Business View Magazine | January 2021

47 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JANUARY 2021 ELEMENT5 and developers are familiar with the new modern way to construct mass timber buildings, so there is a tremendous amount of education that’s necessary. It makes it challenging for us because we’re not selling into an established market, we actually have to blaze a trail and teach people about this industry and why it makes so much sense to build with mass timber. Architects are fantastic sources of opportunities, so much of our marketing and educational efforts are focused on the architectural community.” Traditionally, architects were the first people that an owner and developer would contact when they wanted to construct a beautiful building. The architect would orchestrate all the resources – engineer, suppliers, etc.– around that opportunity. They would manage the client relationship and pull all the parties together to make the project a reality. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough architects who know how to design in mass timber, but there are a lot of owners and developers interested in mass timber because it is a cheaper, faster and more sustainable way to build. “As a result, those owners and developers are coming to us directly,” says Chouinard, “because there aren’t enough practitioners with the experience to coordinate a mass timber solution. That means we become involved much earlier in a project. We can contribute our expertise to the process early on to help optimize the design solution. By engaging the architects and the engineers or doing the engineering ourselves, we become the orchestrator of the overall solution for these mass timber projects. It’s not only changing the construction materials being used today but it’s also changing the go-to- market approach.” In 2019, Element5 began construction of a massive, 137,000 sq. foot mass timber manufacturing facility in St. Thomas, Ontario. When complete and in full production in Q1 of 2021, the plant will briefly own the title of