Meghan McBain

The Engineered Wood Products Association of Australasia will continue in its commitment to product certification and conformance credentials of building materials entering the market.

The Engineered Wood Products Quality Committee meeting in Brisbane this week reviewed its agenda to maintain rigorous, ‘watertight’ standards to ensure products are safe and absolutely fit for purpose – an ongoing commitment in the face of increasing risks of sub-standard building materials entering the Australian market.

The Quality Committee includes representatives with expertise from across the timber supply chain and specifier communities.  The meeting, chaired by Dr Harry Greaves, focused on presentations by EWPAA CEO Dave Gover, Laboratory Manager Suzie Steiger, and Quality Systems Engineer Andrew McLaughlin.

EWPAA’s laboratories at Eagle Farm are accredited by the National Association of Testing Authorities (NATA) and test EWPAA certified products for a full range of structural and physical properties and for formaldehyde emissions and bond quality.

Samples from member plywood, LVL, particleboard and MDF mills are tested daily. The certification schemes are independently accredited by the Joint Accreditation System of Australian and New Zealand (JAS-ANZ).

“Through manufacturing innovation, robust quality control, and adherence to Australasian product standards, the wood products industry is committed to providing a reliable, sustainable, and renewable material for building construction” EWPAA CEO Dave Gover said.

He said EWPAA was positioned to expand its influence as a high-profile and respected industry organisation and certifier of conforming timber products.

“Our priorities in developing and strengthening markets include on-going measures to ensure products used in Australia comply with Australian standards,” Mr Gover said.

“We accept that imports are a reality, but there must be a level playing field and products used in Australian buildings must comply with Australasian standards. Structural safety and the health and well being of building occupants is essential.  The EWPAA brand is a mark of confidence that a timber product meets these requirements.

“The EWPAA and its members have been long-time advocates of product conformance and honest branding of products.”

Photos:

Members of the EWPAA technical committee ..

• Dr Michael Kennedy, Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, Brisbane,
• Andrew McLaughlin, EWPAA quality systems engineer,
• Frank Moretti, Gunnersen, Melbourne,
• Dave Gover, CEO, EWPAA, and
• Jim Zacharin, Cabinet Timbers, Moorabbin, Vic.

Technical committee discussions at EWPAA offices and laboratory in Eagle Farm ..

• Paul Neilson, quality systems expert, Brisbane, 
• Suzie Steiger, EWPAA Laboratory Manager, 
• Dr Harry Greaves, HG Consulting, Melbourne (meeting chairman),  and
• Peter Juniper, Juniper Consulting, Melbourne.

High in stature at 195 cm – or 6 ft. 5 in. in the old measure – new EWPAA CEO Dave Gover has high hopes for engineered wood as the key materials option in multi-million dollar building projects.

“You don’t need to look very far in wood products industry publications these days to find a mention of opportunities for use of wood in multi-storey buildings,” said the former New Zealand forestry engineer who took up his new post at the organisation’s Brisbane office and laboratory this week.

Mr Gover, who studied at the University of Canterbury, worked as development engineer for Carter Holt Harvey Engineered Wood Products, based at the Kinleith plywood mill, Tokoroa, in the North Island, providing technical support to the NZ sales team.

Photo: Dave Gover, new CEO of the Engineered Wood Products Association of Australasia, discusses wood testing programs at the Eagle Farm laboratory with technician Christian Hamlyn, laboratory manager Suzie Steiger, and technician Karrin Ryan.

Following a brief secondment at Nangwarry, SA, he was involved in commissioning the Marsden Point LVL plant in New Zealand where he was responsible for establishing process quality control systems, product testing, and product certification. He also had responsibility for ironing out operational issues with the continuous LVL press. Having commissioned one LVL plant, Mr Gover wanted to try commissioning another, and with his family moved to Perth as plant manager for Wesbeam.

After four years in the west, the Gover family was looking for a more rural lifestyle and moved to Heyfield, Vic, where Mr Gover took up the role of operations manager with ITC in the Southern Hemisphere’s largest hardwood sawmill.

ITC was purchased by Gunns and Mr Gover was involved in helping the operation through some difficult times. For the last three years the operation has been owned by Australian Sustainable Hardwoods, and Mr Gover has been involved with developing and commercialising a range of new laminated hardwood products.

“Ensuring that wood is recognised as a reliable and desirable construction and fit-out material has been the business of the EWPAA, its members and partner associations for many years, be it in residential construction, fit-outs, form work, scaffolding, bracing, screening, flooring, and a myriad of other uses,” Mr Gover said.

“Through a strong certification brand, EWPAA-stamped products are recognised as fit-for-purpose and are able to be relied on.

“With wood emerging as a key materials option in multi-million dollar projects, it is vitally important for industry to preserve its reputation.”

Mr Gover said product certification became all the more important in identifying products as fit-for-purpose.

“Market surveillance continues to be important to make sure that confidence in timber is not eroded by non-compliantproduct from a maverick producer,” he said.

“Promotion of the EWPAA brand and member products to the designer and construction community is fundamental in controlling this risk.”

Mr Gover said as opportunities for timber continued to grow, the industry would need to respond to a design community as they took on new projects, and developed and adapted solutions to unique construction challenges.

Imaginative engineered wood structures made by University of Queensland architectural students and displayed at an inner-city creative hub attracted swarms of art lovers along with both civic and government leaders.

The Fish Lane Follies, centred on a community-focused arts space aimed at engaging Brisbane’s emerging talents and art enthusiasts between West End and the South Bank, featured experimental structures made by students from the School of Architecture and the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Queensland.

Photo: People congregate at Fish Lane to admire, climb inside and enjoy experimental engineered wood structures at a night exhibition in Brisbane. Materials supplied by Austral Plywoods, Brisbane.

“Fish Lane Follies demonstrated how temporary structures could play a role as urban activators in promoting public activity and bringing vibrancy to neglected urban spaces,” said Kim Baber of Baber Studio, one of the prime motivators of the exhibition.

A part-time lecturer at UQ, Mr Baber worked with final-year Masters of Architecture students in a research coursework program to develop the experimental plywood structures.

Working with exhibition coordinator Monique Baber, they sited Fish Lane as a strategic location to showcase students’ structures as part of an overall urban strategy for inner city laneway ‘activation’.

“As a public exhibition, students were proud to be able to showcase their design ingenuity and capability,” Mr Baber said.

Special guests at the exhibition included Jackie Trad, Deputy Premier and Minister for Transport, Infrastructure, Local Government and Planning; Steven Miles, Minister for Environment and Heritage Protection; UQ school of Architecture Advisory board members Dr Michael Bryce AM AE, Lindy Johnson and Paul Quatermass; and  members of the architectural and design profession from large corporate firms to small boutique practices.

On behalf of the School of Architecture and its students, Mr Baber thanked the support of the Engineered Wood Products Association of Australasia and EWPAA member company Austral Plywoods, Brisbane, for providing the construction materials and technical advice.

Sponsors also included the Brisbane City Council, Aria Property Developers, The Fox Hotel, Inlite, Blumen Watts, Rothe Lowman Architects and MAAP Media bank.

“Special mention must be made of the hard-working workshop crew Sam Butler and John Stafford,” Mr Baber said.

“The event has received positive feedback from students, local business and sponsors who have expressed their interest in supporting the next Fish Lane Follies event.

“Anticipation for future events would be to increase the content of experimental structures, with the potential to move into the entire length of Fish Lane.

Architects deal with many of the critical issues in today’s society. They push boundaries when it comes to living, investigate new technologies and materials, and help ensure that what we build is environmentally sustainable.

Importantly, they design not just for today, but for future generations.

That is why a Brisbane project by 15 masters of architecture students conducting research into innovative structures at the University of Queensland represent a refreshing new face for engineered wood systems and their application to future building styles.

The research, supported by the Engineered Wood Products Association of Australasia and titled ‘Optimsed Geometries’, looks at using LVL framing in conjunction with plywood and lightweight fabric to build an exhibition pavilion.

Photo: Architects Kim and Monique Baber of Baber Studio.

Students will design and build the structure over the next two months at the University of Queensland workshops. It will house work by renowned Brisbane contemporary artist Svenja Kratz.

Funding models as well as the cultures and attitudes of university administrators have, in turn, had an undeniable effect on the ability of many schools to provide the best resourcing for the curriculum and the studios they wish to offer their students.

What is clear from the university project is that many schools of architecture, technical teaching and learning needs a strong advocate – particularly for Australia’s undergraduate architecture students who face unprecedented competition and rivalling concerns both within and outside the profession.

The project using engineered wood products has such an advocate in Kim Baber, a part-time lecturer at the University of Queensland’s School of Architecture, who with his wife Monique, runs Baber Studio at West End.

“We are currently proposing that the artwork will be exhibited at an upcoming international architecture forum to be exhibited either at the university’s museum or at Southbank Parklands toward the end of this year,” Mr Baber said.

“This will be part of a collaborative project involving UQ Schools of Architecture, Interaction Design and the Queensland Brain institute. Given the collaborative aspect from three research fields at UQ, it will be promoted widely by the university itself too.”

A win-win for Australian manufactured LVL.

The structure will consist of exposed portal frames made of LVL, with plywood or fabric cladding inside the structure.

There will be an innovative use of LVL applied, through the geometric profiling and jointing of members. The research is being run this semester and students will be evolving the design over the next three weeks and fabricating the pavilion in three to six weeks’ time.

“The exhibition should attract significant media coverage and will exhibit work by leading Brisbane artists,” Mr Baber said.

It also represents good exposure for the sponsor LVL producer Wesbeam, which operates from $110 million purpose-built manufacturing plant in Neerabup, north of Perth, using state-of-the-art equipment from New Zealand, Japan, Finland and Germany.

Wesbeam LVL is a high-value engineered wood product made from Australian Forestry Standard certified plantation timbers, much of which is sourced around Perth under a 25-year state agreement.

Wesbeam has provided the School of Architecture project with about 200 lineal metres of LVL with members ranging between 125-200 mm x 35-45 mm.

“The students, ever-conscious of the environment, are pleased to be working with AFS-certified wood,” Mr Baber said.

Since Wesbeam started making engineered wood in 2004, more than 2000 km of LVL joists and beams has left the factory for construction sites around Australia.

In a separate project, the students are researching construction techniques using plywood without stud framing.

“The benefit of using plywood was the layers created by the cross directional grain,” Mr Baber said. “Students introduced three-dimensional geometry to the plywood through processes or folding, cupping and bending, in order to gain inherent stiffness and strength in the plywood.”

The geometry of the structures is closely related to shell structures often found in thin concrete shells such as those designed by noted German architect Frei Otto.

“We were able to produce very stiff and stable structures without the use of additional solid timber and relied solely on the material properties of the plywood,” Mr Baber said.

“Brisbane-based Austral Plywood were incredibly generous in sponsoring the student research by donating the ply. The company is one of the remaining manufacturers of high grade hoop pine ply, a species that is local to Queensland and has a beautiful blonde and clear face, perfect for the exhibition structures.”

The structures were part of the Fish Lane Follies in South Brisbane on August 28 organised by Baber Studio in collaboration with the University of Queensland.

The Australian Furniture Association and respected skills trainer Chisholm Institute are considering ‘joining forces’ with the Engineered Wood Products Association to provide students with a greater understanding of product certification, building codes and compliance.

Furniture exhibitors at Furnitex Connect in Melbourne recently expressed interest in the EWPAA’s brand awareness program using adhesive labels to advise that products manufactured by its members are certified Super E0, E0 and E1 under a strict JAS-ANZ accredited system.

The Australian Furniture Association, convener of Furnitex, represents the interests of the furniture sector from raw material supply through to the end user. Collectively the industry supply chain employs more than 200,000 people nationally.

Education and training officer Bryon Stanley said AFA had partnered with the Australasian Furnishing Research and Development Institute (AFRDI) to provide standards, testing, product certification and research for buyers and sellers of furniture.

“Furntech-AFRDI embraces the concept of sustainability through the creation of a furniture sustainability standard and the implementation of in-house policies and practices that mitigate environmental impacts,” Mr Stanley said.

“To us, sustainable practices are fundamental to the future of our industry, and to the environment,” he said.

“Commercial furniture manufacturers more and more must conform to ‘green’ specifications and tender requirements in both the commercial and government sectors. Non-compliance means that, in time, they may potentially be excluded from much of the marketplace.”

The AFRDI Green Tick is a Green Building Council of Australia recognised product certification scheme that corresponds with furniture and assemblies.

Melbourne’s Chisholm Institute at Frankston, which trains more than 40,000 students each year, is placing greater emphasis on regulations and standards. This week the institute is hosting a meeting of the Cabinet Makers and Designers Association at its new $18.5 million trade training centre at the Frankston campus.

JAPAN’S ability to screen wood product compliance through a government-audited certification program sets a high standard that Australian authorities could well emulate, EWPAA acting CEO Andy McNaught said.

Representatives of the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (MAFF) were in Brisbane recently for their annual audit of the EWPAA JAS (Japanese Agricultural Standard) certification program.

Each year, government officials from MAFF or the Food and Agricultural Materials Inspection Centre witness EWPAA JAS auditing at a member mill and undertake a three-day process and document review of EWPAA’s JAS certification activities.

The Engineered Wood Products Association of Australasia is one of only three JAS foreign certification bodies outside Japan, and the only English-speaking auditor for the program.

The Japanese representatives also visited New Zealand to witness an audit conducted by EWPAA at one of the JAS certified facilities there.

Mr McNaught praised the contribution made to the EWPAA JAS program by laboratory manager Suzie Steiger and quality systems engineer Andrew McLaughlin.

“They’re right across this,” Mr McNaught said.

“Suzie manages all testing of Japanese samples in the Brisbane laboratory and Andrew has undertaken responsibility for the JAS certification, which requires a sound understanding of the Japanese process, which can be quite complex.”

Mr McNaught said the Japanese audit confirmed that EWPAA continued to run a certification program that met all the requirements of JAS.

He said EWPAA member products met three critical requirements – safety during construction; performance of buildings in extreme weather conditions; and air quality with very low or zero emissions.

“The example for Australian authorities is that the Japanese government requires every structural element going into a building has passed a rigorous certification process,” Mr Naught said.

“This government-level of certification demands that framework of every building in Japan is up to scratch.

“This contrasts dramatically with the system in Australia which has to rely on industry self-regulation.”

Mr McNaught said Australia’s system evidently was not working.

“Proof of this is evident in the number of non-compliant products in the marketplace,” he said.

Photo: Happy with JAS audit in Brisbane: Hiroto Yokoshima, chief inspector, JAS conformity assessment division, Japanese Food and Agricultural Materials Inspection Centre, Masatoshi Tomoi, EWPAA’s technical representative in Tokyo, and Yuko Shimoda, assistant technical staff, JAS conformity assessment division, with EWPAA staff Suzie Steiger, laboratory manager, Andrew McLaughlin, quality systems engineer, and Andy McNaught, technical manager and acting CEO.

Industry leaders, board members, work colleagues, family and close friends gathered at a dinner in Brisbane last week to recognise 30 years of devoted service to the engineered wood sector by Simon Dorries who has stepped down as general manager of EWPAA. Mr Dorries, who joined the Engineered Wood Products Association of Australasia as a laboratory technician in 1985, took up his new position as CEO of Australian Forestry Standard Ltd, based in Brisbane, on Monday this week.

“In his nine years as general manager, Simon elevated EWPAA to the highest ranking as an industry organisation, not only in Australia and New Zealand but in the wider international scene, significantly extending its scope of activities,” acting CEO Andy McNaught said.

“The association grew under his stewardship as a respected industry body that developed wider market access for its members, exposed sub-standard products in the marketplace and championed EWPAA products through no fewer than nine certification schemes.

“His work lobbying governments and trade unions on the dangers of structurally unsound and high emission imports and their threat to the lives of both site workers and consumers gained international coverage.” Mr McNaught said during his tenure as GM, Mr Dorries worked to amalgamate the Australian Wood Panels Association into EWPAA, adding particleboard and MDF to its ‘product mix’ that included plywood and LVL. He said EWPAA now also represented solid wood products and the Australian wood packaging system and was widely recognised as a deliverer of chain of custody certification.

Mr Dorries travelled extensively promoting and certifying EWPAA products in the US, Japan, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands. Simon Dorries paid tribute to the EWPAA staff in Brisbane and the outside consultants who had contributed greatly to EWPAA’s high reputation.

“We were a team and our successes came from team work, and I am glad and proud to have worked closely with all of them,” Mr Dorries said. An extensive interview process is under way to find a successor to Mr Dorries and an announcement of a new EWPAA CEO is expected soon.

Photos:

EWPAA technical manager and acting CEO Andy McNaught makes a presentation to Simon Dorries at the Brisbane dinner.

Simon Dorries receives best wishes from Vicki Roberts (former EWPAA executive assistant), and the EWPAA Brisbane team Andrew McLaughlin, quality systems manager, Karrin Ryan, laboratory technician, Suzie Steiger, laboratory manager, Christian Hamlyn, laboratory technician, Sonia Moore, executive assistant, Andy McNaught, technical manager and acting CEO, and Anna Zlotek, financial officer.

First-year architectural students at the University of Queensland log on to the new EWPAA website during a lunch break at the Zelman Cowan Building this week.

Pictured are Lara Rann, Philippa Webb and Thomas Webster who are among an increasing number of students at the School of Architecture using engineered wood in their design projects.

The new ‘new-look’ website – at www.ewp.asn.au – continues to provide a regular news and information service for architects, timber engineers, specifiers, students and builders.

Services provided by the Engineered Wood Products Association of Australasia include technical information, advice on Australian and New Zealand building codes and standards, updates on forest and forest product certification and building materials performance.

EWPAA is currently working with the School of Architecture on special projects ‘built’ in to the 2015-16 student curriculum.

These include a design-build project by students scheduled for this summer using engineered wood for structure and cladding.

This involves the erection of a small prefabricated studio house no larger than 25 sq m which will form the template for a cross-disciplinary design-build summer studio.

The project will benefit adolescents leaving state care, delivering into programs run by organisations such as Kids Under Cover and Anglicare.

Timothy O’Rourke, lecturer at the UQ School of Architecture, said the program would have broad appeal to students working in teams to deliver a significant and tangible product that has direct benefit to the community. “The aim will be to work with the various chairs of teaching and learning committees from schools within the faculty throughout 2015 to establish the course structure that would enable the program to continue beyond the initial pilot.”

Another project supported by the School of Architecture – the ‘Burst Open’ Exhibition – explores architecture and design through the lens of the emerging global phenomena of open-source.

Exhibition curator and UQ senior lecturer in architecture John de Manincor said the exhibition explored how information sharing related not only to the design of objects but to architecture and the built environment.

Designers from around the world have been invited to participate in a new ‘design model experiment’ as part of the exhibition which has expanded from an initial focus on software to the design of practical objects.

“It’s exciting to see the models, drawings and full-scale prototypes from our Masters students exhibited alongside high-profile local and international designers, including a few UQ alumni,” Mr de Manincor said.

‘Burst Open’ also features work by UQ students and one of the School of Architecture’s new adjunct professors Virginia San Fratello.

The arrest of more than 200 timber traders in an extensive forestry crime bust by Interpol agents in Bolivia, Brazil and Chile sound warning bells for industry in Australia, New Zealand and Europe.

Interpol announced it had cracked a major trafficking ring and seized around $10 million worth of illegal timber.

The chief charge was that the materials seized contained significant amounts of wood harvested from protected species in national parks

Meanwhile, in the US, a number of the bigger home retail chains have been accused of selling Chinese laminated flooring that fails safety standards. One report claimed that after laboratory tests on samples stocked by giant hardwood retailer Lumber Liquidators, US-made laminate flooring had acceptable levels of formaldehyde while the Chinese imports failed all Californian emissions standards.

“These events bring the attention of agencies such as Interpol right to our front door,” one of Australia’s largest plywood manufacturers said.

“Most Australian importers are carrying out due diligence under new illegal logging laws, but there are concerns this commitment is not carried through the whole supply chain where some construction formworkers are importing cheap materials, unchecked, directly from Chinese mills.

“If we are to give them the benefit of the doubt, it is because they don’t understand the ramifications of the illegal logging enforcement Bill and the heavy penalties it brings for non-compliance, or worse, they know nothing about it,” an industry analyst said.

“Given the relentless hunt for illegal wood use by policing agencies, they’d be advised to swat up on federal laws, make sure this material is up to Australian standards and that it is safe for their workers.”

[T&F enews is aware that number of wood products from China that were directly dispatched as formwork to building sites are undergoing random core testing in Brisbane].

At the same time, efforts to crack down on illegally sourced and consumer-threatening plywood imported from China into the UK have been backed by the UK Wood Panel Industries Federation.

As a result of industry concerns and intelligence in this area, a UK program by the National Measurement Office (NMO) has focused on plywood manufactured in China and placed on the market in the UK. Plywood is a product that potentially represents an area of high risk, due to long supply chains and the species used in production, which are from illegally logged sources, notably Africa.

Sixteen companies were identified as operators by the NMO and were requested to supply the due diligence system for the Chinese plywood that they place on the market in the EU.

Of these, 14 companies submitted due diligence systems that were insufficient when compared to articles of the European Timber Regulation (EUTR) that outline an operator’s obligation to implement a due diligence system.

The common thread running through these failures was a lack of narrative explaining how the combination of document gathering, risk assessment and mitigation, where necessary, enabled the company to reach a conclusion of negligible risk that the timber in the product was sourced illegally.

Alongside engagement with these non-compliant companies, products were purchased from the operators and subjected to microscopic analysis to ascertain the contents of the product.

Various sanctions will be applied to the companies in question, including the possibility of prosecution based on non-compliance.

The combined value of the imports of the companies involved in the NMO project amounts to 10% of the plywood imported from China into the UK in the last year, indicating the potential scale of non-compliance in the industry.

The UK NMO program arose in response to intelligence received and indicators from the trade, as well as concerns by trade bodies and NGO groups regarding the importation of tropical timbers into China for processing into plywood.

A range of independent background studies suggests timber imported into China is likely to be illegal and therefore is unlikely to comply with the due diligence requirements of the EUTR.

Source: Timber&Forestry enews

“One of the most invigorating and interactive product knowledge courses we have run – the feedback was excellent,” concluded Simon Dorries, general manager of the Engineered Wood Products Association of Australasia, at the end of four days of presentations and site visits in Brisbane.

The course lagte last year included practical site visits to Austral Plywoods, a leading manufacturer of premium grade plywood sourced from 100% plantation-grown hoop pine provided by HQPlantations and the DAFF Salisbury Research Facility.

Speakers and delegates were drawn from four states, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. The expanding role of plywood and LVL in diverse range of formwork applications generated high interest.

Simon Dorries said the course focused on manufacturing technology, quality control, product application and uses, innovation and the structural and aesthetic applications of plywood and LVL.

He said ever-improving manufacturing technologies together with a total quality control program gave the user confidence that EWPAA-branded plywood and LVL were products of consistent reliable strength, stiffness and dimensional stability.
“This was a valuable up-skilling program for manufacturing staff helping them to make products more cost effectively and in a quality environment,” he said.

Sessions included structural properties and applications of plywoods, LVL, particleboard, and MDF; bond testing and evaluation; finishing and detailing; durability; formaldehyde emission tests; panel quality control; and certification of engineered wood products.
Strong interest centred on sessions about close scrutiny of important EWPAA standard products in various market segments and ‘selling’ product advantages and how to deal with substitutes in the sales situation.

Photo: Talking EWPs in Brisbane. Tung Hiek Hii, Ta Ann Tasmania (centre) with Big River representatives from Grafton, NSW, Craig Dorward, general manager, and Wade Anderson, day-shift supervisor.