Rethink Real Estate. For Good.

PropTech

Woman of Influence.

For the second year running GlobeSt. has made me a winner!  

GlobeSt. has been recognizing the growing number of women in commercial real estate for their excellent professional achievements for over 30 years now through the “Woman of Influence” awards.  The categories are broad. This year I’ve been included in the PropTech Executive / Innovator group of just seven women.  

All credit to GlobeSt. for trying to turn the tide. We need what they want, and that is to recognize that both men and women are capable of amazing things. I’m eagerly awaiting the day that these awards will be renamed – from “Woman of Influence” to “Person of Influence”.

You can view the class of 2024 here.

Thank you GlobeSt!

Image courtesy of Eve Picker

The tallest wood building. So far.

Milwaukee has the tallest wood building in the world.  Yes really.  Milwaukee!

This informational video explains the building and provides a primer for building a skyscraper in wood, or mass timber.

Do you have a mass timber building in your city that will top this?

Cut My Timber.

In 2010, Greg Howes co-founded CutMyTimber, a prefab mass timber company based out of Portland, Oregon, and he remains a partner at the company. CutMyTimber works with architects, structural engineers, builders and other fabricators, to supply custom mass timber products for a variety of building types, ranging from small cabins to 500,000 sf commercial buildings.

CutMyTimber has created products now used in  hundreds of buildings in Europe, Canada and the U.S. They also fabricate green wooden buildings to the “passive house” and net zero energy standard and are currently developing their own  line of mass timber ‘tiny houses’ as well as a new building system for both multi-family and commercial buildings. The company collaborates with the College of the Rockies, in British Columbia, to teach modern building systems, digital manufacturing, Cadwork (a virtual design software), and green building techniques to students in their Timber Framing program.

Greg is also a co-founder and board member of the AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Construction) Hackathon for developers and designers to collaborate and work with new automation, AI, robotics, etc. to look for solutions to daily problems in the built environment. Greg and his team have organized over 48 events globally to date. An AEC Hackathon will take place in Hangzhou, China, this coming December, and events scheduled for 2023 in Austin, Copenhagen, Dublin, San Francisco and Stavanger. He also organized “Mass Timber March Madness 2021,” a series of webinars that spanned a month, featuring speakers from around the world discussing mass timber production, general contracting, architecture, government,  sustainable finance, and tech.

Read the podcast transcript here

Eve Picker: [00:00:07] Hi there. Thanks for joining me on Rethink Real Estate for Good. I’m Eve Picker and I’m on a mission to make real estate work for everyone. I love real estate. Real estate makes places good or bad, rich or poor, beautiful or not. In this show, I’m interviewing the disruptors, those creative thinkers and doers that are shrugging off the status quo in order to build better for everyone. And speaking of building better, I’m very excited to share that my company, Small Change, is now raising capital through a community round that is open to the public. Small Change is a leading equity crowdfunding platform for impact investment in real estate. For as little as $250, anyone 18 and over can invest in Small Change, helping to fuel our growth as we disrupt the old boys club of capital that routinely ignores so many qualified people and projects. Please visit Wefunder.com/smallchange to review the full details of our raise and to make an investment if you can. And remember, investing is risky. Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose.

Eve: [00:01:46] My guest today is Greg Howes, co-founder of Cut My Timber. Cut My Timber is a fabricator of timber and steel components for the entire building industry. Their projects are spread as far as Alaska, Quebec and Australia, with production based in Portland, Oregon, and an office in Vancouver. They are able to make highly complex and efficient building systems available to both large and small companies, as well as to individual independent builders. Cut My timber uses state of the art computer software to optimize projects. This optimization results in less waste and offcuts, so they can build greener at lower cost. And now they are pushing their technology even further, building to passive house and net zero energy standards. Finally, let’s not forget the mass timber tiny homes they are developing. Listen in to hear more. If you’d like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do, share this podcast and go to rethinkrealestateforgood.co, where you can subscribe to be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.

Eve: [00:03:13] Hi Greg, Thanks so much for joining me today.

Greg Howes: [00:03:16] Good morning.

Eve: [00:03:16] So, you’re really heavily involved in the mass timber industry. Can we just back up a little bit and you tell me what mass timber is for people who don’t know?

Greg: [00:03:29] Yeah, I think it’s not really come on the radar in the US, except over the last ten years. And then very slowly, it’s been a real niche market. Essentially, I think a different way to think about it as heavy timber as opposed to two by fours and two by sixes. It involves glulam beams and also now increasingly what’s called cross laminated timber or nail laminated timber. And a simple way to think of that as really thick plywood. But you’re essentially making it out of often two by sixes and you’re stacking them, a layer of them, and then you make another perpendicular layer and glue those together, then typically do a third or more layers. So, you have it almost like a very thick sandwich of lumber and it comes in very, very big panels. I mean, you know, even larger than like ten by 30 or 40 feet. And that’s a single panel. It’s very strong. It’s obviously very thick. And that is used in many ways for walls, typically, floors, roofs, ceilings with it in buildings and mass timber in my research was actually, I mean, cross laminated timber itself was invented almost a hundred years ago actually in Tacoma, Washington.

Greg: [00:04:48] But it really took off in Switzerland and Austria in the nineties and they’ve been doing a lot of buildings with it. Initially, it started as a way to use less strong wood, not even almost waste wood, but it was a way to take wood that wasn’t structurally as strong and essentially through engineering and making this bigger, gluing it together and using automation to manufacture it has more engineering strength. And what’s happening now is that has come into the US market where again, following the Switzerland, Germany and Austria in doing this, and it’s really booming. And when I think of its most attractive properties are, one that it quite literally it’s very difficult, it doesn’t burn. It does burn, but it’s like having a campfire and trying to start the campfire. Not with twigs, but big logs. The outer layer, when it does burn, it’s really hard.

Eve: [00:05:43] I do that all the time.

Greg: [00:05:45] Yeah.

Eve: [00:05:47] A lot of smoke. Goes out quickly.

Greg: [00:05:50] Well, it does. And then it creates that char layer on the outside. So, even if you have that big log and you throw it on the fire and you leave it on all night, even on a big raging fire, it generally won’t burn through because it will have that char layer on the outside. So, it has some really good properties for fire and again, it can be very, very strong. And another big advantage is you can construct the buildings very rapidly, because essentially you’re building digitally before you build on site and you’re essentially manufacturing and custom cutting all of the pieces. So, let’s say the cross laminated timber and all the beams and all the connectors, you’re essentially doing that work before the trucks go to the job site and assemble the building. And when you do that, well, it can be really, really efficient. I give it many examples where buildings are literally going up in a matter of days, and this includes buildings of many stories, including ones we’ve been involved in. You’re doing a five-story building. The foundation is in all of the concrete and then you come in with the trucks and essentially you have a crane, and everything gets assembled extremely rapidly. And then the building continues with all of the things that go inside the building afterward. I think it’s a big advantage.

Eve: [00:07:04] So, what’s the primary problem that we’re trying to solve with mass timber?

Greg: [00:07:08] Well, big not only with mass timber, but in construction in general. We don’t have enough buildings where we’re short of builders and also, we want to build more sustainably. I think there’s a growing interest internationally. I’m obviously in my niche market, so I view the world from the mass timber perspective, but we need a lot more buildings and we need to figure out how to build them more sustainably. As we know, concrete is responsible I think for 8% of the global carbon production, just through making concrete. And so, we need to use more environmentally friendly materials. We need to figure out how to build faster, smarter, less expensive. And we have to do that in a world where we don’t have enough to be blunt builders. And so, how are we going to do that? So, I think creating building systems is one of the best answers. And specifically with cross laminated timber, you can build much higher. There are buildings, I think the biggest one in the world now is in Milwaukee, The Ascent building.

Eve: [00:08:15] Yeah, I just read about that. Yeah, yeah.

Greg: [00:08:18] I think it’s 26 stories, and there are buildings much, much taller that will be made primarily from mass timber. So, there’s a boom in, let’s call it timber skyscrapers. But I think every building is actually a hybrid of materials, so it does have concrete in it and wood and metals, just to different ratios. The big problem I think we’re trying to solve also as well. How do we take Woods and make them stronger through engineering processes or through the factory? How do we do more with wood? And use it more efficiently. And what I think the mass timber boom has created is a way to build taller with wood. And because when you build this way, unlike conventional building, and I’ve been a builder for 25 years, you can go to Home Depot and order a lot of two by fours and then try to figure out how to build your house on the job site. With mass timber, that’s not really realistic, simply because the beams and the laminated timber products are too big. You can’t really cut them precisely on the job site. So, you have to do that work in a factory. Yeah.

Eve: [00:09:33] Yeah. So, basically, it’s like ordering a steel member or a cross line beam ahead of time and making sure it’s sized correctly. Like we’ve been actually doing that for years, right? But now it’s shifting to it sounds like many more elements in the building.

Greg: [00:09:49] Yeah, we’ve been doing it for years. If you drive by and you see a steel building, generally all of those parts or the majority of them are pre-cut and predrilled and the builders job is essentially to assemble those and figure out how to do that efficiently. And we’re applying the same thinking to mass timber specifically.

Eve: [00:10:09] How does this help forests? How are we going to save our forests if everyone’s going to be using timber buildings?

Greg: [00:10:15] I am not a forestry expert. There are many people who are. I defer to them. We do use wood. Here’s my question, the wood we do use, we should do more with it. We should use it efficiently and we should use lumber that comes from forests that are well managed. They’re sustainably managed. In the US, there are a lot of statistics, we’re actually adding to our supply of forestry. We’re having more forests that we can harvest. And the US is the biggest country in the world to build with wood. About 93% of Americans lived in a wood framed home. So, my answer to that is like, well, let’s use the resource that is sustainable and renewable. Let’s use specifically wood that is from a sustainably managed forest. If we use good building systems, we can reduce the amount of wasted wood, a lot. We can quite literally have only a couple percentage points of waste as opposed to conventional construction. That, as you know, creates a lot of the waste.

Eve: [00:11:23] A lot of waste, yeah.

Greg: [00:11:24] Well, I think we can build buildings that use wood, use it more efficiently. We can do more with that wood because we’re creating things like glulam beams and cross laminated timber, and we’re figuring out how to do that efficiently. And we can use the forest the same way we build better and more sustainably with them.

Eve: [00:11:46] What percentage of buildings being built today use mass timber, and how do you think that might change over the next five or ten years?

Greg: [00:11:54] Oh, of all the wood buildings in the US, the percentage that use mass timber is far less than 1%.

Eve: [00:12:01] Oh, it’s tiny.

Greg: [00:12:02] It is a tiny niche market, it is growing. There’s quite a few people in the industry that think the US will become the largest market in the world for mass timber buildings in a short number of years. The same way the US already is the world’s largest market for wood frame buildings in general. But because mass timber is very good for specific kinds of buildings, it’s highly likely that we’re going to become the biggest market of all.

Eve: [00:12:30] And how quickly is that going to happen, do you think?

Greg: [00:12:32] It’s not a demand problem. I think you read the same things I do. We’re short of houses at every price point in many parts of the country. So, we don’t have enough buildings. We have people who need them. It’s difficult to build. I think the growth of building systems where you’re essentially already, call it prefab, buildings is going to grow because it’s really one of the only solutions. We’re suddenly not going to have a lot more carpenters. And it’s the same reason I got into this. It’s like, how do I build more buildings? How do I deliver more complexity? And I think the answer is through building systems. Mass timber is booming, where our factories based in Oregon, Oregon produces the most softwood lumber of any state. There’s a lot of demand out here. Most buildings are, in fact, wooden buildings, and where mass timber is the best product for that type of building, there’s a lot of demand. It’s actually growing faster than the supply. And I would argue that the shortage is of factories that do create the kit of parts for mass timber buildings. There’s not enough of those, and it takes years to build them. And they’re expensive. They’re full of very expensive machines.

Eve: [00:13:53] The actual factory, yeah.

Greg: [00:13:56] There’s interest in mass timber and I think it’s growing, and there’s more interest than there are available supply, and the supply comes through those factories and there aren’t very many of them. That’s the constraint to its growth.

Eve: [00:14:10] So, are you seeing people investing in factories like that? Like are people beginning to understand that issue?

Greg: [00:14:19] Well, there are investors coming in. I’ll give an example. In Europe, Stora ENSO is a Swedish Finnish company. They keep building factories, they’re one of the biggest producers of cross laminated timber in the world. They continue to build more factories and demand exceeds supply in Europe as well. We are having some factories come into the Canadian and US market. One of the biggest suppliers in the world that’s new is a company called Sterling, based in Chicago. Their product just became certified as a cross laminated timber panel, and it’s certified in that it’s legal to use for buildings. So, they’re one of the world’s biggest producers now. So, we’re seeing more companies invest in Canada and in the US. I know them, it’s still a niche market. But the constraint, the bottleneck right now is, well, we’re going to have we have a lot of lumber, we’re going to have more mass timber product, but we need those factories that create those custom kit of parts. That’s what we’re short of. That’s the big bottleneck.

Eve: [00:15:26] That’s interesting. And other than that, is there any specific work that needs to be done to advance mass timber? I mean, you talked about the fire resistance of these really heavy pieces of engineered lumber, right?

Greg: [00:15:39] Correct.

Eve: [00:15:40] Does the building code recognize that? What needs to be done to advance the idea?

Greg: [00:15:45] A lot of work needs to be done on many fronts. And I want to clarify, I am not a forestry expert. I am not a fire expert. I’m not a structural engineer. There are lots of great organizations, people doing the research and also the building codes are being changed and updated to allow for these tall buildings in more municipalities. A big challenge we have in the US, as you know, building codes vary a lot.

Eve: [00:16:17] They do.

Greg: [00:16:18] Based on the municipalities. And not only do the building codes vary, the fear among the local building code officials, but also among the builders. You have a lot of builders, architects and structural engineers, and they hear about this mass timber thing, but they haven’t worked with it before. And there’s a lot of perceived risk in using a new product or a new process. And so, the good thing is there’s a lot of research being done for those interested in fire and structural engineering. I would point people often to research that’s being supported by the US Forest Service and others. It’s happening at a lot of universities.

Eve: [00:16:57] Yeah, it’s really interesting. So, it’s really early days. It’s pioneering efforts still. But you know, I’ve also heard people say that there’s a mass timber boom on the way. Is that, do you think that’s true? Is that going to take a while to ramp up? It sounds like there’s a number of issues to resolve first.

Greg: [00:17:13] Again, since I’m in the industry and have been for decades, my perspective is very biased. I think a lot more people are hearing about it if they’re paying attention at all to what’s happening in the world of construction and specifically with wood, I would say there’s definitely a boom happening, certainly across Europe, Australia, New Zealand and in Canada and the US. When I speak to people in the industry, it’s very much boom times. And the biggest conference that happens in the US is the Mass timber conference in Portland, Oregon. About every March a few thousand people attend and when we were there last year, everyone’s like talking about how it’s extreme boom times. There’s essentially too much work and not enough supply.

Eve: [00:17:59] Interesting. And who’s at the forefront of the mass timber movement in the US?

Greg: [00:18:03] Oh, that question is similar to asking who’s at the forefront of construction in the US. It needs to be much more nuanced.

Eve: [00:18:13] Well, nuance it for me. Okay.

Greg: [00:18:19] I think what it is, when working with mass timber and to be able to do it well literally requires some experience. Because it’s a different process. It’s not designing a building and here’s a ten-story building, should we build it out of concrete, steel or mass timber? And then say, well, who’s the lowest bidder? We’ll build it that way. That literally doesn’t work. The architects are learning how to work design for mass timber. How does it work well, and when is it the right product? The same goes for the structural engineers. If you haven’t worked with mass timber buildings before, there’s a tendency to over engineer. And over engineering makes buildings more expensive and take longer.

Greg: [00:19:04] And builders, as a builder myself, and I’ve been one for 25 years, if you haven’t worked with mass timber before, the question becomes, well, how do I price that out? What is it going to cost me? And too often in construction, your big cost are your materials and your labor. But if you do mass timber efficiently, much of the labor is moved into the factory for the mass timber frame because you’re figuring that out, you’re shipping it to the project. It’s hard to know how to price that if you’re a general contractor who’s never worked with mass timber or prefab before. There are quite a number of people in each of those categories, architects, structural engineers, builders, subcontractors. And these factories that produce the kit of parts. There’s a small number of each of those who have experience, but there’s nearly exponential growth on the total number of mass timber buildings. We’re lucky that we’re out in Oregon. Oregon produces so much wood. The state’s been very supportive of mass timber and the US West Coast, California, Oregon and Washington. That makes up about 50% of the total market for mass timber currently. Canada is doing a lot as well.

Eve: [00:20:16] That makes sense. You know, I can understand why it’s been ahead in places like Finland and Sweden, the very northern Europe, where it’s very long, cold winters. So, this manufacturing system would permit you to be building, you know, when you really can’t work outside, right?

Greg: [00:20:32] Correct.

Eve: [00:20:32] Or not very comfortably. So, is that true too? Do you think northern states are taking onto this idea faster than southern states in the US? Or don’t you see that differential?

Greg: [00:20:43] I’ll touch on the Nordic Scandinavian countries. Europe is so different than the US because let’s say this, over 80% of the buildings in Europe as a general rule of thumb, are made from concrete. That’s essentially the primary building material. The more you go north, let’s say, to Sweden, the more wood there is, the more it’s used in construction. And even in Sweden, I like to tell people prefab, single family housing is the norm. Prefab for your housing, that reached 50% market share in the 1950s. So, this whole idea of prefab and prefab using wood is quite common in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. But it’s still like 10% of the buildings in Scandinavia, it’s much more. How will that come into the US? I think it will, not only here on the West Coast, will it be very common. It will become more common in Georgia and Alabama. They have a lot of loblolly pine there and there’s a lot of it. Some would argue there’s almost too much of it. And so, there are some new factories coming in to the southeast of the United States that will begin to produce more and more mass timber, very cost effectively. So, that supply will ramp up a lot. But again, the bottleneck will still be those factories that take those commodity wood products and make them into buildings.

Eve: [00:22:06] So just changing gears a little bit, I’m just wondering a little bit about your background. How did you get involved in mass timber?

Greg: [00:22:13] I’ve been a builder of homes for most of my life. I’ve also worked in tech, and had startups, and worked in other countries and other industries for short periods of time. But the majority of my work has been in building. Over 20 years ago after I had a startup in Silicon Valley, and we had the whole crash in Silicon Valley, again around that was exactly when we started our company. So, our timing was bad. So, we had a company not related to housing, that shut down. And I said, look, I’m going to go back to building, but if I’m going to go back to construction, I want to do it efficiently. I want to figure out the best way to build. And so, I toured many factories in Canada, the US and Europe, and said, I want to build with wood on the West Coast. How do I do that efficiently? Because life is too short to become an architect, engineer, builder and everything else all at once. I need to use a system and I want to use the best system for building with wood. So, I did tour all of those factories and I recognize it’s a question of software and it’s a question of systems. And that’s when I encountered mass timber. And so, I specifically focused in on that and ask, well, who’s doing that really, really well? And 20 years ago in the US, almost no one was.

Greg: [00:23:44] So, the leaders were in Europe. So, then my research led to, well, what are we learning from the Europeans and how do we apply that here? And then I found the person who’s now my business partner, Stefan Schneider. He was a Swiss immigrant. He’s been here for 20 years, and his job for six years was setting up factories. He was the person you called when he wanted to enter the industry.

Eve: [00:24:07] Interesting.

Greg: [00:24:08] And I said, well, look, I really want to build with wood. You’re the person who’s the most knowledgeable in my experience. Why don’t you start your own factory? For the last six years, you’ve been setting up other people’s factories across Canada and the US. Why don’t you come to Oregon and start your own factory, which he did. So, we’ve been, since 2010, we’ve had a factory in Oregon and we’ve been fabricating mass timber components, kit of parts, on literally hundreds of buildings. And then I want to emphasize, in doing so, we are one of a team of companies that do mass timber buildings. So, we have a pretty big network of architects, engineers, subcontractors, assemblers, many other people. Right?

Eve: [00:24:54] Your company’s got a great name. Cut my timber. I really like that. So, what sort of projects have you built and what does it look like? Do architects come to you or clients or all of the above or engineers? Like, how do you work?

Greg: [00:25:08] All of the above. There is no single mass timber marketplace. Let’s use an example. Let’s say Eve Picker wanted to do either a ten-story mass timber building or you wanted to do ten single family homes using mass timber. And you ask yourself, well, where do I go to do this? Who does this? Who does it well? There isn’t a single place on the web where you can go to find that information. And many of the companies that actually do it are booked out for years, or at least for a very long time. So, they’re like, well, look, it’s great you’re interested in a project, but we don’t have capacity. That’s kind of a problem that may change because more stuff’s coming on the web. But again, there’s no central hub. What happens to us?

Greg: [00:25:51] We’ve been in the industry long enough that we get approached generally through company and people we already know, and they are architects, general contractors, general engineers, some real estate developers. They’re interested in mass timber, and they ask around and find out, well, who does this, who has experience doing this? And they come to us and sometimes we play a big role in the project and other times we’re a subcontractor supplying a small part. I’ll give you an example. There’s an extension of the Portland Airport in Portland, Oregon. That project is over $1,000,000,000. We are one of hundreds of companies supplying that project, so we do some wood fabrication. On other projects, we’ll do a single-family home, let’s say a timber frame or glulam home, we’re the major supplier. We do commercial buildings. We supplied big beams to the new Adidas headquarters in Portland, Oregon. That’s over 400,000 square feet. And then we’ll do event structures like the one in the background behind me.

Eve: [00:26:58] Which is amazing.

Greg: [00:26:59] If you’ve ever watched a TEDx talk, we created the stage for the TEDx talk. That’s 12,000 individual pieces of wood specifically, mostly glulam. And that was all modeled and then fabricated and shipped up as a kit of parts. And that’s a good example of another mass timber project.

Eve: [00:27:18] That’s a really big range. Yeah. So, how do everyday people get into this market. If I just wanted an affordable home, but I really care about the environment and I want to find someone to help me build a timber home, the entire home.

Greg: [00:27:36] There are multiple ways to go about that. There are some for a single-family home. And again, with mass timber, let’s use some examples of a… There’s the homes constructed with essentially two by fours, two by six is in small beams. On the heavy or mass timber side of things, there are homes that are, let’s say, using a lot of glulam beams. Um, there are timber frames. Those are solid wood not engineered wood, it’s just solid pieces of wood. And then there are many homes that are a hybrid. They may be heavy beams and CYP panels, structural insulated panels. So, there are a growing number of suppliers who try to be a one stop shop. That you’ll go to them, and you can buy the home you want from their kit of parts, from their catalogue, or you can have a custom home designed and manufactured and built for you. In this big country, there are many options.

Eve: [00:28:35] There are many, many options. Yeah.

Greg: [00:28:38] And the price points are very varied as well, too. Some companies will focus on accessory dwelling units for your backyard. Other companies are doing big custom homes in ski resorts. It’s very varied.

Eve: [00:28:51] Right. So, I’ve heard whispers from you that you also want to manufacture houses. You want to talk about that, as a way to really produce housing quickly?

Greg: [00:29:03] Yeah. Our company and others, we think a way we can scale and become more efficient and make the whole system better is essentially through developing a catalog of buildings and a building system. Right now, everything, as you said, is bespoke. We have one project like the one behind us and then the next one we’re doing, working on an airport, or we’re working on a large commercial building. That works, we’re very busy doing that, but it requires very different skill sets. And we work with billion-dollar construction companies and the next time we’re working with a general contractor with five employees. So, we have a good business doing that. But we think the way forward, we want to use some of our capacity and we’re developing a line of single-family homes. And so, we’ll sell those as a kit of parts to other builders and to, let’s call it the do-it-yourself crowd, that they do want a mass timber, or a heavy timber home and they want it as a kit of parts. So, we are developing that. We don’t have it ready yet, but we are developing that, and we are building a new factory. Our current one is in Portland, Oregon. We’re building another one that will open up in the first half of next year outside of Portland, and we want to use some of our capacity to do that, that catalog of single-family homes. And we will, and we’ll have that ready in late spring.

Eve: [00:30:39] It feels a little retro, like going back to build your own log cabin, right?

Greg: [00:30:43] It is, But the housing demand is so extreme. So, I think the solution to creating more housing is there are millions of solutions. There have to be many ways. Some people want a big house, some people want a small house. Some people want a net zero home. So, we want to be one of the many providers of solutions.

Eve: [00:31:02] Well, it’s really interesting. So, final question for you. Are there any other current trends in mass timber that we should keep an eye on, like new products emerging?

Greg: [00:31:11] Here’s what I think you should look, when you look at mass timber. Think of, there’s cross laminated timber that’s glued together. There’s also nail laminated timber where the layers are connected with nails and then there’s double laminated timber. So, go into the whole category, understand that there are many kinds of heavy or mass timber. An exciting trend, there’s growing interest in net zero building. There’s growing interest in Passive House. So, the combination of mass timber being fabricated in a factory and they’re addressing the market of green building and specifically net zero and sustainability, where those trends are converging. Is there a way to build in a factory smarter, greener, more sustainable homes for the people who want them? And will these building systems make them more affordable? That’s what excites us, and I think those are all growing trends.

Eve: [00:32:08] Yeah, I agree with you. They’re definitely growing. Well, this is really exciting. I hope you stay in touch and let us know when your factory opens. I want you to send me the catalog.

Greg: [00:32:18] I will. And here’s a real convergence that I think aligns with all the innovative work you’re doing in crowdfunding. I do want to see crowdfunding merge with mass timber and prefab. So, people who want a home or they want a community are finding one another through crowdfunding and they’re working with the factories that can actually produce the buildings either as an investment or for the home they want. That excites me as well.

Eve: [00:32:50] Yes. It would be a lovely world, wouldn’t it?

Greg: [00:32:54] Well, we’ve got to make it happen.

Greg: [00:32:56] Yeah. Well, thank you very much for joining me. And I do expect to get that catalogue when it’s ready.

Greg: [00:33:02] You will.

Eve: [00:33:02] I can’t wait to see it. It sounds like a lot of fun.

Greg: [00:33:05] In late spring next year. I’ll share that with you.

Eve: [00:33:09] Thank you.

Greg: [00:33:09] Thank you.

Eve: [00:33:17] I hope you enjoyed today’s guest and our deep dive. You can find out more about this episode or others you might have missed on the show notes page at RethinkRealEstateforGood.co. There’s lots to listen to there. You can support this podcast by sharing it with others, posting about it on social media or leaving a rating and review. To catch all the latest from me you can follow me on LinkedIn. Even better, if you’re ready to dabble in some impact investing yourself head on over to wefunder.com/smallchange, where you can invest directly in Small Change and our mission to democratize capital formation to create impact in commercial real estate development. A special thanks to David Allardice for his excellent editing of this podcast and original music, and a big thanks to you for spending your time with me today. We’ll talk again soon. But for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.

Image courtesy of Greg Howes

Democratizing green roofs.

Molly Meyer is democratizing the green roof. 

80% of the buildings that will exist in a few decades from now are already built. And since buildings are one of the biggest contributors to climate change, figuring out how to retrofit them economically and easily is a must do. Green roofs are a big part of that. Molly wants to put a green roof within the reach of anyone who owns a building.

She’s tackling this through engineering incredibly lightweight soil and systematically training contractors in how to use it. Her company, Omni Ecosystems, in Chicago, is growing, evidence of the demand.

Molly’s interest in green roofs developed in Germany, where she spent two years working in the green roof industry on a Robert Bosch Fellowship after completing her degree in Earth Systems at Stanford. She founded Omni Ecosystems in 2009 where she works to advance technology associated with working landscapes in order to create rooftop gardens (and other types of working landscapes) that are functional, biodiverse, environmentally friendly, and fiscally beneficial. The company is multidisciplinary and comprised of five branches: OmniInnovation (research and development), OmniProducts (product development), OmniWorkshop (design studio), OmniConstruction (installs living infrastructure systems), and OmniStewardship (provides care for long term landscape management). They don’t just build green roofs – they invent, design, supply, construct, and maintain working landscapes.

In 2019 Omni Ecosystems headquarters relocated to the Bowman Dairy Company’s State Street facility in Chicago, rehabilitating the neglected into a design studio with a 30 ft palm tree, construction yard and manufacturing warehouse, and a rooftop showcase with a 15,000 sq ft green roof including 32 trees. Omni Ecosystems has patented a number of innovative solutions to improve their products including the Omni Tapestry and the Omni Green Roof and have received numerous awards for their visionary products and Molly has received more for her visionary leadership.

Read the podcast transcript here

Eve Picker: [00:00:11] I thought I’d kick off the New Year with an inspirational conversation I had with Molly Meyer last year. Molly is the founder of Omni Systems. She’s developed a brand-new approach to greening roofs.  She’s engineered an incredibly light-weight soil that weighs just 12.5% of your average garden soil, making it possible to easily grow trees on rooftops. Why is this so important? 80% of the buildings that will exist in a few decades from now are already built. And since buildings are one of the biggest contributors to climate change, figuring out how to retrofit them economically and easily is a must do. Green roofs are a big part of that. Molly wants to put a green roof within the reach of anyone who owns a building. I was blown away. 

If you missed this podcast when it was first published, make sure to catch it now.

If you’d like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do. Share this podcast. And go to rethinkrealestateforgood.co where you can subscribe to be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.

Eve: [00:01:38] Molly Meyer is democratizing the green roof. Why, you ask? 80% of the buildings that will exist in a few decades from now are already built. And since buildings are one of the biggest contributors to climate change, figuring out how to retrofit them economically and easily is a must do. Green roofs are a really big part of that. Molly wants to put a green roof within the reach of anyone who owns a building. She’s tackling this through engineering incredibly lightweight soil and systematically training contractors in how to use it. Her company, Omni Systems in Chicago, is growing, evidence of the demand. I was fascinated and hope you will be to listen in. If you’d like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, please share this podcast. Or go to RethinkRealEstate.Co and describe to be the first to hear what we’re cooking up next. Hi, Molly. It’s really nice to have you on my show today.

Molly Meyer: [00:01:41] It’s so nice to be here. Thank you, Eve.

Eve: [00:01:44] You’ve built an amazing company I heard about called Omni Ecosystems with a vision to democratize the Green Roof. So tell me about that. What’s the problem that you’re trying to solve?

Molly: [00:01:57] Yeah, so, well, green roofs are one aspect of it, but when we’re thinking about putting landscapes on structure, weight is a serious concern. So making sure that green roofs, or that the ecosystems that we put on structure aren’t too heavy. And so we’ve invented a new type of growing media or engineered green media, which colloquially we call soil, but it’s very, very lightweight. And so typical soil, like in someone’s front yard, would weigh under a lawn. To grow that lawn would be about 120 pounds per square foot. And typical green roof systems will grow along in about 80 pounds a square foot. We’ve grown lawns in 15.

Molly: [00:02:48] Oh Wow.

Molly: [00:02:50] Orders of magnitude lighter weight.

Eve: [00:02:52] Wow. Wow, wow.

Molly: [00:02:54] And so why is this important? You know, this is one aspect of what we do, which is broadly, broadly what we do is how do we integrate nature into the built environment. But why is this aspect of it important is because when we look at the building stock that’s going to exist in 2040, I might have this stat wrong, but I believe it’s almost 80% of the building stock is already built. Right. And that’s huge. So, and when we know that the built environment contributes at least 40% to greenhouse gas emissions, then that makes it very clear that there’s a huge imperative to retrofit and to adapt our existing structures to be more, to be able to mitigate and adapt to climate change. So when we think of overhauling the auto industry or transportation, if the administration were to put forth a new sort of emissions standards for auto manufacturers, that would turn over about 10 to 15 years. So, we’d know, okay, in 2037, by 2037, here in 2022, those new standards will be in effect. And we know we’ll see the benefits of these better emission standards. But that’s still only, what, a quarter or a third of emissions. There’s still almost half comes from buildings. So, we really do need to be thinking now about what retrofits look like. And while there’s a lot that contributes towards how a building can be greener, I think one really important part is integrating nature into it. So, creating greenery in, on and around buildings.

Eve: [00:04:49] Interesting. Just as an example, I don’t know, maybe about five years ago, I live in a little downtown building which has a flat roof with a stair to it. And I wanted to put a, I wanted to put a green roof on it. And everyone said, no, no, no, no, you won’t have the structure. You’ll have to get a structural engineer, etc., etc. But, you know, I was thinking some lovely little perennial. It’s a tiny little area. It’s maybe 20 by 20. But I thought, you know, something that would be low maintenance in the sun, up there, would give us a little less cooling needs inside since we’re on the top floor. So, when you go to retrofit a building, did you look at existing structure to understand what sort of weight it could carry? Like if joists carry a roof, what extra can they carry?

Molly: [00:05:37] Sure. Yeah. So, we don’t have structural engineers on staff. We, you know, a developer or a building owner would hire them as another consultant within the team. And it’s really important to have a structural engineer to evaluate the building so that we can ensure that it can hold even a lighter load to put the system on. But when our soil scientist invented this new type of growing media, the very first projects they looked at were incredibly limited loads. There used to be in Chicago, a small grocer called True Nature Foods, and True Nature wanted to grow food on their own rooftop and their joists, the structural engineers said their joist would only support an additional 12 pounds per square foot. So, insanely light, and no one had ever grown food in this capacity. But the soil scientists that that we work with, Michael Rabkin, he invented our soils. This was back in 2004, 2005 time period when he was faced with this question. He said that was the first project that they were trying to tackle, and he really developed a process to do this. And it’s all based on the concepts of terraforming. Terraforming is how do you grow soil? So, soil grows in nature, right? Rocks break down biological materials like microbes and earthworms and whatnot, grow in on and around them and organic matter builds up over time. So, you have a profile of biogeochemical processes happening. It’s where geology and biology meet, is what soils really are. And so, to grow soils is really to ask how do we introduce biological organisms to the geosphere in a way that we can make sure plants can thrive?

Molly: [00:07:44] And so, Michael, his work prior to omni ecosystems was with the U.S. Military asking how would we grow food on Mars? How would we grow food? Yeah, in otherwise unable to be grown upon areas. And so, if you were to watch the movie The Martian with Mike, it’s painful because he just goes, “That’s not how it works. That’s not how it works.” Apologies to Matt Damon, but the genesis of the soils at Omni Ecosystem differ significantly from how other providers within this industry ask: How do you grow on structure? How do you grow in lightweight? Because their approach is very much from an engineering or mechanical mindset. Let’s look at the geology and the chemistry of it. So, making sure that there’s certain rock substrate and then there’s a certain amount of NPK, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and other micronutrients. Whereas our approach is we can grow on any geologic substrate because we can add the appropriate biology in order to turn that rock into soil. And so, what we’ve done is we’ve just used a very, very lightweight rock and we grow within it, we turn it into soil on a rooftop. And so, our processes really mimic the ideas of ecological succession. So, when a forest fire goes through an area and decimates a forest, over the course of the next five decades, you will see a forest regrow there. And there’s these ecological steps that occur in growing back a forest. We take those biological processes, and we accelerate them. We put all the ingredients together so that nature can do what happens in after forest fire in five decades. We do it in 12 weeks on a rooftop.

Eve: [00:09:53] Wow. So, it’s actually on the roof. These were not the questions I was going to ask you. I’m fascinated. I know I like it. So, it’s actually a process that you implement on the rooftop.

Molly: [00:10:08] It is, yes. You know, we grow soil from bare rocks. So, on day one, the rooftop looks the worst that it will. And over time, it grows. And so, the most cost effective version of this is actually one of the most cost effective versions of greening rooftops anywhere on a market. It’s less expensive than other sort of monoculture systems. We’ve created a native wildflower meadow that can work anywhere in the Midwest and East up and down the Eastern Seaboard to really mimic nature, to create native habitats.

Eve: [00:10:27] Fascinating, how fascinating, and do different weights of soil give you the ability to grow different things?

Molly: [00:10:51] Weight, not so much depth. Yes. So, the deeper we would go with a soil profile, different plants can survive. So, there are a few misconceptions, however. Many plants don’t actually have tap roots or roots that need to go straight down. Most plants can adapt, and their roots can go sideways. So, lawns, native wildflower meadows, those can all exist in the shallowest three inches. When we try to create forests or tree canopy on roofs, then we do go to a deeper profile because typically our clients want to have mature trees on the roof. And so, we have to cover fully their root balls or their rooting mass with soil. And so, we might have to go up to a two foot depth, but it’s still very lightweight. For example, on our own headquarters, the building where I’m speaking to you today. We created a rooftop with a very structured Bosque, so a series of 15 maple trees in one area. There’s over 30 trees on the roof, but 15 maple trees in one area that, through the use of this lightweight soil, through the use of just optimizing just the right depths that need to be there. And, through the use of air spading, which is a process by which you remove excess soil from the root of a tree. Those things, we’ve allowed us to put this forest on the roof in 60 pounds per square foot. To do this with any other technology, or approach, would weigh 240.

Eve: [00:12:31] Wow.

Molly: [00:12:32] Yeah.

Eve: [00:12:33] When can I come and visit?

Molly: [00:12:34] Any time. Eve, come any time.

Eve: [00:12:36] It sounds really amazing. You’re sort of in the process of making your vision to democratize green roofs into reality. And just tell me a little bit about your company and when it launched and what products and services you offer.

Molly: [00:12:53] Yeah, absolutely. So, we started the company about 13 and a half years ago, in January of 2009. Great time to start a company in the real estate industry. If you remember, I’m being sarcastic. It was.

Eve: [00:13:08] Did she get a loan for a building then?

Molly: [00:13:11] Not so much. But we started the company then here in Chicago because there was quite a robust green roof industry here in Chicago. Thanks to Mayor Daley, his administration put forth a sustainable development policy that was the core of which was around green roofs. So, there was a great market here and we brought our products and services, which at first were really just green roofs. And so, we started with this lightweight soil, bringing it to market. And over time, we found that clients were asking us for more and more services in addition to the products, because it’s a unique approach. It’s not what most landscapers would do and how they would approach creating green space. And so over time, we added a construction arm and a maintenance arm and a design studio. Today, the core of our business is really around supplying our, the soils that we’ve invented and designing landscapes that do more than just look pretty but actively work to adapt and mitigate the climate change. We do still offer some of those construction maintenance services, but it’s less of the focus of the firm. And really what we’re trying to do is get these soils out to other contractors so that they can implement them because we realize there’s too much work to be done for us to try to become a big behemoth contractor. We really want to educate other contractors because our skill set is in inventing and understanding soils. And then our other core is designing with this advanced technology in mind.

Molly: [00:14:59] So through our design studio, we’ve really been able to push the industry forward in thinking about what can be done on structure and within landscape. So the rooftop that I mentioned before in the building I’m in where we have a quarter of the weight of a typical approach, that’s the first time that’s ever been done, and it’s in the staid and risk averse real estate architecture and construction industries. It’s unique to push forward that much through a client. So, our own design practice can push those boundaries and then lead the way for other designers to implement or to apply those to other projects. But another example of sort of work that we do now is not just on structure but on grade. So, one of the soils that we’ve created actually has an enormous amount of pore space. So typical soils have about 25% pore space, which means like air space or where air or water could be held within the geologic substrate. And our stormwater soil has 78 to 91% pore space.

Eve: [00:16:09] Interesting.

Molly: [00:16:10] Over three times the amount of space for water to be held. And this is really important because this becomes then a stormwater management tool using innovative soils. Projects where we are applying this are particularly in urban infill sites where there’s environmental contamination. So, when you have environmental contamination and you’re doing new construction, you often need to dig out that contaminated soil, haul it off somewhere, make it somebody else’s problem to dispose of. But hauling that off in order to create space for cisterns or underground vaults to manage your stormwater.

Molly: [00:16:49] So what we’ve been able to do is say we can cap the existing site, which is a typical approach to environmental remediation, to put a engineered barrier on a site and leave the contamination in situ. And then on top of that, we’re able to put this super spongy soil and it basically behaves like a green roof on ground. But in doing this, the soil, the contamination remains in place to minimize the amount of negative impact that might occur due to that contamination moving. We’re able to bring in this clean soil that manages the stormwater without digging down, and we’re able to often exceed the stormwater requirements of a site. So doing all of this in a couple of sites that we’ve studied and are implementing this on, we have found up to a 35% cost savings when you compare the grey infrastructure approach to the green infrastructure, meaning if you were to look at the environmental, civil and the landscape budgets together of the typical grey infrastructure solution, meaning with cisterns and hauling off contaminated soil, it would be 35% more expensive than just capping the site and putting a super spongy soil on. And the other benefit is that for that less money, we’re getting a more robust landscape.

Eve: [00:18:20] Yeah, and that sounds amazing.

Molly: [00:18:22] So bigger trees. Yeah. Yeah.

Eve: [00:18:25] So do you find that it’s useful where you have really poor soil, like solid clay or it’s really. I suppose you could treat that as contamination too, right?

Molly: [00:18:34] Yes, you could. Absolutely.

Eve: [00:19:37] Because there’s no water runoff. It’s just like a brick wall.

Molly: [00:18:40] Right.

Speaker1: [00:18:41] Just thinking here.

Molly: [00:18:43] Yeah.

Eve: [00:18:44] We’ve lost a lot of retail and there’s lots of strip malls with tons of parking that are standing empty. And I wonder all the time what they’re going to become. Can you just cover over asphalt or concrete?

Molly: [00:19:57] We can, yeah.

Eve: [00:19:59] Have you done that yet?

Molly: [00:19:00] We have actually, a version of that.

Eve: [00:19:04] Turn the mall, the local mall into a park with tiny little retail outlets around the hitch. I think I might go buy one.

Molly: [00:19:13] We absolutely can.

Eve: [00:19:14] That’s really interesting.

Molly: [00:19:19] Yeah. And we have yeah, we’ve put the soil on just straight on asphalt and concrete caps and very shallow, and we can grow plants out of it.

Eve: [00:19:26] Because, you know, that does a couple of things that first of all, it changes the nature of the space. And secondly, the demolition costs and hauling that material and putting it in landfill is just an awful thing to do, you know? So really, really interesting.

Molly: [00:19:42] Yeah. The carbon footprint, I think can particularly as developers start to consider and quantify better the carbon expenditure that they have with each of the decisions they make, it may become very cost effective because of the ability to offset all those hauling the carbon of all that hauling. Yeah.

Eve: [00:20:05] So where are you offering your products and services now? Just Chicago or have you gone national.

Molly: [00:20:11] We’re national. We do this work coast to coast. We have projects now in Phoenix and California, Minneapolis, Atlanta, DC, New York, Connecticut.

Eve: [00:20:26] Not outside the country?

Molly: [00:20:27] Well, we do have a very first couple of projects in the Grand Cayman this year. Everyone on our team is saying, I have to go to that project for site visit. And so, it’s very competitive to us and staff members there for a site visit. But right now, really solidly work within the continental United States. And we’re excited that we have a couple of opportunities to expand beyond that right now.

Eve: [00:20:51] Well, I have a project I’m working on and trying to get built in Australia and we could use that technology there. And the architect I’m working with would be fascinated by this. I mean, they have lighter soils there, but really nothing, nothing like this.

Molly: [00:21:06] Yeah.

Eve: [00:21:07] Are you getting towards your vision to democratize the green roof? How far do you have to go?

Molly: [00:21:12] Oh, we have a long way to go. Well, I think we are making headway, but this is a big endeavor. And it’s not just about us. It’s about everybody contributing to it. We definitely have a couple of decades more of work to do.

Eve: [00:21:26] Who are your customers?

Molly: [00:21:27] Yeah, good question. So, our customers are, for our landscape architecture studio, we are often either directly contracted by architects or ownership, depending on how a certain contract might be structured. For our products, we sell those to other contractors. So, roofers, landscapers and periodically general contractors who do work.

Eve: [00:21:55] So if I wanted to find someone in southwestern Pennsylvania, could I go to your site and see who you sold to?

Molly: [00:22:02] Oh, yeah. You know what? I don’t know if we have a list on the site for Southwest Pennsylvania, but, yeah, we have folks I can connect you with.

Eve: [00:22:11] Okay. Do you touch on who’s on your team? You’ve got a research division. Like what does your team look like to start a company and grow a company like this?

Molly: [00:22:21] Yeah, we have a very diverse team with quite a broad set of skill sets. So, we do have a soil scientist and, as well as a team of, I think about ten landscape architects and a couple of architects. We also have construction project managers. Obviously, HR and accounting and then we have horticulturalists.

Eve: [00:22:50] So your typical stuff.

Molly: [00:22:51] I started the company where I was wearing all the hats, you know somebody had to drive a forklift. It was me, right? If somebody had to pull weeds, it was me. Over time, we’ve grown, and we’ve really gone from a group of generalists who are willing to do anything to now, over the last few years, really having a group of specialists who bring expertise from their prior work. So, we have a director of operations now who comes to us after a career as an owner’s rep. So, she really understands the breadth of the industry and how to interact with our typical clients and how our team should be operating. Yeah, so a really, quite a diverse group of people. But what’s peculiar about our group and what we do is that we need this breadth, to enable to go deep in what we do, right? Because what we do is so unique, but it has to slot in across the industry from design and construction, also through stewardship, through the whole timeline, and be able to speak to each of the stakeholders which are obviously very diverse within the AC industry.

Eve: [00:24:04] And what’s the range and scale of projects?

Molly: [00:24:07] Oh yeah, we have very large projects which can be acres in size, like the Morton Salt Project where we’re applying our soils on grade to manage contamination and stormwater on that site. It’s a four-acre site and other projects are even larger. And then we have a contest among our sales team for the smallest project. And I think right now it’s about 26 square feet. But if you have anything smaller than that, they will be fighting tooth and nail to sell it to you.

Eve: [00:24:43] 26 square feet, that’s a little room.

Molly: [00:24:44] Yeah, exactly.

Eve: [00:24:25] No. So a little tiny little courtyard. Like a little urban courtyard somewhere. Tiny, weenie, little one.

Molly: [00:24:49] Yeah. That might have even been a set of planters, but yeah. But, more or less, our average project tends to be, I don’t know, between a half-acre and an acre of size.

Eve: [00:25:02] Residential, residential, commercial. Do you have residential customers who come to you?

Molly: [00:25:12] We do have residential customers that come to us. Our typical clients, however, are commercial and institutional. So, over the past ten years, much of our work has been commercial developers who are looking to green amenity deck space for their tenants. And we’re finding quite an increase in that after the pandemic, as people are thinking about how do we lure our folks back to the office? And green space is really critical, and adapting existing structures is very critical. And that’s obviously a sweet spot for us. Through the pandemic, many of our projects continued that were commercial, but we have seen quite an uptick in institutional work, health care and higher ed. Those portfolios for us are really increasing significantly. And then we do residential. Yeah, we do it and we enjoy it. But really, I think we’re a commercial outfit, so we kind of work with commercial clients.

Eve: [00:26:06] Interesting. Just to wrap this part of the conversation up, just tell me about one of your favorite projects that you worked on that was really very impactful.

Molly: [00:26:14] Sure. Well, we were lucky to build and supply and continue to maintain the green roof on Studio Gang Architects headquarters here in Chicago. And that was a really fun project for many reasons. Obviously, to get to work with Studio Gang is an honor, but also because of what we actually did on that project. So, they were looking at an existing building. I’m not remembering the vintage, but that was probably before the 1930s. And so, there was a limitation on the structural load. I want to say it was around 22 pounds a square foot that we were limited to. You know, Studio Gang wanted to put a wildflower meadow on the roof, a native meadow, as well as some trees. So, we worked with the structural engineer to identify the columns over which we could place trees, and then the remaining area, we sort of sloped the topography of the soil to manage the weight, keep it low, and then seeded the roof with a native wildflower meadow. And this was really, really fun to do and to think about the species that were up there. But one of the challenges that came up was that the project was delayed and what should have been seeded in the spring was seeded in the fall and late enough in the year that we weren’t sure if the plants could establish and protect the soil from wind scour through the winter. So, we spoke with the Studio Gang and said, hey, look, we can seed with the meadow, with the native species, and they can cold stratify help establish in the spring. But through the winter we’re not entirely sure. So, what we’d like to suggest is seeding the roof with a cold hardy annual so it could establish in the fall, cover the roof through the winter, and then we can mow it back in the spring. Or it could die back because it’s an annual and then the perennial plants could establish.

Eve: [00:28:20] Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. It’s like a blanket.

Molly: [00:28:23] Right. A cozy blanket. So, we ended up seeding with winter wheat. And winter wheat, we thought, I think at the time this was the first time we did this. We were like, let’s just throw a lot of wheat on this roof because we’ve got to make sure it stays in place. So, when we came back in the spring, it was a wheat field across this rooftop. It was so dense. And so, we asked, can we leave it up here rather than mow it? What do you think about just seeing what happens? And they were game. And so, we let it mature and in July we took some samples, sent them to a lab, and they were cleared for, basically there are certain type of fungus that can attack wheat and then it can be dangerous to humans if you were to consume it, but it came back clear on all this. So, we got a group of students together from a non-profit called After School Matters here in Chicago and One Summer Chicago, two different groups. But we worked with them to train them up. The students came to the rooftop with us. We harvested all the wheat. Well, actually, we harvested about 3000 square feet because it was a lot of work. So, we just did about 3000 square feet of this roof because Studio Gang wanted us to harvest with scissors so that we wouldn’t damage the underlying perennials that were coming up.

Eve: [00:29:51] That’s a lot of work.

Molly: [00:29:51] It was so much work. So, the students and we, like everybody, like our staff was out there or the students and we all were out there with a pair of scissors doing this. We brought the harvest back to our headquarters at the time. Another group of students helped us winnow, separating the chaff from the grain, and they came up with all different ways to do this. They took boards and beat the boards together to break up the seed heads. They took a bucket and filled it up and put a chain in there on a drill and beat apart the wheat. And then they took fans and blew the chaff away from the grain. So, like all this stuff, and over the course of three weeks they processed all of this wheat and we had 66 pounds of grain and a local artisanal miller milled it into a high grade pastry flour. And we had over 60 pounds of flour, which then a local baker worked with the students to bake it into cookies that they sold to raise money for After School Matters and One Summer Chicago.

Eve: [00:30:59] That’s really a lovely story. That’s a lot work.

Molly: [00:31:02] It was so much work, so much work. But it did really pay off because a few things came of that. One is the students were hilarious and incredible and so much fun to work with. And one of the students was like an aspiring stand-up comedian, and he put a whole bit together about like how insane it is where cookies and bread come from, which was awesome. And then at the time, the mayor of Chicago was Rahm Emanuel, and he came to our headquarters to celebrate their graduation from this non-profit, this student summer program that they were in. And there were 30,000 kids across Chicago that were in this program, and about 30 of them were here, were with us. And he came to their graduation, and he was supposed to be at our office for like 30 minutes. He spent almost 2 hours just hanging out with the kids. It was so cool. They gave him a pound of flour. And then, you know, Studio Gang’s rooftop ended up winning an award for this project. And today it’s a native wildflower meadow. So, after that first season, the story.

Eve: [00:32:18] They didn’t keep the wheat? Because wheat is beautiful.

Molly: [00:32:20] It is. It really is. But they wanted the native wildflower meadow and so they let it go back to that. And every year now they do a BioBlitz where they bring out a group of biologists and study like what are the species they’re seeing and what’s happening on the roof. So, it’s interesting to see that this is a space, a very urban space. It’s right at the intersections of Ashland in Milwaukee, in Chicago. It’s a very dense intersection, but three floors up, all this ecology has happened in the past five or six years. You know, it’s pretty impactful.

Eve: [00:32:57] It’s pretty fabulous.

Molly: [00:33:18] And then we also learned something very cool, which I love the data behind what we find out on each project. So, here’s a project where it’s about 5000 square feet. We harvested 3000 square feet of wheat and we got 66 pounds of flour. So, what we know now is that for every 50 square feet of a green roof, you could have 1 pound of flour grown. And this is important when we think about how do we scale this up, right? So across the city of Chicago, we worked with Perkins and Will to actually study how many square feet of green roof could ever be built and learned that from each of these data points of all of our projects, that little bits like how much, how much stormwater on this project, how much we do on this project and whatnot. We learned that, you know, if every year you harvested wheat on all the, all the eligible rooftops in Chicago for green roofs you could get, what’s the number of pounds? It’s almost 10 million pounds of flour and that of grain. And that grain could turn into nearly 50 million bottles of beer a year. That is pretty dang cool.

Eve: [00:35:38] Well, so I have two more questions for you. Clearly, you’re really passionate about this. How did you come to it? What’s your background?

Molly: [00:35:09] Oh, yeah, I know enough to get myself really in trouble. So, I studied Earth Systems for my undergraduate degree and my graduate degree. So, I got an undergrad and a master’s from Stanford in Earth Systems. And my focus there was within geology and narrowly within geology, I took a lot of soils and biogeochemistry classes, but I really just knew enough to get myself in trouble. I didn’t. I’m not a soil scientist. After my master’s degree, I ended up going to work for a general contractor as a carpenter for a couple of years just to do something different and be, I wanted to be up in Seattle where I could ski and climb every weekend, and after a few years of that, kind of wanted to go back into working in the environment but thought about, I was so interested in construction and how the built environment was, operates, but I really love soils and a couple of conversations some friends said, what about green roofs? So, I got a fellowship to work in Germany and learned how they build green roofs over there.

Eve: [00:36:23] It’s the country of green,

Molly: [00:36:25] Right, yeah.

Eve: [00:36:26] I mean, they separate out all their recycling. You can’t put glass bottles in except for certain hours because it might disturb the neighbors. I mean, they are so organized.

Molly: [00:36:37] Yeah, yeah, they are.

Eve: [00:36:40] Very precise. Yeah.

Molly: [00:36:41] Yeah. And so, I went over there, and I was there for about a year and a half learning, learning about the German green roof industry, which at the time really was far ahead of the United States. And so, I learned a lot there about green roofs, best practices, came back to the United States and just very fortuitously met Michael Repkin within that first few months of coming back, or being in Chicago. And it’s, his soil science background and me to know enough that he was speaking the truth, but not enough to be able to do it myself. We teamed up and really created Omni Ecosystems from that.

Eve: [00:37:20] How fabulous.

Molly: [00:37:21] Yeah. And over the past 13 years, in some ways we’ve leapfrogged what Germany did. You know, German green roofs remain very much about seeding, which is a monoculture and non-native to most of Europe and North America. In our work is, how can we go lightweight, how can we manage more stormwater, how can we become more biodiverse? But none of that would be possible without understanding what they developed in Germany and building upon it.

Eve: [00:37:48] Absolutely fascinating. So, what’s next for you? What’s next? There’s got to be something next brewing.

Molly: [00:37:55] Oh, boy. We always have little things brewing, but, you know, what we’re really excited about right now is scaling up the solutions we’ve created so that others can implement this. We recognize that we are on a very short timeline to mitigate and adapt to climate change. And the soils that we’ve invented and the design approach that we have has really kind of shown people, hey, there’s a path, it’s proven, this isn’t a pilot study anymore. We have this done and figured out. And so, what we’re working actively on right now is scaling and empowering others to use this technology. And that’s why I said earlier, our construction and maintenance teams are small and mighty, but really what they’re about is learning how these, our systems are best implemented and managed so that we can train others to do it. So, we’ve now built training programs. We have more than 50 contractors around the United States, either fully trained and implementing our systems or in the process of getting trained up. And that to us is really exciting because our hands can only do so much. But getting this technology to others.

Eve: [00:39:16] Now is exciting because I would want to know who they are. I mean, I hope you have a database.

Molly: [00:39:21] We do. And to your point earlier, it’s not on our website yet. But that’s part of the, part of our plan over the course of the next year is to build that up. And we want to make sure it’s just easy, easy for people to deploy this technology and use it.

Eve: [00:39:39] Well, this has been absolutely delightful. I’m in awe. How interesting.

Molly: [00:39:43] Thank you, Eve. It’s a treat to speak with you. And I do hope you’ll come visit sometime.

Eve: [00:39:47] I’m definitely going to. When this latest COVID wave settles down again, I’ll try and come to Chicago. I’d really love to see what you’re doing. Thank you so much.

Molly: [00:39:17] Thank you, Eve.

Eve: [00:39:24] That was Molly Meyer, founder of Omni Systems. She’s developed a brand new approach to greening roofs, an engineered soil that weighs just 15 pounds per square foot. That’s just 12.5% of your garden soil, which averages 120 pounds per square foot. And it’s not only meadows that she’s growing, but trees in her lightweight soil. I’m blown away.

Eve: [00:40:40] I hope you enjoyed today’s guest and our deep dive. You can find out more about this episode or others you might have missed on the show notes page at RethinkRealEstateforGood.co. There’s lots to listen to there. You can support this podcast by sharing it with others, posting about it on social media or leaving a rating and review. To catch all the latest from me you can follow me on LinkedIn. Even better, if you’re ready to dabble in some impact investing yourself head on over to wefunder.com/smallchange, where you can invest directly in Small Change and our mission to democratize capital formation to create impact in commercial real estate development. A special thanks to David Allardice for his excellent editing of this podcast and original music, and a big thanks to you for spending your time with me today. We’ll talk again soon. But for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.

Image courtesy of Molly Meyer

From beetles to mass timber.

Sandra Lupien is the Director of MassTimber@MSU, a program at Michigan State University that harnesses outreach, communications, research, education, and partnerships to advance mass timber construction and manufacture in Michigan and the surrounding region. Sandra has two decades of diverse policy, communications, external affairs, and leadership experience in the non-profit, public, and private sectors, most of it working at the intersection of climate change, natural resource policy, and equitable and sustainable community development. 

While pursuing a mid-career Master of Public Policy at University of California Berkeley, Sandra caught the mass timber bug in 2016, which led her to do at least three things: 1) research what it would take to pivot her small beetle-kill pine furniture company to mass timber manufacturer; 2) to write her Master’s thesis “Removing Barriers to Cross-Laminated Timber Manufacture and Adoption in California: A gamechanger for forests, wildfire, and climate;” and 3) to seize the opportunity to harness her knowledge and passion to help advance mass timber construction and manufacture in Michigan – her home state – in this new position at MSU. 

Before joining MSU in July of 2021, Sandra served as Deputy Director for External Affairs and Communications in the California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research and the California Strategic Growth Council.

Read the podcast transcript here

Eve Picker: [00:00:12] Hi there. Thanks for joining me on Rethink Real Estate. For Good. I’m Eve Picker and I’m on a mission to make real estate work for everyone. I love real estate. Real estate makes places good or bad, rich or poor, beautiful or not. In this show, I’m interviewing the disruptors, those creative thinkers and doers that are shrugging off the status quo in order to build better for everyone. And speaking of building better, I’m very excited to share that my company, Small Change, is now raising capital through a community round that is open to the public. Small Change is a leading equity crowdfunding platform for impact investment in real estate. For as little as $250, anyone 18 and over can invest in Small Change, helping to fuel our growth as we disrupt the old boys club of capital that routinely ignores so many qualified people and projects. Please visit wefunder.com/smallchange to review the full details of our raise and to make an investment if you can. And remember, investing is risky. Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose.

Eve: [00:01:48] Today, I’m talking with Sandra Lupien, Director of Mass Timber at Michigan State University in Lansing, a program focused on her outreach, research and education, all to advance mass timber construction and manufacturing in the state of Michigan. Sandra is passionate about the potential of mass timber. She came to it after exploring possible uses for wood ravaged by a beetle infestation, the result of years of drought in California. Now she’s part of an energetic community, advancing mass timber as materials for all construction types. You’ll want to hear more.

Eve: [00:02:32] If you’d like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do, share this podcast and go to rethinkrealestateforgood.co, where you can subscribe to be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.

Eve: [00:02:57] Hello, Sandra. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Sandra Lupien: [00:03:00] Eve, thanks so much for having me.

Eve: [00:03:03] You pivoted your career in a very fascinating way, basically from beetles to mass timber. And I was wondering if you could tell me about that journey.

Sandra: [00:03:13] The pivot from beetles to mass timber was just kind of one step in many pivots, but I’ll share this. So, I spent a good number of years, 15 years or so, working in the nonprofit sector and then a little bit in the public sector on mostly climate and environmental and sustainability policy. And I decided very much at mid-career in my early forties to return to school and do a Master of Public Policy, which I did at UC Berkeley. And the timing of my arrival in that program at UC Berkeley was fall of 2016. At that time, California was facing, which was to that point, the worst drought it had ever seen, and that was creating conditions on forests that bark beetles really like. And so, beetles were infesting many, many, many, many thousands of acres of California forests, killing off hundreds of millions of trees and as somebody with a climate change lens, I thought, wow, well, there’s obviously a reason on the causation side that this is happening. Right? The drought is exacerbated by climate change. These beetles are coming in. Lots of trees are dying. But if all of these trees are so many of these trees burn or rot at a fast pace, that’s going to emit a lot of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that we really can’t afford to be emitting, right.

Sandra: [00:04:28] And so, at first, I thought, I had a friend, His name is Sam. He and I worked together and then we did this same master’s degree program at the same time. And we were talking about, well, what could we do with this wood that’s on California forests that would be better served coming out of the forest, right? To achieve healthier forest density and to reduce the amount of fuel on forests. What can we do with that that would store the carbon absorbed by the trees in the forest for a long time? So, first we started making furniture out of this bark beetle pine made like slab-based furniture with steel bases. Very simple stuff. And we were selling it under the brand Sapphire Pine, a company that we started reflecting on the fact that this beetle kill Pine has this beautiful blue stain that’s created by larva left in the woods. So we’re making the bark beetle furniture. It’s very cool. And it was compelling for people. They liked the story, and we were like, well, that’s nice that we’re making this furniture and we’re having fun doing it, but, you know, the volume that we’re able to do and that we’re ever going to be able to do is about a billionth of a spit in all of the oceans of the world.

Sandra: [00:05:32] In terms of the scale of this problem, there’s so much of this wood and fuel on forests. What could we do to use more of it in a sustainable way? And that’s when we learned about mass timber. And most of your, some of your listeners might know what mass timber is, but I’m just going to define it. It’s an umbrella term for a variety of large, engineered wood building construction materials. So, picture a really big columns and beams or even large wall panels made out of materials that you’re very familiar with. Two by fours, one by two is all different types of dimensional lumber usually pressed together with a hydraulic press with adhesive between the layers. Right, so these are.

Eve: [00:06:08] We’ve been using, for quite a long time, laminated beams, right?

Sandra: [00:06:12] That’s right. Yes. Glue lam.

Eve: [00:06:13] Part of the mass timber movement, right?

Sandra: [00:06:15] That’s exactly right. Yeah. glue laminated timber has been around for a long time.

Eve: [00:06:19] Glue lam is what it was called. Yeah, that’s right.

Sandra: [00:06:21] People have seen those, and now it’s been adopted into this larger family known as mass timber. So, we thought, well, this is a compelling use case. You know, these, these materials are big. They can be used structurally; they can be used decoratively. And if you use them instead of other types of building materials that are less sustainable, you can store carbon in a building and have generally a lower carbon footprint in your building. So, we were excited about that. So, first we started investigating, what does it take to manufacture mass timber? Could we do that as a company? And we were learning all about the business side of this, you know, potential. And then we thought, well, we’re trying to use materials like these dead wood or smaller diameter trees that aren’t really in the marketplace yet, and so it’s difficult to get them there. So, what types of policy interventions, we’re policy students at the time, would be helpful?

Sandra: [00:07:11] So, I did a thesis on how could California remove the barriers to the manufacture and adoption of mass timber in order to achieve benefits for forest health, climate change more generally and to reduce wildfire hazard, and then, of course, to reduce the carbon footprints of our buildings. So, that was kind of my pivot. I got super obsessed with mass timber. All I wanted to do was work on mass timber all the time. And even though Sam, my business partner, and I decided we’re not going to manufacture mass timber and we’re not going to make furniture anymore either because we both kind of got interested in other directions. I wanted to continue to stay engaged in mass timber in terms of helping to create markets and policies that would help support those markets. So, that’s what I’m doing.

Eve: [00:07:51] So where are you doing that now?

Sandra: [00:07:54] I work at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan and Michigan State University is a large research and teaching university, one of, I think it’s the first land grant university in the United States. So, created in the 1800s. And MSU has a triple mission for research, teaching and outreach. So, where I fit in at Michigan State University is kind of in that outreach space. I’m what’s called an academic specialist with an outreach focus. My working title is Director, Mass Timber at MSU, and this program is a collaboration across our Department of Forestry, our School of Planning, Design and Construction, and the extension, which is the outreach wing of our university. A lot of people are familiar with that extension concept at US universities. And so, what I like to say is we’re uniting forests in the built environment through outreach and education to really achieve sustainability on forests as well as in our built environments. So, that’s where I am.

Eve: [00:08:53] So, the problem in California with the beetles, I mean, what are the problems that you’ve seen in Michigan? Are they different?

Sandra: [00:09:01] In terms of forest health and such? You know.

Eve: [00:09:03] Yeah.

Sandra: [00:09:04] All forests in North America are seeing a variety of different problems, some of which are exacerbated by drought. There’s always different types of pests on forests that create issues. But in Michigan, some of the forest density and forest health and certainly that wildfire hazard is less pressing, which is a good thing. In Michigan we have a strong culture and a strong history of having a forest products industry that has been a very important part of our economy for the last several decades. That industry has been less robust than it used to be. Still going, we still have some major mills and forest products producers in Michigan, but there’s room for more opportunity here. So, one of the things that is very compelling for the state of Michigan is the idea of, and when I say state, I mean the state government of Michigan, is having a mass timber manufacturer locating here. I mean, Michigan is a history of innovation, of manufacture, of fabrication. All of these things really support the idea that, you know, we also have one of the densest forest canopies in the country. So, it very much supports the idea that, yeah, we could be making mass timber panels and columns and beams here and supplying, what we’re seeing here as increasing demand, for these materials in Michigan and the Great Lakes region. So, that’s a very compelling thing for the state of Michigan. And that’s part of why I’m doing what I’m doing. The state of Michigan helps fund the position that I occupy at Michigan State University, and I’m really here to help mobilize what MSU can do, the university where I work, which is research again, education, outreach in support of sustainable mass timber construction as well as manufacture here.

Eve: [00:10:49] So, like really big picture, what problems can mass timber solve in the construction industry and also for climate change. Like, really big picture, not just beetles, but big problems.

Sandra: [00:11:04] Yes, absolutely. So, I tend to put these things into three different buckets. So, on the construction side, I think I’ll talk about construction first. So, buildings and the construction industry are responsible for about 39% of global carbon dioxide emissions. About 28% of that is attributable to the energy used to operate buildings. So, that operational energy. So, the keep the energy that keeps the lights on and keeps your air conditioning running and pumps water. So, that’s 28%. The other 11% is construction industry. And that has more to do with the materials that we use to build buildings, how those are mined and sourced and manufactured and transported and all of those aspects. So, that’s the 11% in the built environment that mass timber can really help address in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. So, because wood, which is what mass timber is made from, is a renewable material, it has an edge in terms of its carbon footprint from the outset, right? Other building materials are not renewable, they are finite, and wood is different. If we’re doing sustainable forestry and we’re doing replanting and succession planting, after we harvest, we can have an infinite resource in the form of wood. So, that’s very compelling. And, of course, kind of biology 101, trees do photosynthesis, right? They absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as part of their respiration and they emit oxygen, but they absorb carbon dioxide and then they store that as carbon in their branches and trunks and leaves and roots and everywhere.

Sandra: [00:12:48] And so, when we use wood as a material for building, we are able to extend that carbon storage benefit of trees while the wood is in use in the building. Right. So, wood is 50% carbon. We’re storing that carbon in buildings when we’re building with mass timber, and that’s very compelling, right? So, we really want to think about, you know, how powerful that is. You know, there’s a need to stop greenhouse gas emissions as part of mitigating climate change, but there’s also a need to buy time, which is delaying carbon emissions. So, as much carbon as we can store in buildings instead of, you know, emitting as we’re making materials, the better. So, that’s a very compelling use case for mass timber. We like that. In forests, you know, it’s very important that we continue to maintain the number and volume of forest that we have. It’s also important that we add new forests, right? We need forests to perform a lot of different services, right? They help clean the air, they help clean the water, they provide habitat, they provide recreational opportunities and beauty and all those things. They also provide products for things that we build and that we need as humans, and we rely on them.

Sandra: [00:14:06] So, part of keeping forests as forests is valuing them for all of those ecosystem services that I mentioned first, but also for those products, you know, as humans who are part of a society and, you know, we are a capitalist society, right? We make products from resources. And if we are saying forests are valuable in part because they produce these resources, we have a strong incentive beyond the ecosystem services side of that to keep them as forests instead of converting them into other uses like big parking lots or subdivisions. So, we want to keep forests as forests. So, that’s another important part of why a high value product like mass timber, which is a long-lived durable product that stores carbon, you know, why making that and emphasizing that as an important forest product helps keep forests as forests. So, another important case.

Eve: [00:14:57] So, where are we in our adoption of mass timber across the United States and also compared to other countries?

Sandra: [00:15:06] Yeah, great question. So, mass timber emerged from Europe 40, 45 years ago and has been slowly making its way into North America by way mostly of the Pacific Northwest and the western coast of Canada. But now we’re seeing mass adoption.

Eve: [00:15:21] Well, there’s a lot of wood there, right?

Sandra: [00:15:23] Exactly. And particularly the types of soft woods that mass timber is most frequently made from, right. So, in the Pacific Northwest there’s a lot of Douglas fir, which is a great wood for making mass timber. So, it’s making its way across and throughout the continent in that way. So, what we’re seeing in the United States is significant growth. So, for example, in 2018, according to Woodworks, which is a nonprofit organization that provides technical education, etc., related to building with wood, and they track demand for mass timber in the United States. In 2018, they found that there were 439 buildings that were either completed or in design or under construction using mass timber across the United States, 439. By 2022, in September, there were more than 1500. So, we saw that demand almost quadruple in as many years. So, that’s a big uptick in interest and demand. Here in Michigan, where I’m operating, we have currently about, we have four mass timber buildings completed. We had five new ones break ground this year. And overall, I’m tracking over 35 projects in this state alone that are either definitely planning to use mass timber or where project teams have clients that really want it. And those project teams are working to figure out the right path to delivering it. So, we’re seeing a lot of interest.

Eve: [00:16:51] So, what do you think is driving growth? Are mass timber products becoming less expensive? I’ve heard that there are zoning issues around the use of mass timber or at least building permitting issues that have to be resolved. So, I think there’s a lot of features of the built environment that have stopped it from taking hold before. How is all of that progressing?

Sandra: [00:17:11] Yeah, absolutely. There are certain barriers and obstacles which I’ll talk about in a minute, but I’ll answer the first part of your question first, which is what’s driving the interest in mass timber? And I think more than any other thing, it is the interest in building our buildings more sustainably, right? We’re seeing policies emerge at the state level in a lot of different states across the country saying we’ve got to have net zero carbon by X date, right. In Michigan that’s, we want to have net zero carbon by 2050 with some interim goals that we want to achieve by 2030. And so, for example, here the state has written mass timber into what’s called the Michigan Healthy Climate Plan, which is the roadmap to achieving that net zero carbon goal. You know, mass timber is one important tool in a robust toolkit to reduce carbon emissions and achieve net zero.

Sandra: [00:17:58] So, we’re seeing policies like that crop up across the country. We’re also seeing large corporations with ESG goals, environmental, social, governance goals, saying like, hey, we emit a lot of carbon in our operations, and we want to find ways to offset that in other parts of our operation. One way of doing that is kind of through procurement, right? So, companies like Microsoft or Google are saying, oh, you know, we’re building these data centers. We acknowledge that even as we’re trying to get, you know, the carbon footprint of our energy down, right, using more renewable sources to operate these data centers, we can also build our new buildings using more sustainable building materials. And many of those companies have already built mass timber buildings for that purpose, really to help execute against their ESG goals, which is critical in terms of how we’re driving this forward.

Sandra: [00:18:48] You know, and then there’s also some, I would not say that the materials cost of mass timber is coming down quite yet. I think we still have a need domestically, and on this continent, to increase the supply of mass timber to meet the growing demand. And we are seeing sometimes delayed delivery timelines, not always. And then anyone who’s doing a mass timber building who just heard me say that I would suggest you shop around and make sure that you’ve checked in with multiple suppliers because some of them don’t have those delays. You just need to look around, don’t get discouraged. But we will see that materials cost coming down as we get more supply online in North America. But right now, what we see are materials, costs up front are typically more than with a more traditional structural system. However, we do see the ability to achieve some cost efficiencies by reducing the amount of time it takes to build a mass timber building. And the reason why that tends to happen is because mass timber materials are usually prefabricated, so they come to your site, cut to size with all of your holes for connectors. Predrilled openings for doors and windows are cut where they need to be. And so, when it arrives, your construction team, your erectors can kind of put up the building a little bit like Lincoln Logs or an erector set. So, and as more and more builders know how to build with mass timber, and everyone who does it is like it’s not rocket science. It’s just a new thing, you need to learn to do it. But as they become more experienced, they’ll be able to reduce project timelines more and more. So, that’s one of the cost matters.

Eve: [00:20:21] Interesting, yeah.

Sandra: [00:20:22] Eve, you asked about codes and zoning too.

Eve: [00:20:25] I asked about codes because I’ve heard that can be problematic, yeah.

Sandra: [00:20:29] Yeah. The building codes in the United States, there’s a lot of variation as to what version of the international building code different states and local jurisdictions are in. So, just briefly, so states tend to update their building codes three years behind the cycle that the International Code Council uses to adopt new international building code. So, the 2015 International Building Code, IBC, it started talking about cross laminated timber, a type of mass timber as being allowable and provided instruction on how to build with mass timber and guidance in the code for that. And that was a really important breakthrough in building codes for making it possible to build more buildings with mass timber in North America and the United States and really around the world. So, that was a big deal. And many states in the US and I would say even most states in the US have adopted, at a minimum, the 2015 IBC into their state building codes.

Sandra: [00:21:30] So, in Michigan, for example, we’re on the 2015 Michigan Building Code, which is based on 2015 International Building Code, and that allows us to build a lot of different buildings with mass timber. However, subsequent versions of the International Building Code 2018 and 2021 expanded the allowable uses of mass timber, and 2021 in particular allows you to build much taller buildings with mass timber, to leave more mass timber elements exposed in your building, not having to cover them. And so that code, the 2021 International building code, is kind of seen as people who are working to advance mass timber adoption in the United States as the one, at a minimum, that we want all of our jurisdictions to have adopted. Right. So I think there’s a lot of, I would say. Some jurisdictions are slow to adopt 2021, just mostly because of bureaucratic processes and the way we do things, right. I don’t think most jurisdictions are opposed to what 2021 says, it’s like, okay, we’re getting there.

Eve: [00:22:31] It’s a lot of work to adopt it, yeah.

Sandra: [00:22:34] Exactly. It just takes some time. But in the meantime, even if your jurisdiction is not in 2021 yet, you know, you can still build a lot of different types of buildings with mass timber. For example, in our campus at Michigan State University. This is one example of many buildings that have been built under 2015 code, right. We built a 120,000 square foot three story building that uses mass timber, glue laminated timber and cross laminated timber in hybrid model with steel to create the structural system. And it’s a beautiful building with lots of exposed mass timber. And you know, you get the benefits of storing some carbon, you get the benefits of having this beautiful material in your building and all of the wonderful benefits of mass timber. So, use your codes, use your codes to build with mass timber and, you know, advocate for updated codes so you can do more with it is what I would advise.

Eve: [00:23:26] Yeah, I imagine really small jurisdictions are going to be very slow on the uptake. So, we’re going to see this emerge first in cities, larger cities or forward-thinking states maybe.

Sandra: [00:23:37] Yeah, and I think there’s at least 12 states now that have adopted the 2021 International Building Code mass timber elements. And I think most, probably most states are on that pathway. And right now, the International Code Council is working to develop the 2024, you know, mass timber elements. And so, we’ll be seeing even more permission to build with mass timber. But even then, we’re seeing jurisdictions approve variances to builders who want to go farther. I mean, the kind of like the most prominent and example that you’re reading a lot about now is the ascent tower in Milwaukee. That’s the tallest mass timber building currently in the world, although I think another building is just coming up right behind it. But it’s a 25-story building. It’s 17 stories of mass timber on like an eight-storey concrete podium. I think that’s the right split there. But, you know, the city of Milwaukee, the fire official in the city of Milwaukee, worked directly with the project development team there to do the variances that were required to get that amazing mass timber building in place. So, if you have local code officials who are like, yeah, I want to try something new, I see the benefit of having this landmark building in our city and I want to help make that happen. Then you’re in you’re in a good place to do something really innovative.

Eve: [00:24:54] So, who’s at the forefront of this movement? Like it’s a mass timber movement. And who’s pushing it along, would you say.

Sandra: [00:25:01] Sector wise, I mean, it’s been interesting. I think I would say that particularly in the Pacific Northwest, when things really started to move in the United States, I think we saw a lot of architects really coming together and saying like, we want to be designing with this stuff. This is really cool. And, you know, we love this kind of, you know, value proposition that this is more sustainable, that this material allows us to design in different ways, that we have this beautiful natural wood look inside, all of the things an architect would like, like this is innovative and cool and I’m pushing the envelope. So, we saw architects really doing a lot of advocacy in the Pacific Northwest, but at the same time in the Pacific Northwest, we also saw the forest products industry coming together and state governments coming together and saying like, we understand, you know, the potential benefit of really moving some of our wood products into, some of our lumber, basically, into these innovative value-added wood products. We see it as a way to increase revenue for sustainable forest management in our communities.

Sandra: [00:26:04] We see it as a way to revitalize our wood products industry and they really also came to the table. So, I think we saw those two sectors. In Michigan we’re having something fun happening where architects are engaged, you know, academics obviously, particularly at Michigan State as well as at our, another university here in Michigan, Michigan Technological University, there’s a lot of engagement. And even state agencies here are seeing the value. But we’re also really seeing the construction industry come to the table. So, whereas when I was doing my research at Berkeley, one of the barriers I kept hearing was like, the construction industry is nervous about trying something new, and it’s difficult for them to adapt to new technologies because, you know, you might build your whole building with an existing system and software that’s available, but mass timber is not yet part of that system. And so, that’s really challenging. But here we’re seeing a number of different construction companies kind of taking the lead and taking leadership roles here. And I think that’s very exciting.

Eve: [00:27:03] That’s very exciting. It is, yeah. So, how do you think things will change over the next 5 to 10 years? What’s five years look like?

Sandra: [00:27:12] Oh, that’s such a good question. Yeah. I think we’re going to see more domestic mass timber suppliers coming online, which is going to make it, make materials less expensive. And hopefully we’ll bring the cost into kind of a parity with other materials that we typically use to build large buildings. I think we’re going to see, we’re going to be seeing more states update their building codes to provide greater permission and clarity around how we build mass timber buildings. I think that’s just imminent. That will happen. Research is showing that we can expect demand for mass timber to double every two years until at least 2034 in the United States. So, we’re going to be seeing more of these buildings.

Eve: [00:28:01] That’s a complete industry, yeah.

Sandra: [00:28:04] Exactly. And having that supply coming online is only going to help facilitate those buildings getting built quickly and affordably. I think we’re going to see more and more multifamily, affordable housing developers starting to look at mass timber and we’re going to probably see more suppliers trying to work with those types of developers to make mass timber a really smart option for affordable housing, particularly since sometimes those multifamily dwellings have really repeatable footprints and mass timber panels can lend themselves really well to that. If we’re designing them in such a way that makes sense. So, those are some things I think we’re going to be seeing. I think we’re going to just see greater awareness across all of our sectors. My hope is that local community or urban planners and community developers will start being like, oh, mass timber is something we should always be looking at. I get this. This is becoming a mainstream thing, right? And just more and more people in the architecture and engineering and construction industry will be educated and aware of how to use this stuff. And we’ll have a workforce that is more trained to do that. There’s a lot of workforce development and training efforts underway right now that are going to help move that.

Eve: [00:29:17] So, there’s a lot going on. So, I have one last question for you, and that is, are there current trends in mass timber that you’re particularly excited about that we should keep an eye on?

Sandra: [00:29:27] Yeah, I mentioned affordable housing and I wouldn’t say that we have an affordable housing trend yet in mass timber, but we have a lot of interest in building affordable housing with mass timber and figuring out how to make that.

Eve: [00:29:39] Affordable.

Sandra: [00:29:39] Really economically, yeah, really economically practical. But bringing those really wonderful benefits to people living in affordable housing units, I mean, they should have beautiful, healthy places to live. We all deserve that. And that, I would argue that should be a human right. So, building units that are lovely to live in and affordable to me is a no brainer. And I think we can figure out how to make mass timber work there. There’s innovation happening in Canada along those lines. There’s some new innovation happening in the Pacific Northwest along those lines, we have an affordable housing developer in Michigan who’s looking at mass timber for a project. So, I think we’re going to see that emerging as a place where there’s a lot of opportunity. So, I’m very excited about that. I also think that there’s going to be a movement toward finding ways to use mass timber and more modular types of buildings and prefabricated buildings rather than just prefabricated panels and elements. So, and I think that’s going to be very exciting for people, and I think that will speed up the pace at which we’re able to get new buildings online, whether that’s housing and I would argue that getting housing done fast is super important, as we all know. So, I think that’s a place where we’re going to see some movement.

Sandra: [00:30:54] And then one thing that we’re very excited about at Michigan State University and it’s a research priority for us is figuring out, you know, we’re saying these buildings store carbon, but they store carbon as long as these materials are in the building. And then what happens when the building stops being a building? What do we do with those materials? And what we do with those materials really, really matters. And so, we’re very interested in thinking about how do we design buildings now, with an eye toward the next life of the mass timber materials in the building. So, how do we make sure that they’re easy to deconstruct and turn into something else? How do we make sure that when we design the building, we’re actually thinking like, what is this next? Is this another building? Do these materials turn into a new building? Are they going to turn into a bridge? What is going to happen with these? So, we’re very interested in starting to think about those things now. One thing we know is that when humans create new technologies, we’re not very good about thinking about the next life of their components now, and we need to be getting ahead of that curve. So, that’s something we’re super excited about.

Eve: [00:31:58] So, I know there are architects and developers in Europe who’ve been building commercial residential buildings with mass timber, partly because it permits flexibility. You know, as a family unit changes inside. They can really easily make a door opening through a wall if it’s timber versus you can’t do that if it’s concrete. So, I think that’s sort of part of the same thing. There’s flexibility there. That’s kind of, that’s really interesting I think, in the long term.

Sandra: [00:32:30] Yeah, I think we’re hearing more and more about that flexibility and especially people in the construction industry have been asking questions about that recently too. So, I think we’ll be seeing more innovation along those lines, too.

Eve: [00:32:42] So, what’s next for you?

Sandra: [00:32:44] What’s next for me is that I am kind of really preparing for the coming year and ramping up. We are going to be organizing a contingent of Michigan delegation to the International Mass Timber Conference in March, which is the kind of premier mass timber conference in the world. Last year we took 50 people from Michigan to learn together, and it was really exciting and I’m hoping to take a similarly sized group this year. So, I’m very focused on building out the knowledge bank for mass timber in Michigan, continuing to get people more interested and empowered to build with this material and really helping everybody who’s engaged in this space in Michigan feel like they’re not in it alone. They’re a part of something and it’s growing and it’s a very exciting time to be involved. So, for me it’s continuing to to do those things.

Sandra: [00:33:38] And then we also received some, quite a few grants for different types of mass timber research this year, and it’s now starting to be time to implement those. So, I’ll be engaged in helping to do a mass timber supply chain analysis and demand survey for Michigan. So, really understanding from the manufacturer perspective, what is our feedstock supply look like, what’s our transportation context, what are the, what types of materials and what species and how much and how big might we make in Michigan? And who would buy our products. So, I’ll be engaged in that. I’m engaged in a project with Dr. George Berghorn on our construction management faculty to develop mass timber, architecture, engineering and construction curriculum modules that existing courses can drop in to expose students and community colleges and universities to mass timber early in their educational careers. So, those are just some of the projects that we’re engaged in, and they’re going to be really ramping up in the next year.

Eve: [00:34:38] That’s a lot. Well, I’ve really enjoyed talking to you. I love your passion and the incredible depth of expertise you have. Who knew that beetles could bring you here, right?

Sandra: [00:34:48] I never would have thought it. I don’t know that I knew that I would be working kind of in the construction industry. And I think it’s really an exciting place to be.

Eve: [00:34:56] It sounds like it is. Thank you very much.

Sandra: [00:34:58] Thank you, Eve.

Eve: [00:35:07] I hope you enjoyed today’s guest and our deep dive. You can find out more about this episode or others you might have missed on the show notes page at RethinkRealEstateforGood.co. There’s lots to listen to there. You can support this podcast by sharing it with others, posting about it on social media or leaving a rating and review. To catch all the latest from me you can follow me on LinkedIn. Even better, if you’re ready to dabble in some impact investing yourself head on over to wefunder.com/smallchange, where you can invest directly in Small Change and our mission to democratize capital formation to create impact in commercial real estate development. A special thanks to David Allardice for his excellent editing of this podcast and original music, and a big thanks to you for spending your time with me today. We’ll talk again soon. But for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.

Image courtesy of Sandra Lupien