November Virtual Breakfast session with a Panel Discussion on Timber Construction

The British Columbia Construction Roundtable invites you to attend our November Virtual Breakfast Session featuring a panel discussion:

Timber Construction, The Perceived Hurdles around Incorporating More Wood in Construction Projects and Strategies of Overcoming Them

From supporting the BC wood industry, wood’s natural beauty, sustainability and carbon neutrality, using wood in buildings makes sense. However, beyond detached houses and multi-family buildings, the main structural construction materials for large or complex buildings in BC are still concrete and steel. Moreover, in some BC projects where mass timber is being used, the wood in being imported from elsewhere. With an abundance of this natural resource in our province, why is BC wood, specifically mass timber not more prevalent in new buildings?

Join us on Wednesday November 25, 2020, and bring your questions for our experts. Expect a lively panel discussion on identifying and overcoming the hurdles of incorporating Mass Timber into our building projects. 

Meet our speakers:

Lucas Epp, Head of Engineering, StructureCraft 

Lucas Epp is a structural engineer with more than 15 years experience working in North America, the UK, and New Zealand.  He is passionate about timber engineering and has built a team at StructureCraft of more than 25 timber engineers and computational designers hailing from around the world. Lucas speaks widely on computational design, timber engineering, and mass timber construction, and has lectured at the AA, ETH Zurich, Imperial College, and UBC. For more information please visit Lucas' LinkedIn profile.

Rob van Adrichem, Director of External Relations, City of Prince George

Rob van Adrichem currently works for the City of Prince George and was a founding employee of the University of Northern BC. He is also chair of Canada’s largest and longest-running conference on the Bioeconomy. Throughout his career, he has specialized in public education, government relations and advocacy, and northern community development. For more information please visit Rob's LinkedIn profile.

Peter Moonen, National Sustainability Manager, Canadian Wood Council

Peter studied Marine Biology, Zoology and Forestry the University of British Columbia and has used that science-based foundation as a technical communications specialist to advance a better understanding of wood products and the forest sector. He has more than 30 years of experience dealing with regulatory, environmental, sustainability and operational issues. He is National Sustainability Manager for the Canadian Wood Council (CWC), a technical and knowledge transfer organization, which provides free technical support to designers, contractors, building and fire officials, owners and regulators to build a strong wood culture in Canada through education, training and awareness. He regularly presents on achieving greater sustainability, durability and the appropriate use of wood in Asia, Europe and throughout North America to design professionals, contractors, educators, regulators and building officials. He was an organizer and session facilitator at the UN Timber Committee and market reviewer specializing in wood and the green economy for the Forest Products Annual Market Review published by the UNECE Forestry and Timber section, was a member of the Steering Committee for the recent UNECE COFFI conference held recently in Vancouver, and is a member of the Low Carbon-Assets through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA^2) Initiative of the National Research Council of Canada. For more information please visit Peter's LinkedIn profile.

Jon Wang, Vice President, Risk Control Engineering, Willis Towers Watson  

Jon Wang has more than 15 years of consulting experience in all aspects of property risk engineering/analysis. Jon began his career in risk control engineering in 2005 with FM Global in the Vancouver office. In 2008, he moved to the engineering department for American International Group (AIG) where he continued to service diverse clients providing HPR consulting services. In 2011, Jon joined Willis Towers Watson where he is responsible for the coordination of risk control services for clients. His focus is on accurate evaluation of client’s hazards and developing practical, cost effective and common sense risk solutions. Jon holds a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of British Columbia. He is a registered Professional Engineer (P.Eng) in Canada. In addition he carries the Canadian Risk Management (CRM) designation and is an active member of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). For more information please visit Jon's LinkedIn profile.

Meet our Moderator:

Mark Robinson, Dentons Canada LLP

Mark is a member of the Board of Directors of BCCR. Mark earned a degree in Civil Engineering from UBC, and previously worked in the project management stream for Urban One Builders, a contractor with expertise in multi-family residential high rise construction. Urban One Builders managed the Brock Commons Tall Wood project at UBC, although Mark did not have the pleasure of direct involvement in that project. In 2017 Mark went back to law school and is now an articling student and Dentons Canada LLP, with an interest in construction law. For more information please visit Mark's LinkedIn profile.