Mass Timber: Early Design Decisions & Tall Wood Code Provisions

Thu Sep 11 2025 at 02:00 pm to 04:30 pm UTC-05:00

CIC St. Louis | St. Louis

WoodWorks
Publisher/HostWoodWorks
Mass Timber: Early Design Decisions & Tall Wood Code Provisions
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Regional In-Person Seminar (St. Louis, MO)
About this Event

Regional In-Person Seminar (St. Louis, MO)

Early Design Decisions: Priming Mass Timber Projects for Success


Mass timber is a unique, non-commodity building material and, to lay the groundwork for success, certain critical decisions must be made as early as possible. These decisions can have a big impact on cost and can either increase or limit opportunities later in design. There are many cases of project teams that want to realize the full benefits of mass timber, but, because they base their designs on traditional building practices instead of optimizing them for mass timber, end up with avoidable price premiums. This presentation will walk through early project decisions and design steps, focusing on how to optimize projects for mass timber and how one early decision can influence others. Topics will include construction types, fire ratings, column grids and beam/panel spans, acoustics, and MEP integration. Completed mass timber projects will be used to illustrate the variety of viable options when navigating these key decisions.


Exploring Tall Wood: New Code Provisions for Tall Timber Structures


As interest in and use of mass timber in the U.S. has grown, so too has interest in pushing these timber structures to greater heights. Using international examples of successful tall wood buildings as precedent, some designers have proposed tall wood projects in the states using a project-specific performance-based design approach. In order to provide a uniform set of code provisions for these tall wood buildings, the International Code Council established an ad hoc committee on tall wood buildings that proposed a set of code changes allowing up to 18 stories of mass timber construction. Those code changes were announced as approved in January 2019 and will become part of the 2021 International Building Code. Following a brief discussion of history and motivators, this presentation will introduce the new tall wood code provisions and construction types, as well as the technical research and testing that supported their adoption.


After the seminar, please join us for a networking happy hour.


 


Speaker: Jason Bahr, PE | WoodWorks


 


Credits: Attendees can earn 2.0 AIA/CES HSW LUs, 2.0 PDH credits or 0.2 ICC credits


 


Location:


CIC St. Louis


20 South Sarah Street


The Showroom, 1st Floor, Forest Park:1-D


St. Louis, MO 63108


Parking: North Silo parking lot shown here. This lot is $1/hour and a max of $12/day.


 


For questions or additional information, please contact:


Jaime Krohn, CMP | [email protected] | (312) 841-8272


 


Image: Ascent / New Land Enterprises / Korb + Associates Architects / Thorton Tomasetti / Photo C.D. Smith Construction



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Event Venue & Nearby Stays

CIC St. Louis, 20 South Sarah Street, St. Louis, United States

Tickets

USD 20.00

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