Brock Commons Tallwood House - Chapter 3: Construction Process

[0:04]So Brock Commons is about a 19-month project, which is about 9 weeks shorter than the comparable concrete project. The first 7 months of it relate to the concrete structure, then just over 2 months of it relate to erecting the wood and the related building envelope. The structural system was constructed in 8 weeks. We managed a three-day schedule. First day your CLT and your glue-lams arrive and you lay out your floor plate. At the same time that that was happening, on several floors below, we are installing concrete topping. On day two, all of the envelope panels come in. At the same time that's happening up on the CLT deck, they're starting to install all of the glue-lam columns. On day three, the drywall starts coming in. And then it starts again on day one. There's several ways in which we deal with moisture and Brock Commons. Firstly, the envelope panels on the periphery of the building. They were installed right behind the primary superstructure. Secondly, there was sealant applied to the wood panels, which prevents moisture ingress. And finally, a concrete topping was also installed shortly after erection of the panels. The biggest challenge with wood buildings is fire safety during construction before we have the gypsum wallboard installed, before the sprinkler systems and fire alarm systems are operating. In this building though, because the mass timber has an inherent level of fire resistance, it was somewhat less of a concern. No more than four levels were fully exposed. We did extend that to six later in the project as confidence in the safety of the building developed. So Structurlam is providing the structural wood elements for Brock Commons: the glue-lam columns and the CLT panels. And so we're providing that material at just the right moment. They are actually going to bring the material right from the truck right onto the building at exactly the right moment. I think this is an ideal building for a very tight urban environment. The building itself is very quiet. There's no jackhammers jackhammering down your concrete. All of it's missing. So that's a huge amount of trucking traffic that's not coming off, garbage that's not being removed, and it's keeping your neighborhood really calm. Because we used pre-manufactured wood components that were delivered to site, taken from the flatbed truck, put right onto the structure. There was no storage of wood on the site. So the site was quite small, it was very clean. I see more and more projects coming up in mass timber. I think we're just at the very beginning stage. We've learned a lot here. We're already seeing an evolutionary process coming up. More testing is being done on wood products, and that's really exciting because that's going to allow us to build more and more unique buildings. Pretty much the sky's the limit in wood.