Greetings from your WoodWorks team. Today’s insights come from western Canada and the US, where mass timber is growing steadily in multi-residential and public infrastructure. In Port Moody, BC the Portwood residential apartment complex is progressing well, with Phases 1 and 2 structurally topped out and interior work underway ahead of anticipated completion in 2027.
Meanwhile, another iconic airport project has a unique hybrid mass timber design using locally sourced wood enabled Canada’s largest municipally owned airport to expand with a warm, eco-friendly CLT “waffle” roof while meeting cost, schedule, and operational continuity goals.
The new 93,000-square-foot Multnomah County Library uses heavy timber design inspired by the Pacific Northwest landscape and has been featured three times in International Mass Timber Conference tours.
Mass timber is well suited to student housing as it appeals to environmentally conscious young tenants, helps institutions attract them, reduces on-site construction impacts, and can build lifelong positive associations with timber living. Download the document: “Building better student housing” to learn more.
Under Armour’s new Baltimore global headquarters uses a predominantly exposed mass timber structure around concrete cores to create a sustainable, comfortable five-storey workplace.
Never mind the details of this project, if you’re a true blue masstimberer you’ll just sit back and admire the sheer beauty of wood on this scale that these shots portray.
We’re on the look out for more New Zealand and Australian-based stories… so if you have anything you’d like us to share, please send to john.stulen@innovatek.co.nz.


Kelowna International Airport expansion

Multnomah County Library

Building better student housing

Under Armour Headquarters
Classifieds | Jobs & Tenders
Waikato University have published an interesting study entitled: Wearable technology for hazardous remote environments: Smart shirt and Rugged IoT network for forestry worker health

This paper introduces the architecture and details of our wearable IoT solution for workplace health and safety in rugged outdoor environments. We focus on the specific requirements defined by the New Zealand forestry environment as it is the industry with the most fatalities and highest accident rate in New Zealand. Neither consumer-level products nor professional wearables have been found to be suitable for forestry conditions. Furthermore, forestry workplaces cannot rely on existing networking infrastructure, and due to their remote and rugged nature, no permanent setup is possible. We describe the Hakituri project in which we integrate wearable devices, networking, data analytics, and a buddy system into a novel monitoring solution for worker health and safety. Our wearable IoT solution includes a dynamic network set-up, wearables suitable for forestry conditions, contextual rule-based data analytics, and real-time alerts. A wearable smart shirt carries sensors for collecting personal data from forestry workers, while further environmental sensors capture contextual data. The IoT network is set up for communication in unreliable and rugged outdoor environments. We explore a variety of setups to achieve the best quality outcomes for health and safety in the forestry domain.
Read more: https://hdl.handle.net/10289/14780

























