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with Swedish Wood and others, a new website for construction professionals covering all aspects of fire safety for timber design. This will be free to use and have a series of webinars to guide you through.
Sustainability will continue as a major theme. We’re starting the year by launching the Timber Industry Net Zero Road Map, led by Charlie Law – this has been a major project, with input from all trade bodies and timber companies across the supply chain (see p8).
It is also a central theme to the Timber Engineering Design courses on which we are partnering with the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering (NMITE), as well as to all of the design and structural engineering webinars we will be running from Q2.
David Hopkins chief executive Timber Development UK
The Building Safety Act is
going to have major implications for designers, contractors and suppliers, with extra responsibilities across the supply chain
After the turbulence of the past few years we hope that 2023 sees the start of a calmer, more predictable period for the country. Certainly, the latest incarnation of the Prime Minister is keen to reassure the country he will avoid the chaos and disruption of recent times. He will also try to avoid mentioning that most of this chaos has been caused by the policies and actions of his own party. We’ll need calm heads to get through the year ahead with a cost-of-living crisis, global market downturn and several policy initiatives coming through. Top of the list is the Building Safety
Act. This is going to have major implications for designers, contractors and suppliers with extra responsibilities across the supply chain. The Act will see the implementation of “the Golden Thread”; a connected series of responsibilities across the supply chain. A new Regulator for Construction Products will be created.
Suppliers will have to prove they have the competence to put construction products on the market and that they are correctly labelled, marked and have all requisite paperwork to prove they are fit for purpose. Timber Development UK (TDUK) is developing a new training course to help members with this and we will also be launching our Merchants Guide to Selling Timber in Q1 so we can carry this best practice through to point of sale. With safety foremost in people’s minds, we will also be launching, in collaboration
This year we’re adding a new theme of “Living with Wood” – a series based around interior design to highlight the range of decorative hardwoods, panels and other timber products on offer.
Sustainability is also at the core of the government’s Timber in Construction Working Group – an initiative cutting across the Departments for Environment, Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. It is looking at ways to increase timber systems in construction in order to help decarbonise the built environment as well as encourage the planting of more productive forestry.
TDUK is working hand-in-glove with the Structural Timber Association (STA) and the Confederation of Forest Industries (Confor) to ensure this initiative is a success. We’re also gathering support for the initiative from other MPs via the Confederation of Timber Industries’ (CTI) All Party Parliamentary Group.
OPERATING AS TDUK
This is also the first full year we will be operating as TDUK rather than TRADA and the Timber Trade Federation (TTF). The merger has been well received so far, but there is still a lot to do.
One big project is to develop our members’ profile pages to allow each of them to have a ‘micro site’ to promote your own goods and services within the TDUK website. This will increase visibility for both suppliers and designers as we start to promote the whole website and membership to clients and developers. We want everyone embarking on a timber project to know that everything they need for their timber development journey is contained within our website. We want this to be a calm, predictable reality for many years to come! ■
www.ttjonline.com | January/February 2023 | TTJ
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