needed to maximise the ability of the timber industry to contribute to new housing delivery.

Panellists included Kersten Gentle, Chief Executive Officer at the Frame & Truss Manufacturers Association of Australia (FTMA) – an industry representative group for manufacturers of timber frames and trusses; Tim Newman, General Manager at prefabricated timber building systems manufacturer Timber Building Systems Australia (TBS Australia); Tim Woods, Managing Director at pulp & paper products data and information provider Industry Edge; and Jim Houghton, director at project consulting business HireThinking.

Several themes emerged.

Is it governments or industry?

Among panellists, views differ about who is responsible for speeding up new home delivery.

On one hand, Gentle says that governments need to reduce red tape and approval timeframes.

She cites the example of Cooma in southern NSW, which is playing a key role as a construction hub in the Snowy Hydro expansion.

Approval timeframes for new housing sit at an average of nine months even as busloads of workers commute to and from Canberra, she says.

As for industry, Gentle says that the timber sector is ready, willing and able to do its part. She points out that no timber mill or frame or truss supplier is currently operating at capacity.

Woods offers a different perspective.

Whilst he acknowledges the impact of regulatory imposts, he encourages the industry to focus on how it can speed up construction once approvals have been granted.

Whilst waiting for approval, project owners could organise and work with their supply chain to ensure that post-approval construction can occur as quickly as possible.

This requires vertical integration and coordination between landowners, builders, subcontractors, suppliers and others.

Standardisation Needed

Next, panellists suggested that Australia needs to move toward standard building designs.

During a recent visit to Scandinavia, Newmann noted how buildings looked much the same.

In Australia, by contrast, Newmann says that his firm is ‘trying to manufacture a different building every single day’. Every time he commences a new project, Newmann’s firm needs to re-engineer the factory building and undertake new processes.

This is inefficient and contrasts to his prior experience in the car industry where designs were repetitive albeit with some differences for different models.

Looking at new housing estates across Australia, Newmann questions whether it is really necessary for all homes to have a slightly different aesthetic on the outside. He raises the question about whether homes could instead adopt a similar exterior with customisation on the interior where this is more readily done.

Houghton agrees.

He adds that in the current market, those without a home will gratefully accept a new home with a more standardised design if that delivers homes cheaper and more quickly. If their main option comes down to red/green windows/doors or left/right hand garages, new home buyers will have little problem with this if that is what gets them into a home.

Addressing barriers

During the discussion, panellists identified areas where barriers could be addressed.

For one thing, Newmann says that it is necessary to align the supply chain and to get suppliers to better understand what is needed by manufacturers of prefabricated homes and elements.

Consider window suppliers. In his own firm’s operations, Newmann requires a new window to be installed into a prefabricated system every fifteen minutes. Yet suppliers often want to supply entire jobs all at once. This requires the firm to store up to ten townhouses’ worth of windows whilst installing just one every fifteen minutes.

Where supply chains are better coordinated, Newmann says that significant productivity gains can be achieved

On King Island, TBS is aiming to deliver a home from ground to sheets on the bed within twelve weeks. To get materials to site, all project materials were transferred by boat last month.

In addition, Gentle talks of the need to remove unnecessary roadblocks to improve the efficiency of existing timber use.

On this score, she calls for the Australian Standard for timber construction (AS1684) to be amended to remove the need to put knobs on timber frames.

According to Gentle, Australia is one of the few countries internationally which places knobs on timber frames. Considerable volumes of timber could be saved if that practice ceased, she said.

Adding value and innovating

As part of the session, panellists outlined several areas of opportunity in which the forest and wood products industry could add value and innovate.

(1) Moving from supply to also doing installation.

In one case, an Adelaide based FTMA member has moved to performing the installation as well as supplying the product. This involves simply putting erecting the outside panel on homes to create a semi-enclosed panel.

Yet another member installs fully enclosed panels.

This, Gentle says, will save time and will improve speed of new housing delivery.

As things stand, Gentle says that this has typically been difficult for the timber frame and truss sector to do on account of the need to pay ‘chippies’ or carpenters. This contrasts with steel, where she says that people are paid ‘$30 per hour to erect Meccano sets’.

(2) Wrapping windows into frame and truss elements.

A further opportunity would be to start adding items such as windows wrapped into frame and truss elements, Newmann says.

He says that opportunities to do this will increase as a result of new energy efficiency requirements which have recently come through the 2022 update to the National Construction Code. These will necessitate more double-glazed windows, which are heavier to lift on site (especially if going onto a second story) but are just as easily installed as single-glazed windows  if installed in the factory irrespective of their weight.

(3) Panelisation and floor cassettes

These, Newmann says, are ‘absolutely the way of the future’.

(4) Moving into the mid-rise market

Another opportunity is moving further into the mid-rise market.

On this score, Gentle encourages fabricators work with builders to extend fabrication’s penetration beyond two and three story homes to also include four and five storey homes.

Opportunities are especially prevalent as governments are now looking at building on top of existing shops. For this purpose, lightweight timber products can be ideally suited, Gentle says.

Newmann agrees. However, he cautions that mid-rise timber buildings are difficult to engineer and gain approval and compliance.

He says that governments could help.

In New Zealand, government programs enabled timber suppliers to move into three-storey walk up apartment complexes and five storey buildings.

Similar incentives could be considered in Australia, he suggests.

(5) Optimisation of factories

Next is optimisation of factories to maximise efficiency.

In one case, Gentle says that an FTMA member has reduced their firm’s headcount from around 100 to just 40 over the past 20 years but has increased their output significantly.

(6) Educating governments.

Finally, Gentle stresses the need to work with and educate governments about the benefits of timber. This could encourage governments to specify timber on public/social homes and public buildings.

In Helsinki, Gentle says that the government in fact mandates use of timber on homes.

Cyclical building cycle difficult for manufacturing

According to Houghton, a further challenge involves the cyclical nature of the private building market.

This poses challenges for manufacturers who operate on high upfront fixed costs and who rely upon ongoing and consistent volumes and output. In some cases, manufacturers have come onto the market and expanded with strong investments and good product offerings only to be crushed during housing market downturns.

The effect of this has intensified over recent decades as private development has become increasingly dominant in new home building activity.

According to Houghton, governments could help by promoting more reliable activity levels on which manufactures can base investments.

Increasing social housing investment could provide opportunities for this to occur.

Blue Skies Ahead

Finally, Gentle says that the future for the industry is promising.

This is particularly the case as significant research is being undertaken to help to advance innovation.

For example, the Australian Government is investing more than $100 million into the Australian Forest and Wood Innovation (AFWI) over five years in a program that is being delivered in partnership with the University of Tasmania.  This program is running three research centres that will undertake forestry research and development.

“I have to say, it’s a bloody good time to be part of this industry,” Gentle says.

“With the APWI funding – the Australian Forest Wood Innovation funding – that is going in and all the studies that are going into the industry, it’s a really good time to be part of our industry.

“We have always been innovative, but now (even more) we are pushing forward.”

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