TTBS Pre-Fabricators Workshop 2018

Wesbeam Tall Timber Building Systems hosted the Timber Fabricators Workshop in Melbourne for experienced timber industry leaders.

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Date: Wednesday 3 Jul 2019

Wesbeam Tall Timber Building Systems hosted the Timber Fabricators Workshop in Melbourne for experienced timber industry leaders. The course was fully subscribed and attended by visitors from Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Perth. David Bylund of Wesbeam Tall Timber Building  and workshop partner, Rob Nestic of TGA Engineers, provided both theory and hands-on experience towards fabrication techniques for large format mass elements.

The Tall Timber Building Systems Timber Fabricators Workshop is an intensive one-day workshop for timber fabricators intended to provide hands-on experience, technical understanding, and further networking opportunities. Wesbeam’s goal is to provide advice for fabricators around Australia in material handling, fabrications techniques and fixing types typically required to fabricate large format mass and box section LVL column, beam, and floor elements.

The group widely discussed that the biggest challenge in the tall timber building space is that there are not enough people like the ones that attended the workshop. There is plenty of wood, and from the specification and design and development, there's no end of expertise emerging in this market. There is a lot of interest in the government and private sector for these buildings. What construction decision makers want is to foster more people to be able to work with the material and fabricate, being able to price it and document it for shop drawings, so that we can all work together to both supply the material and provide the technical expertise with the material.

David Bylund Wesbeam Tall Timber Building Systems Team Lead commented that, ‘Wesbeam’s mission is to help educate the market. We want to share with industry experienced companies how you can fabricate and put all these timber systems together. We can showcase the systems and demonstrate how economical, viable and easy to install it is as well as take out all the complexities of what people may think of timber when building these projects.’

All workshop attendees learned about material tolerances, connections including beam to beam, column to beam, floor to beam as well as pre-cladding elements, logistics, handling and storage, quality control, installation methods and programming, invoicing and payment considerations. The group were then split into teams and rotated through each workstation for a hands-on workshop to build mass columns and beams, mass floors, mass cassette floors and box columns and beams. 

Continuing from this, Timber Insight recently hosted a breakfast seminar in Perth on the topic of ‘Advances in Prefabricated Building Systems: for residential & multi-storey buildings’ which Wesbeam supported. Keynote speakers included John Shanks of Timber Ed and Bill Marsh of Offsite Automation. John borrowed on his experience in the UK and Australia as a consulting engineer to the timber prefabrication market and provided a clear explanation of the history and his view on the future of prefabrication in Perth.

Bill Marsh is the GM of the new and exciting Offsite Automation, the only manufacturer in Perth equipped to manufacture fully enclosed wall and floor panels through an in-line automated process.

Having managed the UK’s second largest prefabrication business, Bill was able to provide a hands-on perspective of the opportunities in WA for panelised prefabrication. Wesbeam is committed to industry education and provided sponsorship for this and other Timber Insight events.

View some of the construction in the workshop held in Melbourne above.

For more information on Wesbeam Tall Timber Building Systems and how we can help on your next timber building project contact us here.

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