North American Heavy Timber and/or CLT Costing

[jayrod12]

Do any of you wonderful sources of information have some super ballpark type costs for heavy timber construction and/or CLT.

Situation: Multi-story office building located central Canada. No layouts yet, still trying to choose systems. If you even have some numbers from a local project we can always factor them up for unknowns etc.

Any help would be appreciated.

As an FYI, our office has tried contacting Western Archrib, but didn't really receive useful info as they were requesting beam/column sizing and layouts before they'd offer up any sort of pricing. I told them to give StructureLam a call but don't know if they have reached out yet or not.

 

[NorthCivil]

I've seen presentations by the structural team on the Brock commons 18 level CLT, as well as the MEC co-op. They claim costs similar to conventional concrete construction, but quicker erection time.

 

[Shotzie]

You may want to reach out to "Wood Works Ontario" Link as they could probably provide some typical pricing values for Ontario, and maybe some recommendations to translate those prices to other provinces.

 

[Brad805]

Years ago a 3" CLT was something like $12/sqft. I emailed one of my contacts and it is still about the same ($11.50). Western subs this out to different suppliers. Your cost estimating team needs to be a bit craftier when they ask questions. I simply asked for the supply of 50,000sqft of 3"x10'-0 (or whatever standard) excluding milling, shops, erection, or delivery. Milling costs will vary widely for each panel. They use a $2million+ CNC for that, and I would bet it runs $500/hr. If you get some arch that wants all sorts of crazy things they could easily double your costs. When we have priced this before it is not cost effective. The typical consumer of this buys it because that is what they want, or they buy into the "green" promo the industry sells.

 

[jayrod12]

Thanks All,

Brad I agree with you, I believe for this specific project we don't have that level of commitment from the owner, however they were just asking for comparison. It worked out to about $100/sqft premium over CIP or concrete on steel. A little steep for this owner.