Mass Timber Group Show: Sustainable Building Experts

Tall Timber Student Housing at BCIT w/Jamie Pobre Sullivan of Fast + Epp

• Brady Potts • Season 1 • Episode 52

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What makes hybrid mass timber a game-changer in construction, and how can innovative structural design accelerate schedules while reducing carbon footprints? Join structural engineer Jamie P. Sullivan as she discusses the groundbreaking 12-story BCIT student housing tower, a hybrid mass timber project that blends cross-laminated timber (CLT), steel columns, and prefab components to deliver sustainability, speed, and superior design. 

Learn how strategic material decisions, moisture management, and construction planning enabled faster construction without sacrificing quality. Jamie also highlights the future of hybrid designs in hospitality and social housing and why mass timber is more than just a material—it's part of a smarter, integrated building solution.

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Connect with Jamie & Fast + Epp:

Jamie's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamiepobresullivan/?originalSubdomain=ca
BuildEX: https://buildex-vancouver.informaconnect.com/speakers/
Fast + Epp: https://www.fastepp.com/
Fast + Epp LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fast-epp/
Fast + Epp: Epp https://www.instagram.com/fastepp/
Concept Lab: https://www.fastepp.com/concept-lab/

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

Speaker 1:

Mass timber is a great material, but it's not the only material out there, and we certainly utilize different materials together to create good engineering, especially as a student, and be open-minded to what else is out there. Certainly when I graduated from university, I thought, oh, I'm going to be mass timber only, but I certainly took a journey to get here. I did a lot of steel design and I did a lot of concrete design, and that all leads to understanding engineering principles and fundamentals. Right, because at the end of the day, that's what matters.

Speaker 2:

This is the Mass Timber Group Show. I'm Brady and today I caught up with Jamie Pobre-Sullivan with Fastenep, the structural engineering firm for the British Columbia Institute of Technology's new hybrid mass timber student housing building. Jamie gives us a deep dive into the structural systems and construction process, including the use of Western Hemlock CLT and a point-supported structure with steel hollow structural section columns. We unpack the lateral systems, cores, facade and how they all impacted the construction schedule together. But before we get into the podcast, if you want to see in-depth coverage of other mass timber projects like this, check out the link in the description below.

Speaker 2:

We just started doing original coverage on mass timber buildings in North America in written articles and in other podcasts. You can see them on our website and even request coverage for one of your own projects If you like these podcasts. Subscribing to the channel is the biggest compliment you can give us. You hear it every time you listen to any podcast, but it really does help the show grow and reach more people with the mass timber information like this. So if you're not already, please hit that subscribe button. So with that, let's get into it.

Speaker 1:

I'm Jamie Pilbry-Sullivan, I'm an associate here at Fasten Up, and today we're going to talk about the BCIT Tall Timber Student Housing Project located in Burnaby in British Columbia, a suburb of Vancouver.

Speaker 2:

What about this project? Well, first let's get into what kind of structure it is, the size, scope and all that. What does this project look like?

Speaker 1:

Yes, so it's a 12-story student housing tower. It's got 11 stories plus a roof, clt, point-supported mass timber floors, supported on a concrete podium. It's got one level of basement, a low grade that is just used for storage and mechanical units, and then the ground level is simply amenity space, office space, laundry utility, more utility, and then the 11 stories above are all single occupancy, single suite rooms for students.

Speaker 2:

So you said it's a CLT point supported structure. What went into the decision making process to use that type of system?

Speaker 1:

This project truly was a Brock Commons 2.0. If you don't know what Brock Commons is, that's at the University of British Columbia. Here that FastenUp designed and completed between 2015 and 2017. That building was 18 stories of CLT point, sported very similar system, half the size though in floor plate, and that project basically rewrote the code in terms of what was possible for tall timber.

Speaker 1:

So people now still talk about it and I think the client, BCIT, really wanted something similar and wanted to benefit from the advantages that they saw out of that project. So it was cost competitive to the very typical concrete tower here, but it had better biofuelic properties. Right, we're getting rid of the highest volume of concrete which is very carbon dense in the building and replacing it with something that is very sustainable. Brock Commons also went up very quickly I think it was something like one week per floor very similarly, and they wanted to achieve the same sort of speed for their project here. So that was a large impetus as to why we went with that system. They saw the benefits of that project and that is also a student housing project and they wanted to apply it to their building.

Speaker 2:

Just got done. Talking about the system there, can you tell me why you went with the steel hollow structural section columns.

Speaker 1:

Coming out from Brock Commons. That system certainly used a very typical concrete core system and we certainly see a lot of that here in Vancouver but we wanted to find another way to prefab the structure. There are a few proprietary things out there, like the ReadyCore system. That was a concrete system but they just were not tuned to the high seismicity that we have here in Vancouver. So we thought let's do steel. Let's do steel because, knowing that we could go with something that was very shop, installed pre-fab and then lift it into place. That took some work. You know, we started off with single blade walls like for brace frames, and then we slowly tuned it so that we could take advantage of the egress cores around the building in such a way that made them not just prefab but self-stabilizing, meaning that we could limit how much temporary shoring that we needed in construction.

Speaker 2:

Were you able to hide those inside of the wall so it didn't interrupt the flow, or how did that work?

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So what was we? We recognized that. So the tower's l-shaped and so, by code and by architecture, they needed stair cores at each end, or what we call the bookends. They needed a middle stair core in order to break up the longer bar on the south side, and then they needed a central elevator core. So we quickly recognized these zones, if you will, and said let's just use that. And so not only did we use those in like C and box shape forms in order to make the self-stabilizing, it gave us enough redundancy, using four cores instead of two, let's say that we could minimize the sections of the frame to hide them within walls.

Speaker 1:

We still have to work around big columns, but for the most part the braces were not an issue. We were able to hide those within the walls, and these are all big fire-rated walls for the stair. So, yes, we were able to fit that in, and we weren't necessarily going in between suites with our lateral system. We were going in between like like big sort of demising walls for, you know, big egress cores instead. So once we shifted our mind into into that, it became like less hard to to hide that structure, if you will, and in fact they, they are exposed in some areas um the braces. That is for effect and because in the end the architect and the client didn't really see the need to hide them. So there are.

Speaker 2:

There's like one stair core where one bay is exposed up the, up the which we like, Combining that system with the CLT, and you guys actually used hem fur CLT for this and you guys had to take it through some extra testing to use it in this application. Can you tell me about that?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so the original design was actually spruce pine fur, which is very typical, right, it's what we see, because it's moderately affordable in comparison to Doug fir, which is like the premium. But hem fir is not commonly used One, because hemlock is maybe not readily available in some areas of North America, but here in BC there are huge hemlock forests and hemlock has some funny properties about it that made it make it really hard to dry, um, but if you understand how to dry hemlock properly, um, a lot of those issues kind of go away, like warping issues. So, um, we only went to Hemlock in order so that we could deal with some on-site delays that we were seeing. And by diversifying their fiber basket, if you will Kolesnikov was able to, and that's the supplier, kolesnikov Mass Timber they were able to essentially treat this on-site delay as if nothing happened. We said, okay, we can use this like a wider fiber basket, we just move you in the queue and away we go. They were specifically tuned to using Hemlock because they're their own sawmill. They have a lower risk, you know, because they're not buying off the market. They understand Hemlock as a material, how to dry it, as just a regular, like it's part of their lumber basket and so we felt comfortable in that realm. They understood how to try it.

Speaker 1:

Then, on top of that, we were already doing a lot of point-supported CLT testing in conjunction with the University of Northern British Columbia to better understand some of the rolling shear properties of CLT. Rolling sheer properties of CLT because the code has very conservatively assumed some lower values for sheer. We had done our own sort of desktop studies looking at what WeEurope is doing and trying to truly understand the complexities around rolling sheer, and that's what helped us to design the building back in 2021-2022. But then in 2023 we were already doing all this testing. Hemphir was part of that testing, and what we saw as a global trend in all of the 190 panels that we tested was that, in general, rolling shear values were higher than the standards were giving us, and because we had HEMFR from various manufacturers in that batch, we were then also able to confidently be comfortable switching from SPF to HEMFR.

Speaker 2:

Do you think that that process that you just outlined is going to open up more applications for HEMFR in BC?

Speaker 1:

Absolutely so. This is the largest sort of commercial use of HEMFR as a CLT material and it will definitely open it up In this process. Also, I think the supplier made it ready to be certified as well, so, as you will like, off the shelf. And so all of that desktop study and actual physical testing that we did I think does open the door for this to continue to be used as long as you get a supplier who really understands how to dry out that hemp mock material.

Speaker 2:

It's not I'm 99% sure it's not hemp fur, but Kolesnikov just supplied a building that's a couple blocks over from me. I've been talking to all the people about working with those guys and it's been I've heard nothing but good things. So we've talked about the testing and the data behind what you guys put together, but can you tell me about the realities of the construction schedule? How fast did it go up? What did you guys see there? Because I know it's a big talking point around mass timber.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we honestly talked about construction schedule almost to death during design. We had an early design assist, design assist partners. So our now general contractor led core was our construction manager starting in develop design phase. They brought on the key trades, so that was steel, that was mass timber and then that was facade. So, um, the the prefab facade. They came on early to really guide the consultant design group just in the right direction. And design assist is a form that we see more and more when the client is especially concerned or mindful of things going well on construction and in this case it really paid off. We asked a lot of questions at the beginning on how to not just speed up construction but simplify detailing such that fabrication was almost as much as possible prefab and therefore everything could show up on site and come together as a kit of parts in its true form.

Speaker 2:

Did Kolesnikov do that?

Speaker 1:

Kolesnikov was part of that. Design assist, yes, but I would say that in some ways the bigger conversations were around the prefab curtain wall and how we were going to detail each steel connection so that things could go seamlessly on site. So when it came to it, it was planned this way and pretty much went this way. Each core was going to take eight days to erect. The central elevator core took 13, just because it's bigger and more complicated, and that's essentially what happened. I think we took a little longer to finish out some of the on-site detailing, but as much as possible, a lot of the critical details were done in the shop. We planned for the CLT to go down and be installed. I think it was one floor per week and, just to keep something in mind, our building plan area is twice as large as Rock Commons, which is the big brother we were looking up to the entire time. So we were twice as fast.

Speaker 2:

How many square meters or square foot was each floor?

Speaker 1:

Ooh, each floor? I'm not sure. I think it's on the order. The whole building is 250,000 square feet, so it's about 20,000 square feet.

Speaker 2:

Wow. So you did about 20,000 square feet a day laying those panels.

Speaker 1:

Yes, about 20,000 square feet a day laying those panels. Yes, now, a big consideration not only was speed, but also how fast can we close in the building. So a large part of the discussion was around moisture management, moisture mitigation and management. Our general contractor, lightcore, was a huge player in this and consulted not just us as experienced players, but Lesnikoff, us as supplier, and RDH, which is our onboard consultant, and they came up with a full, comprehensive plan on how they would actively manage the moisture. Now we're in British Columbia. You cannot avoid moisture. It's going to rain, like whether it's summer or winter, it's going to rain. And so it was not a matter of preventing moisture, it was just how are you going to dry out the panels? And so not only were they actively like just literally pushing water off of the panels, everything down to what sort of membrane we were going to shop install on the panels, to even how quickly are we getting the facade up around these panels.

Speaker 1:

So by the time we hit the second floor, the third floor of CLT, there was always one floor being enclosed two levels down. So that's, and visually, when eventually we get the time-lapse together, it will look like this building is being constructed even faster than your average because of this sequence that we followed throughout until we talked out. So by level I think, two, three, four. By level four, they were laying down CLT in a week and then taking another week to then erect all the columns for the next floor. So, prepped for the next floor and then meanwhile in that week, two floors down, one floor was being totally enclosed with the Flynn speed wall system which was our facade. So that continued and that meant that that floor being enclosed could slowly dry out. Mid February had you know, about three, four months to just dry out completely, um, and and a little less time, because actually then once we hit four floors, um, four floors down was being encapsulated with the gypsum.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so you guys are kind of like running up the building with different partners, like as you go, so you don't have to wait for everything to to get topped out before you start from the bottom on the facade and go back up. Exactly what did you guys do any comparisons on, like, hey, if we did cast in place concrete on this, et cetera, like what the schedule differences were?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, there was a bit of that, I think in the end we found that we could be just faster than cast-in-place concrete for cores with the CLT. I think the differences are that it's just more labor-intensive on site.

Speaker 1:

So, you can get that labor to speed up. When you're doing cast-in-place concrete cores and we certainly see it here they use jump forms. This town is very good at cast in place concrete cores, but this was just, you know, another way to do something and it was just a tad faster. And what we really enjoyed as the structural engineer was that so much of the construction could be done in the safety of a shop. Yeah Right, so we get better quality. We have fewer site reviews for it. We do everything in ShopJar and review it's third party inspected. Because of all the welding that's done To us, it assured a bit more quality for sure, completely.

Speaker 2:

I understand that. So during this whole process, from planning to execution, were there any misconceptions or knowledge gaps that you encountered through your AAC partners that got addressed or that you noticed was like hey, here's something the industry could do a little bit better at in forming different trade partners.

Speaker 1:

I think I saw the biggest leap in development with our steel trade. I would say this is a pretty tall building to be doing concentrically based frames. And we saw them go from asking a lot of the more basic questions of well, can we bolt this connection instead of weld it? To asking us right before construction like, hey, how about we just simplify this? Instead of you having to have splices every two floors for the cores, you just do one splice, which, as a structural engineer, we also like, because we don't have to design these various splices. We'll just get the biggest mobile crane to go along with our tower crane and we'll just lift up a five-story piece that we've shop welded. Yeah, and it was like, yeah, sure, of course, yeah.

Speaker 1:

And I think once they understood the assignment, you know that they had to have tight tolerances to to marry with the mass timber, that they needed quality over. They needed quality and and and had to play with the construction schedule just as much with simplicity. They started to ask some really good questions and started to be proactive about it. The five and six-story lifts was one of the biggest ones and certainly they were being pushed by the general contractor to think about schedule, think about schedule. But in the end that was the reason why we saw core go up in eight days. Yeah, in big like five story and six story lifts.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So each core is about, in the end, you know, just eight pieces Piece per day.

Speaker 2:

So there's a lot of back and forth collaboration. I won't call it problem solving, but maybe solution finding right Like hey, how can we make? The people here better, faster, and it sounds like everything came together. Did the schedule complete on the timeline that you guys originally thought?

Speaker 1:

On the grand scheme of things, yes, there was an onsite issue with Groundworks that slowed us down at the very beginning, but in general, once we got through that, the building did go up pretty seamlessly.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I love to hear that this was kind of like a showcase mass timber piece in BC. So, from your perspective, what were kind of the most significant ways that this project advanced the use and understanding of mass timber in your specific region?

Speaker 1:

I think, yeah, it is a showcase. Unfortunately, none of the CLT is going to be exposed, but what it does do is it follows to the letter of the code. The code you know, it is max 12 stories, which at the time was the maximum that you could go. It's what we consider partially encapsulated, meaning that it relies only partially on gypsum board layers for fire resistance rating, and then we've designed the CLT to char for the remaining amount of that fire resistance rating, again per the code. And so I think it really showcases that you can do this and with the construction scheduling that we hit and the success of that, I think it also just showed, yes, you don't always have to go with a concrete tower to be successful. You can do mass timber and you can do it hybrid. You don't have to be tried and true um, you know mass timber all the way and you can make it successful um with different materials yeah, I think that's really what's what, what it underlines.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm hearing more and more conversations around hybrid is the future. We're using different materials, integrating different materials. It doesn't all have to be strictly mass timber or steel or concrete, et cetera. It's like how do we blend these to get the best of both, and I think that this is what this project demonstrates that, yeah yeah, and the fast enough too.

Speaker 1:

We we're known for our mass timber and our detailing and our our crazy mass timber designs, but always we think about where does it make sense? Does it make sense? Yeah, it doesn't. If we're just pushing mass timber for the sake of just mass timber, it doesn't feel right. We push it so that it's either being showcased in a way that we appreciate or in a way that makes the most sense for the client and for the project itself.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, totally agree there. So, looking beyond the BCIT project, what are some of the more interesting or things that excite you, that you see on the horizon in mass timber design and construction?

Speaker 1:

We're seeing it pop up more in social housing, which I think is important right, especially with that like construction schedule in mind, with the biophilic property, the sustainability card in mind, that, yes, we want to be building more housing to address this housing crisis, but we want to do it in intentional ways, in ways that serve the public, in ways that serve our future. So that's a big story with Mass Timber. I think, though, the area that I'm excited about is in the hotel and hospitality about is in the like hotel and hospitality. You know, we see, um. I think even more adjacent to student housing is um is hospitality, totally.

Speaker 1:

You get very repeatable suites. They're single occupancy. Oftentimes they really just want to be there. For someone who lives there for short term or stays there short term and is out, yep, and that's kind of what student housing is. The challenge with multi-residential construction is that you get the. You get like six different layouts, and they want to be three, four bedroom four bedrooms is a dream, but and then they want balconies, and then you know, and, and those all add complexity to, especially to a point supported mass timber system, and so there are ways of working around that we certainly have, but with a hotel. It seems like they want to go up quick, they want to be simple, they want to be pretty straightforward, and I just see that as. Why not use the BCIT student housing project as a model for that?

Speaker 2:

the BCIT student housing project as a model for that Totally, and I talked to a lot of developers in the Colorado area leading up to our conference this year and the folks that showed the most interest and the most openness to learning about mass timber were hospitality developers.

Speaker 2:

So I think you're on the right track there for sure, because, like you said, it's outside, you know, outside of students versus tourists, let's say, like you know it's, it's all the same layouts, it's all the same form and function and, and I think what's, uh, unique about mass timber in hospitality is it's, it's different, it's unique. It provides a different vibe other than, like your standard hotel, you know, wallpaper, carpet et cetera. Like, even if you're not exposing it everywhere in the rooms, like you can expose some part of the structure and it just adds a unique element that differentiates the product. And I always hear you know, one, it's got a pencil right. Two, it's got to be quick. And then, three, it's got to differentiate your product in that space. And so I would love to see more mass timber hybrid hotels come out in the future.

Speaker 1:

For sure. And if we look at like the Las Vegas market, for example, where it's all hotels, they blow up those hotels every couple of decades. And not that I want to see a mass timber building blow up. That is not what I'm getting at. What I'm getting at is that there is a question that often gets asked is like should we take apart this building in the future? If we had to and I think that becomes easier with some of these mass timber hybrid buildings, especially PCIT think I can see a world where that, that building can be disassembled with a lot of care and a lot, of, a lot of work, but more so than a concrete tower that just gets demolished.

Speaker 2:

Right, and that's looking at like the total life cycle cost, right, and so, like you're talking about, the grave end of that Right. So there's costs associated with that, whether it's financial or carbon or or what have you and you know, especially when you're talking 40, 50, 75, 100 years in the future, like, do you think that municipalities and government agencies are going to be more lenient about blowing things up and throwing them away or more strict about reusing and recycling?

Speaker 1:

I hope they're more. Yeah, I hope they're more strict.

Speaker 2:

Yeah for sure. And especially it's like a somebody that's looking at that asset. You know, later down the line I think that's definitely part of the the conversation that'll come in is like hey, can you, can you disassemble this, can you recycle it, can you deconstruct it? Or even if it, you know, heaven forbid, it all goes to the landfill. At least it's wood, right, it's right concrete.

Speaker 2:

So yeah yeah, no, I like where that's going. I hope to see more of it in the future. A couple of quick questions for you before we hop off. I always like to ask everybody where they're going to learn about mass timber, how they're advancing their individual trade and practice. Where does Jamie go to learn?

Speaker 1:

Honestly, I came here fast enough. Honestly, I came here fast enough. There are so many senior experts here in Hall Fast and even in what he and Jerry Epp did and why they did it. That has been my biggest education is working with Paul and with the other senior engineers. Ian Boyle here was the EOR for this project and I learned a ton just working under him. So honestly, it's been my peers that I've worked, that I've learned the most about mass timber and fast enough in general. I know it sounds very loyalist, but it's truly why I ended up here.

Speaker 2:

Well, I'm going to ask you a follow-up question to that. So you just demonstrated that you learned so much from your peers, and then especially in the mass timber realm. What are you going to do to help other engineers learn about mass timber?

Speaker 1:

moving forward stuff like this, yeah just getting the word out, presenting um, showing up and being very present, um, honestly, a bit, through mentorship as well, at the local universities and amongst local high schools even, and just speaking more about what it is that we do and that I do, how I'm a part of it because I'm always very happy to talk about, you know, to miss bust, and to talk about what works and what doesn't and why and how we can change that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, I love that answer. So before I ask my last question where can people connect with you and the company?

Speaker 1:

Yes, so they can visit our website, fastenupcom. You can Google FastenUp as well. We're here in beautiful British Columbia, in Vancouver, we do have a concept lab which is a full laboratory. So really, if you are in town and interested, you should come by. It's not totally an open door, you have to let us know that you're coming, but I think it's great because and I mentioned concept lab because it is literally a physical space to see some of the things that we do without having to be necessarily in those buildings. Our building is also like our own sort of like living lab, if you will. We built ourselves a mass timber hybrid building so we can see all you know, all the connections and we can see our own lateral system and we certainly push the envelope there as well. And you could find us on LinkedIn and all the socials and so on.

Speaker 2:

All right. Well, I'll be sure to link all those down there in the show notes below for people that want to get in contact with you. So you kind of teed up my last question with your answer. So, hypothetically, let's say that you're in an elevator for 60 seconds and an engineering student is standing next to you and they ask you about what you do and mass timber. What would you tell them?

Speaker 1:

I would say, yes, I'm a structural engineer, I work at JASTA and mass timber is a great material, but it's not the only material out there there and we certainly utilize different materials together to create, um, good engineering, uh, good projects and and building projects, and that they should explore, I think, um, especially as a student, and be open-minded to what else is out there.

Speaker 1:

Certainly, when I graduated from university, I thought, oh, I'm going to be mass timber only, but I certainly took a journey to get here. I did a lot of steel design and I did a lot of concrete design. I did a lot of design like even just non-structural anchorage within hospitals, and that all leads to understanding engineering principles and fundamentals right, because at the end of the day, that's what matters over just materiality is really understanding how something works and why it works and why it might not make sense for the application that we're looking at makes sense for, for the application that we're looking at. So, um, being open-minded really about any and all materials and why we would use them is maybe what I would tell this young student. That's a fantastic answer.

Speaker 2:

I love hearing the hey. Mass timber is great, but you have to know more than just mass timber.

Speaker 2:

You gotta explore a little bit more to it, you know we touched on it, like it integrates with all these other different materials. Like you can't be a master in a sole solitary material or subject, because they all cross, collaborate, integrate. So that's a great answer. That's all I had for today. I wanted to thank you for jumping on telling me about the BCIT project, fasten Up's involvement, talking about some structural engineer topics on here. So thank you for hopping on and I'm excited to watch the project come to completion next spring and I'm sure we'll have a time to unpack the finished project later.

Speaker 1:

Thank you.

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