An insurance expert is calling for his industry to take a second look at wood. Jeff McLellan, a vice-president with BLF Canada Insurance Services Inc., recently addressed the 2016 International Wood Symposium in Vancouver about the sluggish response of the insurance industry to new wood technologies.
While new materials such as cross laminated timber (CLT) and glulam are changing the nature of wood construction, insurance companies are not keeping up, McLellan said.
"Reinsurers drive the bus on this, and they say ‘wood’s wood’," McLellan said. Wood has specific properties and a history that make it an easy target for advocacy groups from other industries, he added.
"But how many massive wood fires have actually happened?" he said.
McLellan stated that when fire does occur, awareness of the material does increase, but "if you go three to four years without a fire, underwriters get comfortable." The wood industry, McLellan said is doing the "heavy lifting" of educating the public regarding new wood technologies.
"They’re the ones getting the info out and getting people engaged," he said.
But people often haven’t had good experiences with new materials and technologies and developers tend to work with those they’ve worked with in the past.
"As with most things it’s education and experience that’s the solution," he added.
Wood construction also offers advantages over other materials beyond sustainability, McLellan said.
"One thing CLT can deliver here is much faster delivery to market, especially when combined with prefab," he said, adding much less noise pollution is produced during construction of wood projects. Other countries, he noted, are ahead of Canada both in terms of adoption of wood technologies and insuring wood projects.
Collaboration between the insurance industry and construction in the United Kingdom resulted in a document called Joint Code which addressed fire protection on construction sites.
"I believe this document helped drive down incidents. It’s an example of the insurance industry being proactive. But in North America, I don’t see it," McLellan said.
"Engineered timber is already considered conventional in some countries. It’s definitely an option designers would consider in Germany or Switzerland," McLellan said.
While the United States has not yet invested in advanced wood construction, "they have the potential to leapfrog us. We have a lot invested in this discussion as a country, but the U.S. construction industry is more ready for change than the Canadian construction industry," he said.
McLellan pointed to projects such as the 18-storey Brock Commons student residence made primarily of wood as a sign of progress, and said there are other possible applications of wood construction.
"B.C. social housing has an amazing opportunity to be leaders in this space," he said. "And if it’s not needed, it can be deconstructed and moved. You can’t do that with other material, but it can be done with CLT and glulam."
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