The building industry is changing with the emergence of technologies—first with BIM and now AI— which, together, are making construction smarter and more efficient than ever before. That is according to Nick Milestone, Vice President of Projects and Construction for Mercer Mass Timber, North America’s leading mass timber provider:

“Mass timber is almost the next industrial revolution or the next industrial evolution,” Mr Milestone told Wood Central in an interview earlier this week. “We are starting to see that in the rollout of software packages, where structural steel software is now adapting itself to mass timber.”

Mr Milestone is a four-decade veteran of construction manufacturing (39 years, to be precise) with deep expertise in structural steelwork and, since 2006, in mass timber too: “Back in the UK (his native country), big retailers wanted to do eco-friendly stores, we came up with a hybrid model (timber with steel) to reduce costs and maintain carbon neutrality.”

“Cross-laminated timber (or CLT) was a real game changer for our industry,” Mr. Milestone said. “Now we had these full structural steel frames with CLT floor decks, full mass timber residential developments.” 

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