WIA_ISSUE2_2023

MATERIALS AND TECHNOLOGY
on real-time information about section
size and grades availability.
Can you elaborate on the kinds of
barriers to entry for sustainable and
mass timber design?
Jones: When an engineer faces the
question, do I choose concrete, steel
or mass timber, there are different
paths.
The status quo is easy and simple
because it is taught at universities and
everyone is doing it, and you will not
look silly in a meeting.
Mass timber currently, conversely, is
arduous. At the moment, engineers
are building excel spreadsheets
to complete their designs, but
spreadsheets are inefficient for
multiple reasons: First, every
engineering firm is building the exact
same spreadsheets, thus reinventing
the wheel; second, spreadsheets
have a big chance of being incorrect
for engineers designing their first
time; third, mass timber is an evolving
field which makes all previous
spreadsheets redundant; and lastly,
spreadsheets are not a web-based
app, and hence cannot be directly
linked to the supply chain’s availability.
As such, CLT Toolbox replaces the
need to build excel spreadsheets for a
building’s design. Rather than starting
from scratch, engineers can build off
the computation routines offered in
the software.
The software also aims to provide
the education that has been missing
in universities. I once wrote a white
paper on this problem space, called
“Addressing major bottlenecks for the
adoption of timber in the emerging
mid-rise market”. The finding was
that engineers are spending about
500 unpaid hours on their first mass
timber jobs. This is the time spent
learning mass timber design, building
internal design spreadsheets, or
learning the nuances of mass timber
structural analysis.
This defined the market problem CLT
Toolbox is trying to solve, as it looks
to drive down the cost of entry for
engineering firms looking to design
sustainably. The software is not a
black box, so engineers can educate
themselves alongside completing their
first mass timber designs.
Can you also elaborate on what the
product roadmap for CLT Toolbox is?
Jones: There is an evolving ecosystem
in software for a fully automated
stack. Part of this evolving ecosystem
is parametric 3D tools that eventually
plan to provide the design file utopian
software stack. CLT Toolbox provides
the mathematical infrastructure, with
plans to use an application programme
interface to plug into other software
solutions. The software plans to be the
best in the world at solving this specific
problem for the design community.
In your opinion, what do you
think is necessary to make the
built environment industry more
sustainable?
Jones: Global warming is one of the
world’s major problems that can
be solved through innovation and
technology. Although the bounds of the
future are inherently uncertain, we can
maximise the potential of a positive
future if we act proactively today.
We plan to be a key part of the jigsaw
puzzle that eliminates embodied
carbon from the built environment for
the betterment of humanity. But it is not
easy. Operational energy can be solved
with the sun — which is roughly 1,000
times the size of Earth — whereas
embodied carbon can be solved only
with one times of Earth. Therefore, it is
an order of magnitude more difficult.
It is reported that the building and
construction sector accounts for
approximately 39% of global CO2
emissions. Embodied carbon emissions
from concrete and steel production
contribute roughly 8-11% of total
global CO2 emissions. This is in fact
more than the cars on our roads.
The construction industry therefore
needs significant innovation. Mass
timber can only represent a portion
of the solution. Innovation needs to
occur across concrete, such as with
geopolymer cements, or steel with
hydrogen used for virgin steel, to have
a serious shot at the problem. CLT
Toolbox plans to elevate all materials
that contribute to our mission onto the
software over time. WIA
What a page of the
CLT Toolbox software
looks like
WOOD IN ARCHITECTURE • ISSUE 2 – 2023 39