TRADA: The leading authority on wood

Providing the industry with new specifications.

An internationally recognised centre of excellence on the specification and use of timber and wood products, the Timber Research and Development Association (TRADA), is a not-for-profit membership-based organisation.

Its aim is to provide members with the best information about timber and wood products so they can in turn maximise benefits that can be provided by timber.

TRADA is continually improving its offering, whether by producing new specifications or training.

Much of this will be available for the industry to see for themselves at this year’s Timber Expo in October.

In what is part of UK Construction Week, TRADA has teamed up with the Emergent Technologies and Design (EmTech) Graduate Programme at the Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture to create a wooden pavilion at the expo.

Named as The Twist, the pavilion explores experimentation into twisting and bending timber that creates a doubly-curved surface to provide different spatial experiences.

This pavilion’s design will exploit and celebrate the material behaviour of wood.

The collaboration between students from the Emergent Technologies and Design Programme at the AA and TRADA is an exploration of the bending and twisting capacity of timber through the integration of structural and spatial performance into an elegant architectural solution.

As well as an outing at Timber Expo, The Twist will also appear in Bedford Square, London, at the beginning of next year and will be able to be viewed by the public.

Rupert Scott is the Membership & Marketing Manager at TRADA and he is delighted with the groundbreaking design.

He said: “By bringing together students from the Architectural Association and our own technical expertise in timber, we believe we will create a truly innovative structure.”

TRADA to release NSTS

TRADA is working hard to level the playing field for the timber industry against its competitive market set and this summer will see the release of the National Structural Timber Specification (NSTS).

NSTS takes on the steel and concrete industries for the first time while providing the construction industry with best practice guidelines against which timber buildings can be erected.

Although timber is an old building material, it is also very innovative thanks to new forms of structural timber and product types that push the boundaries.

TRADA has worked to develop comprehensive specification that covers information exchange, materials, fabrication, erection, protection and quality assurance.

The focus of NSTS will be on structural uses of kiln-dried softwoods for use in three main areas; light frame construction, heavy frame construction and panel construction.

What these systems do is establish methods of erection and tolerances, allowing the specifier to adopt a different system than can normally be expected. Therefore, a closed panel timber frame could be installed to ‘panel’ standard.

Supported by a team of TRADA members, the design of the NSTS has followed Eurocode 5.

Director of Smith and Wallwork, Simon Smith, described the new specification as a “milestone”.

“The NSTS represents a milestone for timber construction in the UK. We now have a document that addresses all the issues required to successfully specify both traditional and modern engineered structures at any scale,” he said.

Training courses available

Not only does TRADA work to provide new industry specifications and innovative timber, but the Association is committed to educating the industry and as such provides a series of training sessions.

Following the success of the 2014 training dates that attracted contractors, merchants and timber workers at all levels, a new programme has been arranged that will give two levels of training.

This includes introductory and intermediate, both on a range of timber subjects.

TRADA will take its courses on the road, running them in Leeds, London and Edinburgh, providing highly practical and hands-on experience.

Introductory courses will be run in the morning and afternoon so delegates can go to two courses in a day, while the intermediate courses take place over a full day.

For more details, go to http://ift.tt/1TpLaNS.

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