industry has prioritised learning and swiftly enhanced its knowledge and expertise in mass timber, and also its understanding about the potential design, construction and use pitfalls. This growing expertise in the construction industry is evidenced by collectively produced guidance: documents such as 16 Steps To Fire Safety (2017) 1 , Structural timber buildings fire safety in use guidance, Volume 6 (2020) 2 , Moisture management strategy (2022) 3 , all by the STA, and the Mass Timber Insurance Playbook (2023) 4 . Signposts to key documents are given in Section 7.3. This Guidebook is the latest collective industry guidance document representing the consensus of the mass timber buildings design experts. Some companies have also published individual company guidance documents such as Arup’s Fire Safe Design of Mass Timber Buildings (2024) 5 , which is a useful document sitting along this Guidebook and allows designers to make more informed decisions based on risk and a useful summary of relevant research and the ‘New Model Building’ (2023) 6 design guide for residential buildings by WTA. The insurance industry itself has also recently produced documents such as The Insurance Challenges of Massive Timber Construction (2022) 7 and Joint Code of Practice: Fire Prevention on Construction Sites (2022) 8 , both authored by the RISCAuthority / FPA, as well as guidance documents drafted by individual companies such as Allianz’s Emerging Risk Trend Talk 2 (2024) 9 . Signposts to key documents are given in Section 7.3. This Guidebook is the latest collective industry guidance document representing the consensus of the mass timber buildings design experts in what constitutes ordinary good practice.
Of the comparatively few loss events specifically associated with mass timber construction, even fewer have been publicised, with only one notable loss involving an impact to the mass timber structure. In 2014 the University of Nottingham’s GSK Laboratory was destroyed during construction from a fire caused by an electrical fault. Guidance documents that cover the risks exposed by this event include the STA’s 16 Steps to fire safety Promoting good practice on construction sites (2017) and the Fire Protection Association’s Fire Prevention on Construction Sites (2023). Relevant risk-mitigation measures, during construction, in this case include prioritising the completion of fire compartments including fire doors and fire stopping and installing sprinklers if and where required. Although moisture-related losses are more frequent and make up the bulk of insurance payouts, these tend not to be publicised, and we are unable to list these here. In two recent high-profile loss events involving moisture and fire respectively, the mass timber structure played neither a role in, nor was it impacted by, the loss. The first example is at Sky Central in London, from 2014 onwards. The building suffered moisture ingress during construction which resulted in damage to the timber cassettes set in the glulam roof (not the glulam itself). The STA’s Moisture management strategy, Process guidance for structural timber buildings (2022) covers this risk. The second example is the Wood Innovation Design Centre in Prince George, Canada, which suffered a loss in 2024. The building’s timber cladding was damaged by a fire caused by a blast following a ruptured gas line in an adjacent building. The extent of the subsequent fire was limited by the building’s non-flammable insulation-filled external wall void and its sprinkler system. In fact, the damage was mitigated by the flexible glulam structure which allowed the building to bend and absorb the shock of the blast, preventing potentially even greater damage.
LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE
The sector has learnt from the relatively small number of loss events, many of which the Guidebook’s authors have been able to closely study. The Guidebook’s content reflects this built-up knowledge.
INSURANCE
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