OTTAWA, Ontario – The Canadian Wood Council (CWC), working with the Canadian and Ontario governments, plans to conduct a series of five separate research burns on a full-scale timber structure in Ottawa. 

CWC said, “The purpose of the project is to support market acceptance of tall and large mass timber buildings in Canada.”

The two-story structure will be subject to five burns over the summer of 2022, with the first and largest scheduled to take place at the end of June.

CWC is a strong advocate of mass timber construction, which it said through wider acceptance and adoption will solidify Canada’s global leadership in the bio-economy and forest sector in “achieving a low carbon, built environment.”

According to CWC, the objectives of the fire research burn demonstrations include: 

• Showcasing that mass timber construction is a safe and viable alternative to other more conventional construction systems (steel and concrete) for constructing large or tall buildings;
• Supporting the implementation and adoption of the 2020 edition of the National Building Code of Canada; and
• Supporting the transition to performance-based codes and future code change proposals to extend the use of mass timber to other building types, heights, and sizes and increase the amount of exposed timber permitted.