Business View Magazine | January 2021

38 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JANUARY 2021 BVM: How is FPInnovations helping to advance the evolution? St-Onge: “We are pushing to include wood in the market for all those kind of buildings. And from our members’ point of view, the next step would be to industrialize all that construction. We are looking for a solution to achieve this and reviewing the codes that need to be adapted – from the forest to the last step of those buildings. Based on the codes and standards, everything that is brought to the table needs to be addressed and accepted. So whenever you suggest modifying a specific code, it must be approved by all committee members. That’s a big part of what we are doing within our team – the research required to ensure safe construction with wood and then approval by the industry and the regulators.” Karacabeyli: “We work closely with collaborators, such as the Canadian Wood Council (CWC), American Wood Council (AWC), APA, universities, and we played a major role in moving light frame from four stories permitted in the codes to the current six stories. This happened first in British Columbia in 2009 and now it’s in Canada’s national building codes. Today, we have over 500, six-story buildings in Canada – either built or in the design or construction stage. “On the mass timber side, we played a significant role with our partners in implementing the game- changing CLT technology in North America. There is now a CLT product standard for Canada and the U.S., which was then implemented in the wood design standard. We also played a major role in implementing tall wood buildings. In 2021, the Canadian national building code is going to allow mass timber buildings up to 12 stories. “We participate in codes and standards committees and provide information to support proposals by CWC in Canada, or AWC in the U.S. We are the experts preparing the technical information. But we do one more thing which is very important. We package and disseminate the collaborative research we perform via handbooks and guides for wood building systems