Mass Timber Construction Podcast
Mass Timber Construction Podcast
Special Guest - Nate Bergen - From Brock Commons to BCIT Mass Timber Construction and Education
Prepare to be inspired by Nate, a leading expert in the mass timber industry, as he takes us on a journey through his fascinating career path. From his humble beginnings at a sawmill to contributing to the groundbreaking Brock Commons project, Nate's story is one of innovation and collaboration. He offers a unique glimpse into the challenges and triumphs of the mass timber construction world, emphasizing the crucial role of early collaboration with architects and engineers and the revolutionary use of a unified 3D model.
We explore the evolving landscape of construction education programs, with Nate sharing his experiences working on high-profile projects like Google MT1. The conversation shifts to his transition into education, where he’s making waves at the British Columbia Institute of Technology by developing a curriculum that bridges the skills gap in the industry. The need for hybrid installers who combine carpentry and ironworking skills is just one of the exciting developments Nate touches on, as well as potential international collaborations with programs in places like Australia.
In a refreshing change of pace, Nate also opens up about the personal challenges and lessons learned from managing large projects, including a major office building for Google in Silicon Valley. As the episode wraps up, Nate offers some light-hearted insights into maintaining a healthy lifestyle amidst the demands of construction life. His personal anecdotes serve as a motivational reminder of the importance of integrating fitness into daily routines, leaving listeners with both practical advice and an inspiring call to action.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are live. This is the moment you all have been waiting for. It's time for the global sensation, the one, the only the undisputed heavyweight podcast in the world the Mass Timber Construction Podcast. And now here's Paul Kramer, your host.
Speaker 2:Good morning, good afternoon or good evening, wherever you are in the world today. My name's Paul Kramer. This is the Mass Timber Construction Podcast and, unfortunately for all of you, we have to suffer through an interview with a person I've known for a long time. We used to spend a lot of our time in the hotel Eastland in the rooftop bar. We would consume food and other things, but, nate, it's great to have you on the podcast. Finally, do you want to just tell our audience who you are and what you currently do, and then we'll ask you some more questions about how you got into mass timber?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Yeah, thanks for having me, paul, great to see you again. It has been a while. So, yeah, what I currently do is too much at the moment.
Speaker 3:So, recently, most recently, I've joined uh bcit, uh, british columbia institute of technology, uh, we're on part of a uh recently built mass timber team, uh, where we are in charge of building new curriculum courses to help educate the tradespeople, installers, on all things mass timber. So it's pretty exciting stuff and uh, um, you know kind of kind of live in that space where, um, you know, on the leading edge, where it's a little bit cowboyish, which is you know kind of where I like to be. So, um, but uh, you know, on top of that, I'm I'm also uh, managing, uh, my my own company, f3 Timber Technologies, where we do a number of things, one of which is distribution for some European manufacturers and fasteners, connectors, temporary bracing, and then we do some in-house manufacturing ourselves where we're working on developing connectors and hardware for installation methods, trying to solve some problems that I've personally had to solve over the years as an installer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's the most crucial bit for me, because, if we can just hark back to the fact that many people might not know, you worked on one of the most notable buildings in Brock Commons. Tell us about how you got into mass timber Like what was your pathway?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's, you know, I think a lot of times for a lot of people I've heard similar stories is, you know, sometimes you fall into an industry by accident, and that was definitely the case for me.
Speaker 3:I was working at a sawmill for my early 20s, for a couple of years and needed to get out, essentially, and my way out was a job at StructureCraft Builders as a laborer. I went there Mike Marshall give him a shout out he was the hiring manager. He hired me there and, uh, over over seven years of my time there, I I worked my way up into, uh, both becoming a red seal carpenter and leading the shop in in manufacturing, um, we did a lot of cool stuff at structure craft, uh, but after about seven years there, I moved on to Seagate, needed some different challenges and that's where, you know, ralph Austin came into the picture. He had a very, you know, interesting vision for his future and it was, you know, going from light wood frame into mass timber. So I joined his team to help him do that and you know, the long story short is, after a couple years there, we, um, we got to work on the yeah, like you said, one of the most notable mass timber projects out there brock commons, brock Commons.
Speaker 2:And the project is renowned for being high. You know it's a very tall building and there would have been some unique challenges given it was really at the inception, the growth stage, the the start of the growth stage of tall, mass timber buildings. What was the most memorable thing you can recall about the project that made it significant with the application of mass timber to, to that say, the superstructure, for example?
Speaker 3:yeah, I don't. I I'll try to keep this concise, but I don't think that's a short answer. Uh, you know it. It was a very memorable project for a number of reasons, the first one being we got Seagate uprooted very early. You know, ubc was a very forward-thinking owner, developer and wanted to do something, as they do, quite quite new and cutting edge. And then the team that was involved, fasten Up Acton Austria, you know, and Acton Austria, as the architect, was very much on board with letting the structure dictate what happened. And then he came in afterwards to fill in with the architecture.
Speaker 3:But early days, fastenep came as a very collaborative approach. They showed up to the table with three or four connection options for all the different types of connections. We sat around the table, all had our input and from there we built a full scale mock-up, tested out. You know all the connections, some you know the connections that were that we couldn't really agree on. We tested maybe two or three of them and proved out which ones were were the most effective.
Speaker 3:That was kind of the setting the stage and then, kind of through the, you know, once we got past that point, a lot of pre-construction meetings happened where UBC as the owner, they, they contracted CAD makers directly and they conducted meetings where they pulled in all the sub-trades into one room where we sat around a table and they would pull up the 3D model in front of us and we would actively discuss conflicts and they would edit 3D model in real time for us.
Speaker 3:So, you know, we sat through several months of that where you know, I guess for me the thing that stands out is you know, there was only one model. There wasn't. The mechanical guys didn't show up with their own model, and you know the concrete and steel, it was all CAD makers that built one singular model and then farmed it out to everybody else. So the conflicts were already solved and from there we went on to build and I think that is really honestly the key to that, the success of that project. Uh, you know, I and not necessarily clt as as as the material. You know clt is a fantastic medium to to be able to prefab. But, uh, I think if you took every single project out there and and did the amount of intense pre-construction that we did on on Brock Commons, you would, you would be successful.
Speaker 2:And with that pre-construction phase being quite long, that's sort of indicative what you know, the research and what industry is saying is that you spend more time considering facets of the build and the fact that you spent so much time in design and, like you said, tested the efficacy of some connections and weeded the ones out that didn't work was was. Did that pay dividends when you brought that forward?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, and I think the simplest way to kind of put it into perspective is for us. I think we had four change orders on that project, three of which were just added scope. You know the amount of conflicts that happened. They really didn't happen. Things ran smoothly and absolutely paid dividends.
Speaker 2:I have been a big fan of looking at history, and the Crystal Palace, which is one of the largest exhibition halls in Europe, and obviously the Empire State Building, are two notable projects where they use prefabricated techniques. One was the 1850s, one was in the 1900s and obviously now we've got things like Brock Commons. Can you tell me whether you thought leadership at the top that created the environment for those decisions to happen? Did that play a part on the way that the project was executed?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it did absolutely was executed. Yeah, I think it did, absolutely. You know, again, going back to UBC as a forward thinking owner, you know I think they've got more capacity or more, you know, ability to take on some of these risky projects, which is great for, you know, pushing the industry forward. Um, but they, they allowed this, uh, early pre-construction, this heavy pre-construction upfront, to happen. Um, you know, and and really took the advice from uh, from their consultants and uh, and just said, okay, you know, if this is advice from uh, from their consultants and uh, and just said, okay, you know, if this is what you say needs to happen, we're gonna, we're gonna let it happen that way.
Speaker 3:Um, and you know I wasn't really involved, you know, at those high discussions. Uh, so you know there are people that could speak better to it, but, um, you know, that was the overall feeling that we got. It was that, yeah, it makes sense to spend this money up front, build the building virtually first, get rid of, you know, get all the virtual RFIs done, fix all the problems before we build it in real time.
Speaker 2:And the building itself. The superstructure has central core systems and, from memory, it had outriggers systems, steel structural systems with four plates in it and then a prefabricated facade. Was the building ever designed as a purist mass timber building or was it always going to be this sort of hybrid purest mass timber?
Speaker 3:building or was it always going to be this sort of hybrid? Yeah, so there was definitely some concessions made. I think it was always going to be a hybrid. Uh, you know there some statements from fast and up, uh, about the core system, uh were that, yeah, we could have done it in mass timber, but because we were, you know, breaking new ground, you know there were certain conversations that they got around by just doing it out of concrete or, you know, adding extra drywall to kind of kill the fire and and get around some of these, uh, these hurdles, so they, um, the most important thing was that we, we got this, this demonstration project, built and and proved out that, uh, this is a viable way to build.
Speaker 2:I always ask this question for people who are involved in builds, and I've I've put many people on the spot and I'm going to do it to you too. What were the curly things? What were the things that didn't quite go to plan that you can recall that you go? If I had my time over again, I would have used this brand of screw gun to drive these meter long fixings into the floor plates, because the ones we had were underpowered, those sorts of things. Well, what were some of the things that stood out to you? That are little tips that people don't often talk about.
Speaker 3:Okay, there's nothing in terms of tooling. I think we really got the connections right on that project and hopefully I'm not throwing anybody under the bus here but some of the lessons learned in building tall with timber. There was a heavy discussion around axial shortening and the difference of materials, the difference in shortening between the concrete and the timber and the different types of timber. In the first I think it was three or four floors, we had PSL columns, or four floors we had, uh, psl columns, um, which, which were different than the the rest on the glulam column side, um. So one of the things that happened once we we got I think it was level 14 the uh, the axial shortening was not as much as calculated, so we were growing too much, too fast. Obviously, at level 14, we're getting close but we had to actually cut the columns down by about a half inch to get back on track and reset the elevations before we kept going. That was the most notable kind of thing for me. The other big one and this was a general contractor lesson learned but those outrigger platforms that you talked about.
Speaker 3:You know, not everything goes to plan. There's always something that doesn't right. Not everything goes to plan. There's always something that doesn't right. Um, the plan that they had had envisioned was to uh, you know, because they had the concrete cores built early. Um was to get the actual elevators installed soon enough that we could use them for a construction hoists. Um, you know, but true to form the, uh, the elevators were delayed and we ended up with not a construction elevator on that site. So there was a lot of stairs walked. I think we were all in pretty good shape by the end of that one.
Speaker 2:You probably needed it, nate to be honest I could.
Speaker 3:I could probably use another broad commons. Uh, now to to get me back there well, you'll need to walk that off.
Speaker 2:Um so, go and pop in some stair systems, because you'll probably end up eating some more seafood and some other food in portland if you're heading down this year.
Speaker 3:That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2:And so from there, you obviously have been involved in the connection systems, but I want to sort of circumvent and go to the education, the BCIT stuff that you're doing. Yeah, sure, so how did you get involved in that? And you know what specifically are you trying to do. Is it curriculum writing, Is it delivery programs or is it something different?
Speaker 3:So it's, it's both of those things. Um and uh, I guess I'll go back to kind of how I got involved. Uh, and, and I'll, I'll, I'll kind of how I got involved and and I'll I'll, I'll kind of finish my my history of of the my mass timber experience. But you know, I spent about five years at Seagate and from there I moved on to a company called Kinsol Timber which is partly owned by mr mike marshall. Um, so I got to work with him again for for a couple years, uh, and in that time I worked on again some cool projects. Uh, google mt1 was kind of the highlight for me in that time. Um, but kind of mixed in there I got.
Speaker 3:I think I blame Mike for this, but I think he kind of pushed me to be involved with BCIT as they were building out their very initial ACERT program. That has been running for now for three, four years. So I showed up as an industry expert to help them kind of navigate the curriculum for that and continue to be involved. Every year I showed up to do, you know, an hour presentation for the class, class on on my experience and, uh, you know, I, you know, just just got drawn back into it. So, um, yeah, and what we're doing now is exactly that.
Speaker 3:You know we do have one course at bcit, um, but we we need more. It doesn't. It doesn't, you know, kind of satisfy all the all the needs of the industry. So we're looking at bringing all the different parts and pieces of the industry together. That's our goal anyways to try and break down some boundaries between different trades. We've got the carpenters. We're seeing a lot, a lot more iron workers getting involved in this space and I think we need those guys. But you know they show up with a different set of skills than the carpenters do. They're far more comfortable and capable around cranes, kind of right out of the gate. But you know, when you go and look in their toolbox they don't have a lot of wood cutting tools. So you know there's good and bad on both sides of and you know we're kind of creating kind of a hybrid installer is what we kind of need for going forward for these mass timber projects.
Speaker 2:That's interesting, mate, and I guess you must have been very clever to fool them that you were smart enough to move from industry guest speaker to being part of the program.
Speaker 3:yeah, well, hopefully you don't blow my cover here if they're listening to this, your cover's blown, you know.
Speaker 2:And then I guess now I owe you a beer, but anyway, that's worth the joke. I uh, I applaud you on what you're doing and shout out to Mike and to Time and all the people at Kinsel and what they're doing is fantastic. And we'll circle back to you because I wanted to chat to you about that too. But with the program that you're doing, it seems very similar to what we've had here in Australia with a course in which is a course in prefabricated technology using timber, and so people who are carpenters would use that very short course. It's sort of like six or seven subjects or something like that throughout a year. And then there's like the project management version, which is a diploma.
Speaker 2:So you, you scale up and you do probably twice as much, but now you're managing projects, so you're thinking about project management and staging and getting ready to deliver, and then, at the other end of that, we actually decided to develop a BIM program as well. But BIM in this instance wasn't building information model, it was building information management, and we did that around digital design. So all that commentary you've spoken about with, uh, the pre-construction, digital integration with cad makers um, all of that is enveloped in what this information management um sort of program is about. So that's, they're nationally registered programs, so we should probably catch up afterwards and have a chat about, yeah, how they might fit with what you're doing, but sounds very similar.
Speaker 2:And is it well attended Like. You've got people coming to the, the, the Institute, to participate in this on a regular basis.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that's right. So it's, it's been. Uh, the course has been running. I think this we're in our fourth, fourth year. Uh, that's right, the course has been running. I think the first week they're gonna run until june doing online learning, and then there's a two-week in-person practicum where they come and put a two-story mock-up together, um, and and apply all the things that they've they've learned about. So and what you're doing sounds amazing and and actually, yeah, very similar to what we're we're pushing for. Um, we've got some, some project management courses being being developed, exactly like you said, specific to mass timber and, uh, you know, teaching the project managers. I think a lot about lead times is one of the big ones and, again, getting back to that, that prefab and early integration of sub trades into your, into your planning.
Speaker 2:It is a shock to people, isn't it? When you say, uh, we've produced your entire building. It's sitting on the floor. When are you coming to take it to site and then get their podium level ready for assembly right?
Speaker 2:So it's like it's this difference between the project's timeframes on site versus the manufacturing time frames, and I don't think the speeds have aligned and the communication has to be strong, um, but it's certainly that way and of course I don't know of any project in that I've ever been involved in that has ever been on schedule. It's always been a little bit behind, except for when COVID hit and everything stopped and everyone had to do as much work as they possibly could up to a deadline, and then they were working 24 hours to invoice for the next billing period to get cash flow in, because it wasn't going to be there. So I saw projects accelerate for the first time in my life then. So if it's the same as where you are, um, we share a common association with delayed project differences in material yeah, yeah, I, I can, uh, I can relate for sure let's circle back to google.
Speaker 2:Tell us about that. You said in your dialogue about your career as one of your most memorable projects. Tell us about you know. You said in your dialogue about your career, it's one of your most memorable projects. Tell us about you know.
Speaker 3:Tell people about what that project was how big it was.
Speaker 3:And then, you know, silicon valley is a an interesting place, especially for, uh, outsiders like myself who are not used to that uh, kind of busy space, um, but it's, it's, you know it's interesting. Google owns uh, you know, owns half the city and they're slowly just building these offices and we got to build one of them. So, 180,000 square feet, five stories. Kinsel won that project just before they hired me in 2019 and just kind of handed me the portfolio and said we got a lot of work to do. So, you know, over the course of the next year, a lot of pre-con, and you know, the building looked very different from the bid package to the final product. A lot of design changes throughout that time, but the most the reason it means so much to me is it was a real integration of all of the building systems that I've created and I'm now selling with F3 timber, uh, and I was able to apply them to to a very, very cool project. Um, you know that, I think, is, you know, it's award winning. So, um, I was tasked at Kinsaw with, uh, you know, obviously being pre doing the pre-construction meetings, um, but then designing the, the erection plan and and the sequencing plan, those, those two to go together very uh. They need to go together, uh, to be effective. Um, so I worked with aspect engineerspect Engineers. They were our bracing engineer and we developed the system.
Speaker 3:One of the, I'd say, the most impactful thing on that project for me was and it was around a design change. Where so google mt1 does not have any concrete cores? The lateral system is all in these large steel brace frames. Uh, early in design, those steel brace frames were uh tied tightly to the glulam frames and there was a lot, of, a lot of issues and and things that we were hard to solve with with them being that way. So they at some point made the decision, the right decision to decouple the steel frames from the, from the wood.
Speaker 3:Um, and what that meant for for kinsaw was uh, and I didn't realize it when it first happened, but we had planned to do, say, two floors of bracing and then cycle our bracing up as we went. But when they decoupled the steel frames it meant that the diaphragm only tied into the lateral system once the concrete topping was poured, which didn't happen until we built the entire structure. So we ended up going from a small amount of bracing needed to having to temporary brace the entire structure for a period of time. So you know that one blew the budget uh wide open for us um, but you know it was. We had a good, good working relationship with xl construction and um and the team down there. So you know we worked through it all and and uh.
Speaker 3:I think the biggest takeaway for me was that um, doing the project the right way, even though it cost us more um saved us money at the end of the job rather than try to save money up front. Uh and uh. You know, cheap out on bracing or whatever it is the way that we did. It made sure that the project progressed for for everybody and not just us. We, we were strategic with our bracing so that all of the follow on trades could be actively working while we kept building above.
Speaker 2:Brilliant. As long as the accountants at Kinsel were happy, mate, you're all good.
Speaker 3:That's right. Well, you're going to have to ask Marshall about that one.
Speaker 2:I have to get Mike on now. I think I've got enough stuff to talk about with you being on here alone, let alone speaking to other people. But yeah, that's very interesting, mate, that's very interesting. And again, with that project, like Brock, what was the one thing that you look back and you go? That didn't work out necessarily, but you know that was something that was good in the end. Besides the bracing, was there anything else that stuck out?
Speaker 3:It's a good question. It was a challenging project for me because we were the bracing. Was there anything else that stuck out? Uh, it's a good question, it was. Uh, it was a challenging project for me because we were. We were in the middle of covid. Uh, you know, that project got delayed from 2020 spring install to, uh, an early 2021 install.
Speaker 3:So, uh, you know, for me I wasn't able to travel back and forth. I was, I was stuck in in san jose, which you know. There's definitely worse places to be stuck in, uh, but, uh, you know, I was telling somebody else just recently that I was going through through these pictures of mt1 and and, uh, looking back, I was like, oh man, this is, this is a very cool project, and when I was in it, I don't I don't think I fully appreciated that I was, I was definitely, you know, missing home and you know those, those kind of sentiments. So that's a bit of a side as I'm trying'm trying to reach for. Uh, you know what other things stood out.
Speaker 3:I think maybe another big one for me was, um, the. The crew that we worked with was, I'd say, largely inexperienced crew in terms of, uh, putting their hands on mass timber and you know we definitely had a steep learning curve at the start. But you know, what was very apparent, you know, as we went through, is that for all of these mass timber projects that have been designed and planned properly, you really only need a few people in leadership at the top, on site, kind of directing traffic, and then a bunch of competent carpenters, whether they have touched timber or not, whether they have touched timber or not, these systems go together easily, quickly, that they're going to get it, they're going to figure it out, they're going to get it done. So it's not as scary, I don't think, as maybe some people think it is.
Speaker 2:That's good to know.
Speaker 2:It means that it's encouraging for people who haven't um been in that sector and had exposure to it.
Speaker 2:It provides encouragement that you can do it with, as you said, the right leadership, and I think leadership is a key theme that's come through both with you know, the amazing projects from the past and Brock Commons, and again here.
Speaker 2:I think it's an important attribute that we don't often think about is leadership and then team culture that surrounds that, and I'm experiencing more and more with even projects here in Australia that are absolutely running, and more with even projects here in Australia that are absolutely running, like you said, with very minimal change, documentational variations that we call it here. You're finding that everything just clicks together, and I think this is the utopia that people including myself, you know, 10 years ago plus were hoping we might be able to get, and it sounds like it's slowly getting there through through the auspices of sharing this knowledge and sharing wisdom through people like yourself. So no, well done, but we've run out of time and we might actually have to get you back on the program another time, but just in closing. So how do people get in contact with you and how do you get into the?
Speaker 3:course at bct, bcit. Yeah, forcom. Uh for bcit, nathan underscore, bergen at bcitca and uh, you know, as I mentioned before about the the course, the courses here at bcit. There there's a lot of online learning and online learning and you really just need to go to the BCIT website and register for the ACERT mass timber program. The in-person portion is obviously. The in-person portion is obviously trickier for some people who are further away, but there's also a real desire at BCIT to collaborate with other schools and folks like yourself to share that knowledge and take what we're doing here and apply it in other places. So one of the things we hope to do throughout all this course development is produce new content that, if it can't be fully done online, we can maybe take some of that learning. If it can't be fully done online, we can. We can maybe take some of that learning, uh, transport it to two different locations and get some of that hands-on experience for these, uh for anybody that can't travel here.
Speaker 2:So yeah, excellent, that sounds awesome, nate, and thank you so much for your time, uh, for coming on the podcast and, uh, I hope that you do find some stairs very soon to go for a couple of ups and downs and get into shape. And thanks very much for sharing your story and what you do with our global audience. So thanks for being on the podcast.
Speaker 3:Thanks so much, Paul. Thanks for having me. Thank you.