Nonprofit connecting teams to responsibly harvested wood

Portland International Airport ’s new mass-timber roof features materials from 14 landowners, mills and fabricators in Oregon or Washington. Suppliers include the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation , Skokomish Indian Tribe , and Coquille Indian Tribe . This sourcing was done with the help of wood advisors, who help project teams select products from local, sustainable sources.

Sustainable Northwest ’s Green Markets program has six wood advisors. They help builders and building owners buy responsibly harvested, local wood for their projects. Paul Vanderford, Green Markets program director, said Sustainable Northwest, now in its 30th year, began providing wood advisors about six years ago.

A traceable supply chain is used to track wood from a forest to the final product, the organization’s website states. Sustainable Northwest helps parties that own or manage forestland, mill timber into wood, manufacture or sell wood products, design and construct buildings, or own buildings.

For the PDX project, architecture firm ZGF pitched a mass-timber roof. Jacob Dunn, ZGF principal and sustainability lead on the project, said the Port of Portland advocated for it and especially for sourcing the wood locally. The Port’s goal was to create the most local airport terminal possible and do so sustainably.

The Port also believed the best way to preserve the airport’s heart and soul in the new main terminal was to engage local partners. In addition to ZGF, the project team includes contractor Hoffman Skanska Joint Venture , design-assist partner Timberlab , and others.

In 2016, Dunn attended a conference on forest resilience in Olympia, Washington. There, he acquired a list of potential wood advisors, including Sustainable Northwest. Ecotrust previously had a wood advisor for about a year, according to Vanderford.

“Doing the work well requires tons of network, relationship and trust that makes competition pretty scarce,” he said.

ZGF gave Sustainable Northwest a contract near the end of schematic design to help the firm write procurement guidelines and specifications for sourcing the wood. Once the project progressed, Timberlab hired Sustainable Northwest on a separate contract during design development to execute that framework.

ZGF identified key players they wanted to target as sources of wood for the project. Sustainable Northwest advised the team on which areas of the supply chain to engage.

“One of the key things Sustainable Northwest provided was insight into the potential landowners’ sources in the supply chain,” Dunn said.

Sustainable Northwest gave ZGF analysis on whether something met the project’s criteria.

The Port’s chief project officer, Vince Granato, said there was a big question early on about the wood sourcing and what criteria the project team would use. Through the process, the project team tapped into Sustainable Northwest’s expertise and found that it did not have to limit wood sourcing to an FSC Forest Management certified supplier because smaller suppliers that do not rely on that certification also offer sustainably harvested wood.

Timberlab, Sustainable Northwest, ZGF and the Port toured forests and talked to mill operators, Dunn said. Timberlab received calls from manufacturers and then called Sustainable Northwest to vet them. The team would then work on documentation through the chain up to the Port to approve it.

Various spots in the airport columns, storefronts, benches, etc. will have signage identifying where the wood came from. Airport officials expect to have the signage in place by September, shortly after the terminal opens in August.

Meanwhile, Sustainable Northwest is also collaborating on an Oregon Mass Timber Coalition project. The group received a $41.4 million Build Back Better Regional Challenge grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration . The grant has a component called “Advancing a Forest Restoration Supply Chain,” which has two main objectives: creating more resilient forests and providing small-diameter wood for the growing mass-timber industry, said Marcus Kauffman, biomass resource specialist at the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) and coalition communications officer for the Oregon Mass Timber Coalition.

As part of that component, ODF has developed a track and trace program in partnership with Sustainable Northwest to bring additional transparency to the mass-timber supply chain and provide evidence of the wood’s origin. The program speaks to the need for greater transparency and accountability in the supply chain, Kauffman said.

“A big part of our effort is to be able to say the wood we’re putting into these mass-timber buildings is helping to restore forests,” he said. “We provide that evidence through the track and trace program.”

Sustainable Northwest is also working with other organizations such as the New England Forestry Foundation, the Georgia Forestry Foundation, and others to expand intentional wood sourcing capacity.

One of Vanderford’s goals is to scale the work and make sure there are wood advisors across North America to assist projects. That means professionalizing the process, sharing it in a transparent way, training people, and actively supporting partner organizations on their first calls/projects before stepping back and letting them do the work on their own.

Sustainable Northwest joins a project like a Lego piece, Vanderford said, adding that not many project teams include a wood advisor. However, a lot of projects now have an internal capacity to deliver on some specific wood advisor outcomes, he said.

Timberlab, for example, now that it has relationships with the mills and manufacturers involved in the PDX project, can work with them directly to source wood for future projects. Sustainable Northwest can either introduce wood sourcing to a project team or provide further analysis and expertise for one already familiar with sustainably harvested wood.

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