Investigating the Benefits of BIM for Mid-Rise Timber Buildings in Canada: A Qualitative Study

Timber has recently gained global popularity as a material for taller building typologies. It is a material much less intensive in resource and energy use and accounts for far less greenhouse gas emissions over its life cycle in comparison to steel and concrete; the two most dominating materials in the Canadian construction industry. Mass-timber is an engineered product, which requires the use of prefabrication and CNC machining. Although this process creates much safer working environments and significantly improves the quality of the delivered products, theoretically allowing mass-timber buildings to go even higher, it requires a high level of collaboration and automation at the beginning stages of the project. It requires strong building information modelling (BIM) which is also a relatively new technological process in the industry. Several tall mass-timber projects have recently been constructed however; there has been limited documentation of the strategies and processes needed for a successful project,