The Tallest Mass Timber Building in the World Is Only Half the Story

Mass timber evolves through global conversations, ideas jumping from landscape urbanism to affordable housing, from precision prefabrication to the rise of biogenic materials. But those ideas don't move on their own. They move through people who've worked across the entire system from end to end. Sebastian Bildau is one of those people. A German architect and mass timber specialist with nearly two decades of experience starting at CLT's ground zero in Austria, he now runs Atelier Bildau in Munich, a design workshop focused on timber at every scale. This episode is a walk through the projects that shaped his thinking.

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Forests as Cleanup Tools and Future Building Material

Most people think the mass timber supply chain starts at the sawmill. Sebastian starts earlier, at the dirt. His early work in landscape urbanism explored what happens when you treat a post-industrial contaminated site not as a liability but as a long-term asset. The concept was simple: plant fast-growing tree species like poplar directly on polluted land. In the early years, the trees do the remediation work, absorbing heavy metals from the soil that heavy industry left behind. Over time, the land heals. After 20 to 40 years, what started as a row of saplings on a scarred urban site becomes a thriving park with mature timber ready to harvest.

The business case is built in from the start. Rather than paying to remediate contaminated land through conventional means, the trees do it naturally, and then pay dividends as a local material supply. Shorter supply chains, lower transportation costs, and a building material with a documented environmental story attached to it before it ever reaches a factory.

Takeaway

Sustainability in mass timber isn't just about what you build, it's about where the material comes from. Thinking that far upstream is rare. It's also an advantage.

Affordable Housing in Vienna, Value Engineering Done Right

On a former airfield between Vienna and Bratislava, Sebastian's team delivered 200 units on a 90x90 meter plot at roughly $168 per square foot, and still found a way to build with timber. The project came out of a competition and was constrained from every direction: tight budget, dense urban site, strict local fire codes, and a client building social housing at scale.

The structural solution was a hybrid: thin concrete slabs, minimal columns, and concrete corridor walls for durability and acoustic performance. Everything else, the prefabricated exterior panels, the facade, the upper floors, was timber. The untreated larch facade was the boldest move, and also the most contested. At the time, a combustible exterior skin like that wasn't permitted under Austrian code. The city's approval authority pushed back hard. The team's solution was a metal fire-separation band projecting several inches beyond the facade plane at each floor level, a detail that physically interrupts flame spread and gave the authorities what they needed to sign off.

It sounds like a small thing. But that one detail unlocked the entire aesthetic of the building without adding significant cost or structural weight. In fact, by minimizing slab depth and keeping the concrete footprint as lean as possible, the team reduced the building's overall weight and kept costs in check throughout. A lot of value engineering went into making it work, but the result was a dense, livable, affordable project that didn't compromise on the timber vision.

Takeaway

Code obstacles aren't reasons to abandon an approach. They're engineering problems that usually have solutions, if you're willing to dig for them.

Robotically Prefabricated Panels in Berlin

A few years later, working as lead designer at a Berlin-based proptech developer, Sebastian took prefabrication further than most residential projects ever go. The building used a robotic manufacturing line to produce both inner and outer wall panels, and arrived at site completely ready to install. Every panel came pre-loaded with electrical wiring and data cables. The panels went up, got connected, and the building came together fast.

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The system was deliberately two-dimensional. Rather than stacking three-dimensional volumetric modules, the team worked with flat panels assembled on site. That choice paid off in flexibility. 2D panels are easier to transport, easier to adapt, and easier to disassemble at end of life if the building ever needs to come down or be reconfigured. The only 3D element in the entire project was the bathroom pod, which came pre-plumbed as a single unit.

The facade couldn't be timber at that height due to fire restrictions, so the team used fiber cement panels combined with a large PV array covering roughly half the exterior surface. Getting PV panels to work on a timber-framed high-rise required its own coordination effort, but the standardized panel dimensions kept the overall system lean and the joint lines tight, which also improved the building's airtightness and thermal performance.

Takeaway

The more you resolve at the factory, the less you fight on the job site. Prefabrication isn't just about speed, it's also about quality.

The Federal Ministry of the Environment, Putting the Right Material in the Right Place

A federal government office building in Berlin doesn't sound like fertile ground for timber innovation. Single occupant offices, long corridors, a complex floor plan that branches like a tree trunk, not exactly the open-span, loft-style program that typically showcases mass timber at its best. But this project became one of Sebastian's most instructive precisely because of those constraints.

The team built what they called a matrix, a massive Excel spreadsheet that evaluated every structural component in the building against input from every discipline: structural, MEP, building physics, and fire. Columns, beams, floor decks, ceiling assemblies, each one analyzed for which material performed best in that specific location. The process took months. They ran separate exercises for the structural frame and then again specifically for the floor composition. It was painstaking, but it produced something valuable. A building where every material decision had a reason behind it.

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The result was that roughly 40-45% of the floors were timber, concentrated entirely in the zones where people actually work. Every individual office had exposed timber beams, columns, and ceilings, all carrying an F90 fire rating, meaning they're engineered to withstand 90 minutes of fire exposure. The corridors and mechanical areas stayed concrete. The biophilic qualities of the timber (warmth, acoustics, visual texture) were delivered exactly where occupants would feel them most. The government got a building that met every code requirement and still managed to feel like a place people actually want to show up to.

Takeaway

Timber doesn't have to be everywhere to change how a building feels. Strategic placement beats all-or-nothing every time.

An All-Timber Tower at 150 Meters

‍“I dare you”.

Sebastian's structural engineer challenged him to prove that a genuinely all-timber tower, no concrete or steel core, was structurally feasible at 150 meters. Challenge accepted.

Most tall timber buildings today reach the 100-meter mark by leaning on a concrete podium and a concrete or steel core at the center. Sebastian's concept takes a different approach. Two parallel timber super-frames, spaced 12 meters apart and arranged in a cross formation, handle both vertical loads and lateral forces. The core contains elevators and stairs but doesn't do the structural heavy lifting, the frames do. Steel plates, pins, and dowels handle the connections where forces are highest, but timber remains the primary structural material throughout.

It's a lighter building, a faster build, and a fundamentally different structural logic than anything currently standing at that height. The seismic performance actually benefits from timber's lighter weight and natural ductility. The concept is still in development, but the intent is to demonstrate that the assumptions everyone makes about what concrete has to do in a tall building aren't as fixed as they seem.

Takeaway

The height ceiling for mass timber keeps rising, and the people pushing it aren't doing it by tweaking existing approaches, they're questioning the structural assumptions underneath them.

Structurally Engineered Bamboo in St. Louis

The final project introduces a material most structural engineers haven't seriously considered yet. Working with Luke D Schüette of ReNüTeq , Sebastian is developing a bamboo tower in St. Louis, a city whose iconic arch shaped the building's design language. The material is structurally engineered bamboo, or SEB. Bamboo milled down into fibers, laminated under pressure, and certified for structural use.

Bamboo grows dramatically faster than timber and sequesters roughly 60% more CO₂ per cubic meter while doing so. In laminated form it approaches the strength of hardwoods like beech. It can be processed into dense, nearly non-combustible composite panels by adding ceramic powder, giving it a fire rating that opens doors in jurisdictions with strict requirements. And unlike traditional bamboo construction, which relies on the raw stem, SEB works within the same manufacturing and connection logic that mass timber teams already know.

A 7-story demonstration tower is currently underway. A follow-on project at roughly double the height, around 60 meters, is in planning. The St. Louis project is a proof of concept, but the ambition behind it is much larger - establishing bamboo as a serious structural material for mid and high-rise construction in the US and eventually in Europe.

Takeaway

The definition of what we can build with is still expanding. Like bamboo. It's the next chapter in biogenic construction, and the people treating it that way now are going to have a significant head start.

The Thread Running Through All of It

Use the right material, in the right place, for the right reason. Solve the code problem instead of walking away from it. Push prefabrication as far as it can go. Question the structural assumptions everyone else treats as fixed. And, Sebastian's closing note, and maybe his most grounded one, don't forget the craftsman. All the robotics, engineered systems, and biogenic innovation in the world still need skilled hands to put it together. That part doesn't change.

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How can tiny metal hooks dramatically change construction and the way we build with wood?

Learn more about GripMetal.

In this factory tour, we go inside Nucap Industries in Toronto to get a behind-the-scenes look at a material innovation that’s transforming wood construction from the inside out. After more than 25 years of development, GripMetal is being tested as a way to mechanically reinforce wood, unlocking greater strength, ductility, and fiber efficiency without relying on adhesives.

Think rebar for wood.

In this video, you’ll see:

- How microscopic metal hooks mechanically lock into wood fiber

- Why this technology came from high-performance automotive braking systems

- How it’s already being used in modular construction

- What it could unlock for mass timber systems like CLT, NLT, and glulam

- Why hybrid materials may be the next step for scalable mass timber construction

This factory tour goes beyond machinery and process, it looks at how material science can expand what’s possible in modern construction and mass timber buildings.

If you’re interested in construction innovation, factory tours, or the future of mass timber, this video breaks it down from the ground up.

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It only takes one last-minute shift in structural grid lines—sometimes by a few inches—to trigger a cascade of rework that cripples even the best-laid construction plans. In the world of mass timber, where every dimension must align for precise fabrication, that single tweak can spark confusion with suppliers, drive up costs, and derail project schedules in ways no one expects.

This tension between early design responsibility and chaotic midstream changes is the real fork in the road. If architects, engineers, manufacturers and fabricators understand how their early design process affects the later-stage manufacturing and delivery phases - entire budgets stay intact and installation flows with fewer hiccups. But neglect the Design for Manufacturing and Assembly fundamentals (DfMA) and small misalignments can spiral into endless rework, production fiascos, and lost trust with owners.

For a quick visual on how Design Coordination, DfMA and Production steps come together for mass timber projects, download Element5’s Project Design Workflow Diagram.

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Breaking Down the Drawings

The best way to make sure a mass timber design is ready for manufacturing is to pick it apart.

“We really, for lack of a better word, destroy the drawing set. We find all the mistakes. … We need to know all the parts of the drawing, make sure there’s no unknowns.” - Kevin Rocchi , VP of Engineering at Element5 .

That teardown begins with a rigorous, discipline-wide technical review—architectural, structural, and mechanical—hunting for missing dimensions, ambiguous load paths, unclear slab extents, hidden geometry, and any detail that leaves room for interpretation. Kevin’s team at Element5 compiles every gap into a master question list and turns it into a formal RFI. When that first RFI balloons to 20 or 30 questions, it’s often a sign that the project isn’t as developed as the design team may have thought.

One area where designers consistently underestimate the supplier’s needs is load clarity.

It’s not enough to provide general design loads. Mass timber suppliers need dead, live, wind, and seismic loads broken out separately, because they must apply their own load-duration factors (CD in the US, KD in Canada) to each case when sizing connections. If the supplier doesn’t know the breakdown between dead and live loads, they can’t apply the correct load-duration factors—and any resulting connection capacities become unreliable.

That same need for clarity extends to diaphragm and lateral design. Suppliers need to see the complete lateral load path—shear diagrams, load levels, and the specific shear-resisting elements—so they can determine the correct connection forces. Without that information, they’re forced to reverse-engineer the lateral system from the drawings.

When the design team doesn’t supply the necessary load breakdown, Kevin provides the connection capacities he can justify using clearly stated CD/KD load-duration factors. He then sends those calculations back to the engineer of record with a simple request: Confirm that this capacity works for the loads you intended. It’s a back-and-forth cycle that drains time and invites rework.

The Big One — Shifting Grid Lines

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Among all the coordination challenges that derail mass timber projects, one consistently stands out.

“The big one for me is for architects… lock in your grid lines… Don’t change your grid lines once you know the mass timber supplier is engaged.”

A locked grid is the foundation for millimeter-accurate fabrication. Every glulam beam, every CLT panel, every connection detail depends on the final geometry. Shifting a column, adjusting an overhang, or nudging a bay after supplier award forces the manufacturer to re-model, re-coordinate, and re-issue shop drawings—all while the structural engineer and architect revise their own documents. It’s a cascade of new RFIs, conflicting markups, schedule drift, and preventable cost escalation.

But Kevin adds an important nuance: there is a phase where some flexibility is appropriate.

During DD, before supplier selection, it’s reasonable to keep the grid flexible and “supplier agnostic,” especially when different suppliers offer different glulam widths and depths. Every manufacturer uses its own standard sizes. Instead of locking a specific beam width prematurely, Kevin advises design teams to:

• Centerline beams and columns, and
• Accept that final beam widths and depths may shift ±½ inch once a supplier is chosen.

This approach preserves optionality without creating downstream chaos.

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CLT brings its own considerations. Designers often attempt to optimize panel thickness by specifying thinner lamellas—hoping to reduce weight or material. But North American mills overwhelmingly produce standard 38mm 2x stock, and thinner lamellas require suppliers to plane down higher-grade material, wasting fiber without reducing price.

“It’s literally the same price for us to sell you a 175mm as it is for a 139mm,” Kevin noted.

Instead of trying to fine-tune lamella thicknesses—which rarely reduces cost and often increases fiber waste—design teams should focus on defining top-of-slab elevations early and leave the selection of lamella configurations to the supplier once they’re engaged.

Once the supplier is engaged, however, the grid must stop moving. Any shift reverberates through fabrication modeling, engineering checks, hardware sizing, panelization logic, and connection detailing. What looks like a harmless tweak on paper is, in practice, a design reset.

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What Happens After the RFI Cycle

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Once Element5 has enough RFI responses to lock in slab extents, grid lines, and design loads, the work starts to shift from design coordination into fabrication. At that point, the supplier begins building the manufacturing model—the digital source of truth that drives CNC production, hardware procurement, and shop drawings.

Element5 creates that model in SolidWorks, not Revit. “We model it in SolidWorks to the millimeter,” Kevin said. SolidWorks is where the exact fabrication geometry is defined: every notch, seat, hanger, bolt, screw, pocket, and tolerance needed for machining and assembly. Once this level of modeling begins, even small design changes ripple through the production workflow.

As that model develops, Element5 issues a confirmation RFI to align the design assumptions with what they’ll actually supply. That RFI typically verifies:

• Glulam grades
• The glulam widths and depths Element5 will use
• CLT grades and layups
• Final CLT panel thicknesses
• Any differences between the design team’s assumed member sizes and Element5’s standard dimensions

Even with a detailed drawing set, the supplier has to re-baseline the exact sizes and grades they intend to fabricate, so design teams should expect this step.

Once the SolidWorks model is defined, it’s exported to Rhino and then into Revit to create the Issue for Approval (IFA) drawings. The IFA set shows what Element5 intends to deliver: the member sizes, panel extents, and connection details that have been thought through to the millimeter.

From there, the approval loop is straightforward but important: Approved, Approved as Noted, or Revise and Resubmit. A clear, timely review at this stage keeps engineering, procurement, and production aligned.

After the IFA set is approved, Element5 moves into full detailing—modeling every component to the millimeter, finalizing custom steel, completing fastener takeoffs, and batching panels and beams by truckload to match the planned erection sequence. At this point, the digital model isn’t just documentation; it becomes the playbook for how the building will be cut, shipped, and assembled.

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Coordinating the Jump From Factory to Jobsite

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Coordination with the general contractor and the installer is just as critical as the design itself. The goal is simple: ensure the building goes together on site as smoothly as it was modeled.

Mass timber installation lives or dies by sequence.

Panels and beams aren’t generic two-by-fours dropped on the ground in a bundle—they arrive CNC-cut, connection-ready, and staged for a specific order of assembly. That’s why Element5 plans material by the truckload.

“If seven panels fit on a truck, those seven panels are going to be batched together,” Kevin explained. “We need to know—are you picking panels directly off the truck and installing them right away, or are you unloading them to the ground first? That completely changes how we stack the load.”

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If the installer plans to “pick from the truck,” panels must be stacked in reverse installation order, with the first piece needed sitting on top.

If the contractor is offloading everything first, the batching strategy changes again.

Ignoring these logistical questions can force the install team to reshuffle entire truckloads manually—costly, slow, and unnecessary. A single quick response from the on-site team (“Yes, we’re picking from the truck” or “No, we’re staging first”) can save hours of site labor and prevent sequencing mistakes that ripple through the build.

This is why communication during this stage carries so much weight.

Kevin put it plainly: “Coordinating it with the general contractor and installer is key to the process.”

Just as delayed RFI responses earlier can hold up modeling, late answers at this stage slow procurement, slow batching, slow shipping, and ultimately slow erection. The supplier is planning fastener orders, custom steel lead times, and CNC operations around the sequence communicated by the field team. Any ambiguity introduces friction.

The more the GC and installer stay in sync with the supplier at this point—confirming crane plans, pick-from-truck strategies, erection pacing, and site constraints—the more the mass timber package behaves the way it was engineered to: predictable, efficient, and dramatically faster.

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Want your team to know what to expect at every step of this process? Download Element5’s Project Design Workflow Diagram.

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How Element5 Is Raising the Bar in Manufacturing

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Successful projects are always Element5’s priority, and behind the scenes, Element5 is quietly retooling their operations for more mass timer success in North America.

After a recent investment from HASSLACHER NORICA TIMBER, now a majority shareholder, Element5  has added a new glulam production line based on Hasslacher’s line in Europe. This new line became fully operational this past September and is capable of producing roughly 50,000 m³ of glulam per year, freeing the existing line to focus on CLT only at a capacity of 50,000 m³ as well . That separation of lines reduces the constant trade-off between CLT and glulam runs and gives project teams more predictable capacity.

The new glulam line is part of a large expansion to the overall facility. On top of doubling production capacity, the expansion doubled the size of the plant from 130,000 square feet to over 350,000 square feet, including a new 2-storey mass timber front office.

On the CLT side, Element5 has already expanded its CNC and value-add area and completely rethought panel handling. Historically, CNC was the bottleneck: every panel had to be picked up by crane, machined, then moved again. Today, panels move on conveyors through three CNC machines in a continuous flow.

As Kevin put it, that shift “moved our bottleneck back to production”—a good problem to have.

The result is faster, more consistent machining and less risk that CNC capacity is what holds up your schedule.

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Element5 has also built a dedicated sorting and grading building around a MiCROTEC© Goldeneye scanner. Instead of 10–15 people visually grading 2x material, lumber now runs through the scanner, which measures moisture, stiffness (MOE), dimensions, and defects board by board. Wet pieces are diverted to the kiln; higher-strength boards are sorted into stronger categories; localized defects can be cut out so the remaining piece qualifies for a higher grade.

As Kevin put it, the system “essentially allows you to make MSR out of everything,” and he’s blunt that traditional visual grading is outdated by comparison.

On top of that, Element5 is working with several Canadian partners to develop new glulam grades using “remanufactured lamellas”—homogeneous beams that are ripped, rotated, and re-laminated so defects and finger joints are staggered in the tension zone.

Those beams are slated to be tested at the University of British Columbia, with the aim of establishing design values for future CSA O86 updates. The goal is straightforward: to enable, for the first time, spruce–pine–fir glulam produced this way to exceed 2,400 psi allowable bending strength—reaching the 24F–1.8E performance level designers typically associate with Douglas fir.

For project teams, all of this adds up to tangible benefits:

• More reliable capacity and lead times as CLT and glulam get their own dedicated lines
• Faster, less fragile CNC flow thanks to conveyor-based handling instead of crane moves
• Better use of the fiber basket, with machine-graded lumber and upgraded boards replacing broad visual buckets
• Higher-performing glulam options from SPF previously only available with Douglas Fir.

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Conclusion

Mass timber succeeds when everyone upstream and downstream is aligned. Clear drawings, locked grids, fast RFI cycles, tight modeling, and real-time coordination are what turn a good design into a smooth build. With Element5 advancing both its manufacturing capabilities and its project delivery process, design teams have a clearer path than ever to predictable schedules, tighter budgets, and timber structures that come together exactly as intended.

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Join Our Newsletter to Download the Project Design DfMA Workflow Diagram from Element5.

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Picture a downtown site at dawn, where contractors gently swing a 50-foot-long, 2 feet wide and feet deep timber bream into place. Not for building, but a parking structure.

That’s the reality of what's happening in the world of mass timber right now. And to unpack it, we spoke with the Systems Wizard himself, Corey Hokanson, the Design Manager at SmartLam North America.

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An Industry Scales Up: From Mass to Mega Timber  

Columns and beams once considered “big” are now growing so large that onlookers knock on them to check if they’re hollow. That’s exactly what happened when SmartLam North America showcased its new 24-inch by 42-inch glulam at a recent conference. They drew immediate curiosity about how glulam could possibly reach such dimensions - and be produced economically. Until recently, achieving a beam two feet wide by up to four feet deep often meant a time-consuming, custom hand-layup process. Now, SmartLam presses in Dothan can turn out these jumbo glulam members seamlessly.

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Driving this transformation is a practical desire to manage higher loads and longer spans with fewer pieces, all while addressing fire and sustainability requirements. In Hokanson’s view, “There’s a lot of things that change when you start getting into pieces that big and that heavy.”

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One direct technical gain is the potential to reduce overall piece counts—doing away with multiple smaller beams in favor of a single member. Fewer members means fewer connections and labor hours, but it also demands bigger handling equipment and more careful planning. Because single pieces can top 12,000 pounds, oversights in design, sequencing or installation can erode those hoped-for benefits. The industrial leap from “mass” to “mega” marks a moment where “everything has changed in the last couple years,” adding fresh options that simply did not exist at this scale before.

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3-Hour Fire Rating: A Bold New Frontier  

Not long ago, few imagined that exposed timber could endure three hours of direct fire exposure. Yet Hokanson describes new furnace tests showing mass timber assemblies charring for three hours with “no coatings, no intumescent paint, no drywall wrapping.” During these tests, the timber effectively formed a thick char layer on the surface, protecting an undamaged structural core. He notes, “They put it in a furnace and basically blast it with a blowtorch for three hours… it’s like you threw it in a bonfire.”

From a design perspective, this changes the conversation around heavy timber in spaces that demand ultra-safe, code-driven solutions. It also means teams have a legitimate alternative to expensive encapsulation or the  steel and/or concrete typical for high fire-rating assemblies. In tangible terms, using these 3-hour rated timber assemblies frees projects from adding extensive gypsum board or intumescent coatings. The cause-and-effect is straightforward: by allowing enough mass for extended charring, the material retains a stable core, preserves structural performance, and satisfies the code. Hokanson points out the real advantage of timber’s char characteristic: “You figure three hours… that’s a long time… you can get a lot of people, everybody out of a building in three hours.” It’s an endorsement that large wood members are stepping decisively into applications once reserved for concrete or steel.

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Podiums and Parking Decks: Challenging Concrete’s Turf  

Now, timber can claim spaces long dominated by concrete—like podium levels and parking decks. SmartLam is already fielding designs that swap out concrete beams, slabs, and rebar with 7+ layer CLT and heavy glulam. Hokanson captures the schedule benefit in practical terms:

“I can come drop in these four pieces of timber off the semi-truck in two hours. Or we can sit there and form this all up for the concrete and then put all the rebar in… then we can pour the concrete. Then we can sit around and wait for it to cure….”

That contrast grapples with weeks of site labor, specialized forming and bracing, and the wait time that inevitably follows a wet pour.

Replacing a conventional podium system (concrete beams plus a concrete deck) with large glulam beams spanned by nine-ply CLT does come with its own unique set of consideration, though. Hokanson describes a project employing 12.5-inch-thick CLT panels: “That piece weighs 12,000 lbs.… we better make sure it’s in the right order on the truck,” emphasizing the need for careful sequencing and onsite logistics.

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Mastering the Logistics Puzzle

Enormous structural members offer clear benefits, but only if carefully choreographed from manufacturing to final install. It starts the moment a 12,000-pound panel is pressed and ends with that panel being correctly sequenced on-site. Hokanson warns, “If you get partway through putting it together and you’re like, ‘Oh, I should have put that one in first,’ now I got to go pull three pieces out… you’re losing all that time schedule savings.”

A concrete deck might allow continuous pour after pour without worrying about piece-by-piece staging. Timber, however, arrives “basically a puzzle piece,” so just-in-time sequencing is crucial.

The upside? Mastering that puzzle yields an impressively streamlined crew—“on a mass timber install, you might have five or six people,” Hokanson notes. With fewer trades on-site, the risk of coordination clashes drops. But to keep that advantage, each piece must arrive when needed and in the exact orientation for rigging and lifting into position. For those tackling a podium job or large commercial floorplate, the short yet precise staging can be a major edge—provided the entire supply chain works in lockstep, from the press operator in Dothan to the crane operator on the job site.

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The Four-Foot Screw: New Realities for Field Install  

Hardly anyone expects to drive a four-foot screw into solid wood, but the new wave of massive beams demands equally massive fasteners. “You’re not going to find a lot of 16-inch screws at your local hardware store,” Hokanson observes. That leads to specialized torque drivers, batteries that can handle heavy loads, and yes, an awareness that if the tool overheats or the screw seizes, installation will be disrupted. “You have to drive it in one go all the way in,” he explains, because if mid-thread cooling occurs, the screw can bind and snap.

The consequences of using the wrong method can be devastating. “Worst case scenario, you’re taking all those screws back out and replacing them all because you voided the warranty… or you broke the screws off,” Hokanson says. In the absolute worst case, snapping a critical fastener inside a beam can require full beam replacement—a cost nobody wants. This scenario flips a standard wood framing approach (laborers with practice at sinking three- or four-inch screws) into a new territory where site managers must plan for specialty equipment, factor in slow-driving drivers, and equip extra drills to cycle in when batteries begin overheating. In short, ignoring the fastener hardware dimension might jeopardize the very speed advantage that large mass timber promises.

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Automated Presses Meet Sky-High Loads

No one doubted that big glulam members could be made by hand. But producing them at scale—“a press load of beams every fifteen minutes,” as Hokanson puts it? Utilizing a uniform, factory-tight layup with presses sized for these larger members makes it possible. And more reliable.

Fasteners and connections can fail if there are gaps in the lamellas, something mitigated with a consistently dense beam. Hokanson explains, “Simpson Strong Tie has an actual study and a formula for how much you have to reduce the capacity if there’s gaps between boards,” referencing the risk with hand layup members of this size. The new automated llines mitigate that capacity drop. The result is more reliable performance, higher design loads, and a confidence that timber can compete head-to-head with steel or concrete in major structural roles. As Hokanson says of the new system, “We can make anything in between this and this,” meaning wide, deep, or a combination of both, all without the manual constraints of older methods.

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Pushing Off-Site Construction Principles Further

Massive beams magnify a core principle of mass timber: “You really don’t want to have to do that” on site, Hokanson quips when describing the labor of drilling a hole through 42 inches of solid wood. A routine task might become an hour-long ordeal, requiring two people, multiple drill bits, and a shop vacuum to clear sawdust along the way.

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The obvious takeaway: incorporate all cuts, holes, and service runs into the CNC stage. “If that shows up in the wrong order and you have to move that somewhere… how do you move that?” quickly transforms from a rhetorical question to a budget-busting predicament.

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In a world where beams can approach 4 feet in depth, that coordination starts early and runs deep. Whether it’s a parking deck or an office building with hidden conduit, everything from the largest structural connection to the smallest wire chase needs to be pinned down before the press and the CNC do their work.

Future of Mega Mass Timber

“Don’t assume that we can’t do something,” Hokanson says, stressing that many long-discussed but previously unfeasible mass timber ideas deserve revisiting.

The giant beams are here—and they are more than a novelty. “Everything has changed in the last couple years… we’ve got bigger screws, bigger fasteners, bigger brackets… let’s just do more of it.” Then, with that, he closes the door on doubt and opens it to a new scale of timber.

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