Residential Timber Construction - Evaluating Emerging Technologies

Timber has always had a profound role in residential construction; in Australia it has been mainly used for flooring and stick framing erected according to long established recipes. While the local industry has recently embraced some new technologies such as Laminated Veneer Lumber, other more innovative ways of building with timber now gaining acceptance overseas, are not being adopted locally. This document describes a systematic process undertaken for the purpose of evaluating the suitability of overseas and local emerging timber technologies (ETs) for use in the Australian residential construction industry. The purpose of this was to help the local industry set its technology development agenda. To assess the local suitability of the Emerging Technologies, a modified Delphi process was employed to interrogate the experience of a varied group of specialists each of whom had relevant expertise in the construction industry. The process aimed to arrive at a consensual ranking of emerging technologies against a variety of criteria for publication in a web database. The website has been made available to encourage and assist industry in taking up ETs in Australia.