California’s Mass Timber Future: New CLT Plant, AB 2446 & Wildfire w/Fabric Mass Timber

What's #MassTimber's role in #California's $145 Billion #construction market?  Is it the next global leader? What role does AB 2446 play? This NEW #masstimber manufacturer weigh's in.

Scott Ehlert, CEO, and Mark Little, Director of Product Innovation at Fabric Mass Timber, discuss their mission to address California’s housing crisis, wildfire challenges, and climate goals with sustainable, innovative mass timber solutions.

Learn how Fabric Mass Timber plans to revolutionize construction in California, from wildfire fiber utilization to pioneering a customer-focused approach for mass timber adoption.

Fabric Mass Timber breaks down misconceptions about fiber shortages, explains the impact of California’s AB 2446, and unveils their innovative approach to prefabricated, sustainable housing. From wildfire-thinning fiber applications to building a fully renewable-powered factory, Fabric is creating scalable solutions for California’s housing and environmental challenges.

✉️ Visit Fabric Mass Timber's Website: https://www.fabricws.com/

📧 Contact Scott: scott.ehlert@fabricws.com
📧 Contact Mark: mark.little@fabricws.com

Looking for your mass timber community? Attend the 2025 Mass Timber Group Summit in Denver Co - Aug 20-22nd!

Chapters

• 0:00 Mass Timber Revolution in California
• 14:20 Building a Customer-Driven Fabrication Team
• 28:03 Engaging Industry for Timber Innovation
• 31:19 Educational Initiatives for Mass Timber

Transcript

Mark: 0:00

Right, because mass timber is very popular. Everyone listening to the podcast knows that They've all seen the hockey stick on the Woodworks website. But we think 2446 is just going to make that growth curve just straight up and down. I mean it's a good bridge between the lack of knowledge out there and kind of the incentive to make it happen.

Scott: 0:19

We think of it like renewable energy, like the wind generation, for example, was really kind of slow to get off the ground in California Once those state-level mandates kicked in, requiring utilities to have a certain percentage of their you know power source come from, you know renewables, you know wind straight up, and so we see that same thing happening with the mass transit.

Brady: 0:53

This is the Mass Timber Group Show. I'm Brady. Today I caught up with the team behind Fabric Mass Timber, soon to be California's first mass timber producer. Their CEO, scott Ehler, and Mark Little, their director of product innovation, took me through their plans to use mass timber to address California's wildfire problems and the housing crisis. Their approach to mass timber comes with a high degree of services and support so that these buildings can become a reality. And last, if you like these podcasts, subscribing to the channel is the biggest compliment you can give us.

Scott: 1:21

So with that, let's get into it. Hi, I'm Scott Ehlert. I'm the CEO and founder of Fabric Mass Timber and we are working on opening California's first mass timber factory. Working at the intersection of solving California's housing, wildfire and climate crises.

Mark: 1:36

And I'm Mark Little, director of Product Innovation for Fabric Mass Timber. My remit is really to understand what we're making, how we're making it, who we're making it with and who our customers are, what their needs are.

Brady: 1:46

Yeah, well, that's exciting, guys. I've talked to a lot of folks that have said why is there not a mass timber facility in California? So it sounds like you guys are building one. How did this all come about? Tell me the background.

Scott: 2:08

How did we get from crazy idea let's build mass timber to like, hey, this is happening. Well, we still have a lot of work to do, for sure, but we've been working at this for a really long time. We started working on the idea of bringing mass timber to California about five years ago. My background was in strategy consulting. I worked at brand customer experience and design strategy for big global firms and worked with a lot of companies in the housing and construction space. I just saw just an incredible need for delivering new building materials and methodologies to deliver the volume of housing that California needs. I left my consulting career to solve that right, Just kind of started with a blank piece of paper and said how do we make this happen? And spent about a year just kind of diving deeper into the industry. I had a lot of experience at that C-suite level working with big companies, and so I had a great kind of strategic kind of lens into these things. But like the tactical side of it all and execution, it's definitely more research. So I spent about a year just asking questions and building relationships and talking with builders and developers, subcontractors and architects and engineers and planning departments, just banging on every door possible to just try to unpack this kind of gory knot of housing supply in California.

Scott: 3:06

For those that don't know, California has really put a pretty monstrous number out there for new housing that needs to be built in the state to meet affordability. Just in the last couple of months the median home price in California broke $100,000 for the first time ever. So when we think about housing affordability it's double. The median home price here is double what it is nationally. So it's a beast of a problem and the state has identified the need to build 2.5 billion units of housing in the next essentially like five, six years to meet that demand and actually just to control the continually skyrocketing cost of housing. Again, this is just kind of a beast of a problem that current traditional building methods and methodologies just don't have a solution for, especially when you kind of factor in some of the macro problems that California is dealing with around labor. Really that's like the big one, right? It's like labor supply and skilled trades. Those numbers are dropping across the state, ironically kind of heavily tied to the cost of housing, right, Like there's not a lot of timber framers, wood framers, that can afford the $350,000 a year income that you need to be able to buy a house in San Jose, for example, right, and so we're losing a lot of that workforce. It's about being replenished, and so how do you build the volume of housing that we need, a timeframe that we need it, with a fraction of the workforce that is required to build that volume of housing?

Scott: 4:33

I spent a lot of time looking at different prefab technologies modular, panelized and there was some interesting stuff in there, but there was a lot of there's a big, thick graveyard of companies in the modular space and there was a lot of good reasons for that. It's a really tough business and it's tough to get traction in the industry. No-transcript, but more of something that kind of amplifies what everybody's already doing today. Yep, and then you tie that to the wildfire crisis in our state. As we were doing research on this and just trying to wrap our heads early days around mass timber, California was on fire from coast to coast and border to border. There was huge, massive fires across the state, and so we started attending all these forest management task force meetings in Sacramento and really kind of diving into that problem and learning about the tremendous volume of biomass wood fire in our forests that needs to be removed.

Scott: 6:02

That needs to be removed, and the state is really kind of desperate to incentivize use of that Right now. It's all waste right, it's all waste material. This is a problem common across the West, but no more acute than in California, and so that was really kind of the genesis moment of Fabric as a company. It was looking at the need to remove a tremendous amount of material from our forests, needing, on the other hand, needing a tremendous amount of material from our forests, on the other hand, needing a tremendous amount of new buildings and need those in higher density in-fill locations away from wildfire risk. So we need to go more critical on that. Mass Timber is the natural bridge between those two things, and that was really the beginning of Fabric. And then we basically spent the last several years, you know, figuring out how to take that from an idea into an actual, like viable business.

Brady: 6:50

Thank you for sharing that. I think you guys are bringing the intersection. Like you said, have two very important topics right Housing and the environment specifically are for us how much of California's assembly bill 2446 is playing into, like your conversations and your thought process moving forward.

Scott: 7:06

Yeah, very much. So. You know when we look at what's happening, you know kind of at the macro level in the state, you know the need for new housing is a big driver, but you know builders are also. You know they're being asked to do a tremendous amount with less and under an increasingly more complicated environmental and regulatory regimen.

Brady: 7:25

And I was just going to say I'm sorry. I just realized that many people might not know what AB 2446 is. Can you unpack what that?

Scott: 7:31

is yeah. Yeah. So AB 2446 was a it was. It was signed two Septembers ago. It was part of a big climate package signed by Governor Nussel, but it was kind of a sleeper component in in all the other ones that were more about energy use and renewable energy and this was kind of a piece that really kind of slipped under the radar a little bit but have really kind of profound impact on our built environment and how we build and the construction industry overall in California. When we think about California's construction industry this is $145 billion a year industry in the state. It's a monster of a business ecosystem by 2030 and a 40% reduction by 2035.

Scott: 8:27

And that impacts about 70% of that $145 billion construction industry right, it's commercial buildings over 10,000 square feet and residential buildings over five units. Right, so an incredibly broad swath of the total volume of construction that we produce in the state. And so you know, you can see, that the state of California is taking, you know, the climate crisis seriously and you know they're really driving, you know, this kind of top-down adoption of more sustainable, biobased building materials and we believe that you know even though I'm sure most of the people listening to this will know that California is the largest market in North America for mass timber.

Scott: 9:07

You know one out of seven buildings, approximately, are built in the state. Uh, but with ab-2446 kicking in um, you know, we just see this being really one of the largest markets globally, if not largest market globe. And uh, you know we've talked with the folks that are writing the actual like letter, the law that was signed and putting in the details and it's moving forward as it was passed right.

Mark: 9:24

These are very aggressive uh mandates um that that the state is committed to uh to see through and I think that might be a good way to kind of um, enhance adoption right, because mass timber is very popular. Everyone listening to the podcast knows that. They've all seen that the hockey stick on the woodworks uh website. But we think 2446 is just going to make that growth curve just straight up and down. I mean it's a good bridge between the lack of knowledge out there and kind of the incentive to make it happen.

Scott: 9:55

We think of it like in renewable energy, like the wind generation, for example, was really kind of slow to get off the ground in California Once those state-level mandates kicked in, requiring utilities to have a certain percentage of their power source come from renewables wind straight up. And so we see that same thing happening with mass-tank Concern and the risk is that it disincentivizes construction. Construction is already so expensive in California. You know new construction, you know to pencil in, like Los Angeles, your hard costs are like $5.50 a square foot, right, like in that range, right for multi-chamber. It's really just an incredibly expensive market.

Scott: 10:36

But you know so we don't want 80 to 24, 46 to slow down our already kind of anemic kind of housing market. But you know, I, I think there's ways in the state is very much looking into carrots to incentivize this. This is where we see our role as a manufacturer and providing a high level of kind of services for builders, uh, so that they can have that knowledge and how to build, how to build efficiently, how to adopt this new material that doesn't, you know, kind of upend all their processes. It's not as intimidating or as daunting as one might think.

Brady: 11:08

So, working with the design and build teams, it sounds like you do more than just sell CLT or glulam. Am I getting that right?

Mark: 11:17

Yeah, I mean our approach is really to deliver projects, not just products. I think there's definitely players in the industry who just want to sell billets and be done with it and then have secondary manufacturers take care of the rest of it. So we want to offer that level of full service, of fabrication, but also, on the front end, really adopting a very robust customer service experience, really understanding what the customer needs are and how can you make that process much more sophisticated, efficient, accessible, transparent. I think all these things are really keywords for our customer experience platform that we're trying to build into the process. So, really thinking, taking all the learnings from all the guys who've gone through this before, I've done a great job and have kind of evolved this way organically. We're taking that knowledge and starting there. So I think Hopefully that's a big advantage for us in the future, as we have this very, very robust customer service experience.

Scott: 12:09

When we look at again going back to the California market, that's obviously our core focus is serving our local regional state. Here there's 300,000 licensed general contractors in the state of California. If you look at the number, who's actually built with Minstember? It's basically on marketized fingers, right? It's not a lot, right. So how do we scale this right? How do you scale mass timber delivery and project delivery to grow that base of contractors that feel comfortable and confident speccing their projects, putting timelines together, trade coordination for a mass timber project? So, while other states like Oregon or offices like DC, for example, even Colorado has a mass timber coalition, right Like California doesn't have that yet, and so a lot of that, the efforts of, like woodworks and other trade organizations are incredibly powerful. But a lot of that education and that knowledge needs to come from the manufacturer on the ground, and so we want to empower just a much broader base of builders out of that pool of 300,000 to feel that they too can tap into the benefits that most.

Brady: 13:19

For sure, for sure. And so, if we're looking at California as having a very large demand for mass timber currently, but also moving forward, what are you guys doing to attract California customers? That might be a little different than take your pick of any other manufacturer across the globe, like why would people be coming to Fabric?

Scott: 13:39

You know, if I may, brady, just to push back a little bit of that thinking. You know, yes, we. You know, obviously we'll be competing against other mass timber manufacturers, but that's not where our mindset is. This is about organically growing the mass timber base in California and conquering business from congregants. If we spend our days worried about what the existing players in the industry are doing, then we've already lost. We've already lost the plot and have missed a much bigger opportunity.

Scott: 14:09

So while you know, yes, we'll be bidding against people on those signature, you know library projects and whatnot, and you know college buildings right, like those are always going to be like hot items to bid against.

Scott: 14:20

We're really kind of focused on that organic growth and you know, as Mark alluded to, like building that customer experience platform. Again, that's tapping into our background. So I don't think we've touched on Mark's background yet as well, but you know that's how we feel that we can draw people into our work is like giving them the tools to do that early feasibility, giving them design tools to test their site, you know, to educate and inform their design teams, kind of best practices, right, standardized details we're very much kind of thinking of in project delivery, the kit and parts conversation. Everybody in design systems, all the manufacturers, are talking about that. How do we kind of standardize certain aspects of that? How do we empower more kind of sophisticated developers and builders who have their own? How do we empower more kind of sophisticated developers and builders who have their own? How do we create new parts together? Right, and so it's really kind of dialing up or dialing down that level of service based on the sophistication and the needs of the customer.

Brady: 15:19

Peel back a little bit of your background for us and then tell us how that plays into the conversation.

Mark: 15:24

Yeah, that's a good segue. I mean, my career started in architecture and experience design. So I started off with a firm called 8 Inc, which was the company that worked with Steve Jobs to design the Apple Store back in the day. So I spent years and years and years back at 8 Inc working on understanding this kind of crossover between the environment and the experience for its users. So I've always had this kind of user-centric, customer-centric focus. So that took, you know, I was with Aiding for almost 20 years. I was a principal there for about 10 of those years Did projects for. You know tons of companies that are very progressive. You know Apple, tesla, nike, virgin, and those were all really based on this heavy, robust, sophisticated customer experience. So that led to the multiple iterations of my career. But most recently I was at Google as design and strategy lead at their R&D for the built environment, which was kind of an innovation lab to think about the future of Google buildings, the spaces, the workplace technology.

Mark: 16:27

We're doing a lot of work with mass timber. We're doing a lot of work with prefabrication, a lot of work with kits of parts. So all these things kind of combine them together. I think is kind of a key aspect of what we're doing at Fabric Mass Timber and I think what drew me to what Scott's doing is he's obviously the core of what Fabric Mass Timber is built on. It's inspiring, but he's really working hard to build a very differentiated team and I think that's one of the ways that we can again talk about ourselves as being differentiated experience lens, but also that very practical kind of manufacturing experience, engineering, design assist experience lens. So I think combining all those things together is kind of where the industry is headed and we kind of want to start there and just go for it.

Brady: 17:18

What about production capabilities, like, have you guys figured out, like what kind of or what size of panels you're doing? What kind of fabrication capabilities? Has that all been locked in yet?

Scott: 17:26

Yeah, I think you know I think we're about 80% there at this point. We've done quite a bit of factory concept work. We've built out really robust models, so we have a good sense of what our output needs to be to meet current and 10-year timeline market demand in California as well. So I think, yeah, we've got a pretty good idea of that product mix and those manufacturing capabilities.

Mark: 17:49

I was going to say it goes past just the production part of it, right, because the production isn't necessarily the hard part, right. The you know, obviously we're going with very sophisticated automated systems that are proven, that are kind of the industry standard, so that part of it isn't that. I mean it's really hard. The bigger piece of the puzzle again is that front end, that customer part, the tools that we can empower our customers with. But then on the back end all the fabrication, all the CNC, all the connection detailing, you know, all those are kind of the hardware installation, all those things that kind of become bottlenecks for some. We want to understand where those existing bottlenecks are and kind of adapt our facility design around those so that we don't have those same difficulties.

Brady: 18:32

I was looking on the website and I see a whole team up there. So have you guys already started diving into some of those components?

Scott: 18:38

Yeah, absolutely. We've kind of broken out the core capabilities and competencies that we want to bring to the market um, and are kind of plugging those holes with with top talent across that, and so we'll be actually kind of rolling out some some new announcements on the team, uh, shortly as well. Um, I think you know, being in california has its advantages, right, um, there's a really deep talent pool here. It's a really attractive place to live um, people want to be part of the action and California gives that. So I think, while obviously building out the workforce and the talent pool to deliver on this is always going to be a challenge, I think we do have a leg up in that we do have a really attractive value, prop and story and brand that we're building. That's drawing people to it.

Mark: 19:31

And it's a really enticing opportunity as well. Well, yeah, I think just to dig a little bit deeper into that, ready to unpack it a bit, I mean, we've we've identified the roles that we think are important to build out early. Um, those include, you know, bring out an engineering partner who can help us design a team around the engineering and design assist opportunity for us. We brought on a head of digital manufacturing. He's got a deep experience with robotics and digital fabrication, so we want to, you know again, we're kind of coming at this with that. We know what the end goal is and the end state that we want to be, so we can kind of reverse engineer our factory to get to get to that point.

Brady: 20:04

And so where, where are we at on the timeline for seeing some fabric mass timber roll out the end of the factory?

Scott: 20:11

Yeah, well, if everything goes according to plan which it won't, but if everything does, then we're looking at best case scenario, end of 2027, but most likely mid-2028 is probably more feasible time-life we do have some preliminary pilot factory stuff that we're working on. Between now and then there's stuff that we can build out on and start to iterate on those processes, especially that, if we're thinking of it, if what we're doing is project delivery, master project delivery, we Master of project delivery. We've got a pilot factory in the works now that will really start to build out those capabilities, both on the physical manipulation and logistic side, all the way up through to the digital systems, and really starting to kind of staff that out and build out that really kind of competent and skilled workforce that can do that.

Brady: 21:06

Well, how are you guys sourcing the fiber that's going into your products, like, how are you working with existing landowners and mills and how does that whole kind of supply chain work for you guys?

Scott: 21:15

Uh-huh, yeah. So I think, well, you know, one of the reasons, you know I should kind of touch on the very top of the podcast was, you know, everybody's kind of looking around and wondering when or why there's no mass timber, when a mass timber factory is coming to California, why there isn't one today. And I think there's a widely held belief that there's just not enough fiber in the state to support a mass timber manufacturer, and I think that misperception worked to our benefit and that it gave us the runway to pursue this. But there are some really strong and capable milling groups in the state of california and they do produce the. You know they do have the fiber basket and they do produce the. You know raw materials at scale that are needed to supply this.

Scott: 21:59

Um, you know everything from the lamb stock grade dug fur for glt, uh, all the way through to the full spectrum of SPF for CLT, and so we've been very early in the process. That's one of the best bits of advice that we got from the big European players, and I love the collaborative nature of the business and how much information sharing there is. But one thing that we got early from the Europeans was get really close to the folks that cut the logs. And those are your best friends, right, because without that then you've got nothing. And so that was something that over the last several years, we've really just taken the time to build those early relationships, to get those letters of support from all the big million groups within California to let them know that we're real, that we're pushing this thing forward and that they can start to get behind what we're doing.

Scott: 22:52

And we've received tremendous support from the local milling industry. They recognize that, yes, they want to see greater demand for their product, but they also want to see healthier California forests. So they're kind of on the front lines of the wildfire, right, like all of their timberlands and their sourcing are at great jeopardy due to the overgrowth in California's forests. So there's a lot of support there and working collaboratively with the mills and working with them in strategic partnerships to not only get the supply of existing materials that we need but to also, you know, kind of experiment right and to really kind of push and work together to identify the fiber baskets and the species that we can get at volume that can support new you know, clt and GLT layups, and then have that like landscape impact with the wildfire component and I think there's been, you know, a lot of support, as Scott said, from the industry and then have that landscape impact with the wildfire component.

Mark: 24:02

California's forests in mass timber products work with Oregon state to really do some testing on some, some fibers that are typically not seen in mass timber that could be appropriate for GLT or CLT. So I think there's just, you know, in an industry that you know it's very difficult to do what we're trying to do. As you know, it's very difficult to get the wood if we're not vertically integrated. So how to build this kind of, like you know, vertically integrated organization by proxy right, like building those deep relationships with the mills so that we can work hand in hand with them as partners versus just customers.

Brady: 24:38

Got it, and is that going to draw all of your attention and resources until you know that 2028 timeframe? Or you guys have something you're working on in between that, Like what's next in the immediate future?

Mark: 24:48

Yeah, well, we have and have been working on building systems. So, as Scott alluded to, febre kind of started as a multifamily housing mass timber kit parts solution. So we've taken that as kind of a parallel path as we build the factory out. We have opportunities much sooner than then with groups to help implement mass timber solutions specifically for homeless housing. So we've kind of taken our initial work on the multifamily housing system and adjusted it to be appropriate for a homeless housing solution, which we think is something that's incredibly, incredibly critical for us. I mean, everyone is aware of the homeless housing crisis everywhere, but in California it's super acute. I mean there's over 180,000 people that are homeless in the state. The state's dumping billions of dollars into trying to solve it, but the solutions are all kind of falling a bit flat right. There are a lot of prefabricated solutions out there, but we think we can do better. We think with a mass timber-based system we can be a parity with many of those systems better. We think with a mass timber-based system we can be a parody with many of those systems. We can build more sustainably. We can build solutions for housing these people. That's much more draws on the biophilic benefits of mass timber.

Mark: 25:56

And a big differentiator for us in that space is density. So a lot of these groups have been working with kind of tiny home solutions which are just individualized boxes on a site, which is super inefficient from a site planning perspective. So banking on density as a good differentiator. So, for instance, we're working with a homeless housing group in Oakland, california, called YSA, who have an existing tiny home village in Oakland, kind of out near the airport, and that's a series of essentially tough sheds on trailers. So we're working with them to expand their offering on the existing site and we can fit 32 of our units on the footprint of four of their existing units. So if you can imagine, I mean that's one way to draw more services to more people is to really have more efficient planning on site. So we're working with them to build out up to 100 units on a space that currently houses 27 units.

Mark: 26:52

So huge opportunities there for the density aspect of it, the biophilic aspect of it and the other part that we think is really cool about what we're doing is that our system is demountable. So it's robust enough to be assembled and disassembled and reused or stored in multiple uses. Because a lot of these providers are on temporary sites, they're on parking lots. They may not be there for more than a year or two. So we want to design a system that was demountable and reusable forever and storable if they need to store it. It's not a volumetric modular system, it's a flat pack system so it can be stored offsite in a much more compact footprint than a typical like tough shit.

Scott: 27:33

Yeah.

Brady: 27:33

I love that. That makes a lot of sense, yeah.

Scott: 27:35

And that really just kind of goes back to just our underlying philosophy, right Of kind of looking at the kind of macro challenges facing California and how do we create a regional-based solution that are designed specifically to maximize the impact that we can have on these problems and then provide a lot of benefits as well. It doesn't hurt that mass timber is not only an incredibly effective material and solution but it's beautiful, it leads to really incredible design. So, as Mark is talking about in the homeless application, the biilic aspects, right, like here's people that have lived, you know, uh, and this, this group why I say that we're working with they specifically target homeless youth, right. So we're looking at, like young people in their you know, late teens, early 20s that have been on the streets, had really really tough lives, right, um, and so how can we give them a calm, you know, an environment that is that does not feel like an industrial box, but something that feels like a calm, soothing environment for them to, um, to receive those kind of recovery services and and re-acclimation services in?

Mark: 28:37

yeah, and I I should give a shout out our partners in this as we designed it. Our hacker architects in fortland, home structures of fort and Arup was something. That's a lot of the envelope design. So this is a kind of a world-class dream team of mass timber folks really putting their best minds into a problem that typically doesn't get that kind of attention. Yes, yeah.

Scott: 28:59

And that goes back to you know again, our kind of really engaging with the people that we want, you know, with the industry, right, Working with. You know what we think about that customer approach. How do we work with the industry as it exists today? Work with the, with the folks that are kind of driving mass timber, adoption and driving the knowledge of mass timber, and incorporate their work and their thinking into our process so that we're not coming in thinking that again that we have all the answers right.

Scott: 29:25

Um, you know, I think, something that I learned from the early research and you know digging into the prefab world with how many you know outsiders came to the construction industry and kind of looked down their nose at. You know construct the, you know the construction folks, as you know these like backwards, you know kind of you know, the amethyst right, and I don't I think they couldn't be more wrong.

Scott: 29:45

Right Like I feel, like you know, we've all really kind of humbled ourselves in this process and that there's so much incredible institutional knowledge and we want to tap into that and help create tools that accelerate that and not think that we're going to disrupt the industry. Right Like, I can't think of a single conversation I've had with a builder or an engineer that wants their process disrupted. You know, right Like, they want to minimize disruption as much as possible, minimize risk, and so I think we can do that by engaging with really smart folks like Hacker and Arup and Hulms and learning those best practices and learning about what makes their clients tick and how we can better serve both the design team as well as the end client.

Brady: 30:26

Yeah, I think that's a very intelligent and needed approach and, yeah, I'm looking forward to watching what you guys do. I have one more question for you before we get to our last question, and it's an easy one how can people find out more about what you're doing and get in contact with you?

Scott: 30:38

You know the Fabric website, so it's fabricmastembercom. You can reach out to us just around on our generic email. You can also reach out to us individually. It's can we share. Can we share our emails? Uh on, do we? Do we need to say them, or?

Scott: 30:51

I'll link them down below yeah, okay, yeah, uh, yeah, you know, if you're interested in talking, you know again. You know, while we're primarily focused on california, um, you know, we're looking at the original southwest states as well. I mean serving those underserved markets and building that customer base there. So if you're in Nevada, arizona, utah, right, feel free to reach out to us. We'd love to talk to you and see how we can support your projects as well.

Brady: 31:14

Link all that down below. I encourage everybody listening to connect with you guys, find out more about what you're doing. My last question for you, and we'll start with mark this time you've got somebody in an elevator. You've got 60 to 90 seconds to tell them why mass timber is awesome, what you guys are doing and what you're hoping to do, uh, and impact in the california world. What do you say to that person?

Mark: 31:35

yeah, I might maybe like re-ask the question yeah, yeah, so no, I would say, I think a huge component of what we're trying to do here and part of this the industry struggle is through education. So so many people don't even know what mass timber is. People who know mass timber are just obsessed with it. Right, but how do we broaden the message and really broadcast the benefits of mass timber and why it's great? So, for instance, we were at Climate Week last month in San Francisco. It's hitting multiple events with investors and climate tech folks and no one's heard of mass timber and of all the groups in the world. You should know about mass timber. The folks at Climate Week should know.

Mark: 32:14

So I think there's a huge gap in kind of knowledge even of mass timber. We do tell people at Mass Timber and the fact that something we didn't even get into here, but the fact we're trying to use utilize some of these wildfire thinning fibers that might not typically be used in Mass Timber you know the story is just like people's jaws drop. Tell me more. Tell me more of the fact that we're trying to solve all these acute problems through this one really simple and elegant solution. I think is super powerful. So it's not really an elevator pitch, but that's kind of, I think, a broader need for a bigger education Depends on how long your elevator is.

Scott: 32:54

So, yeah, I'm going to take the easy route and kind of echo what Mark said a little bit in that, you know, it's like, yeah, as Mark kind of alluded to, right like people in the masterware industry, like Europe, we feel like we're kind of in the center of the storm, right Like in the eye of the storm, and that's we breathe and sleep, you know, dream about mass timber, but if you just go just a little step outside of that, nobody really still knows what it is on state, california, state level procurement policies and for their building, you know, their official kind of state building and architecture teams, and they never even heard of Mastin, right, these are people that are, you know, here, are the state that's driving initiatives like 80, 24, 46.

Scott: 33:33

And there's still this huge disconnect between the people that are actually building the buildings and designing the buildings, who aren't even considering engineer wood products because they just don't even know about it right.

Scott: 33:43

So, you know, I think there's this huge educational component to drive that awareness, to make it a, you know, kind of a household name, if you will, alongside concrete and steel, and I really think that that really kind of starts the education level At the early.

Scott: 33:59

You know, we kind of need to plant those seeds early. You know, if we're thinking long-term here and this is a long-term commitment to California, a long-term commitment to mass timber we need to really be building that education base out. And that's another big push that we're working on is working with a regional college really close to the proximity of our site that we've secured, and are working with them on developing a curriculum, both upstream at the forestry level, downstream at the site level and installation training, and then directly at the manufacturing level, right. So everything from the folks that can do the 3D modeling and the digital twins to the maintenance engineers on the CNC equipment, presses and everything kind of in between, right. So really looking to build that knowledge base and showing people that are coming out of the universities and coming out of the trade schools that this is a new standard that they should know.

Brady: 34:56

I love it. It's going to take a whole community to move this thing forward, but in the end, you got to start with letting people know about what's going on and then sharing with them the great work that's happening because of it. Um, so I think you guys are absolutely right in both your answers, so I'm excited to watch you guys bring your dream and your mission into reality, and I hope that anybody listening if they can help you to reach out, uh and connect with you follow along with what you're doing. There's a ton of need for housing, ton of need for responsible forest management, and I think you guys are bringing both of those together. Specific to your state right in California, and I think regional mass timber ecosystems are the most beneficial way to set these kind of things up, and so I love that you guys have a focus right there in your backyard, using both the resources and solving the housing problems that you guys are facing. So I applaud you guys and your work and I look forward to following along. Wonderful Thank you, brady.

Brady: 35:57

Thanks for coming on. Yeah, thank you.