Mass-timber buildings on the West Coast – ones eschewing carbon-heavy cement in favour of wood frames – kept hitting a ceiling prior to 2019 as Oliver Lang was seeking to tap the environmentally friendly building material for bigger projects.

“When we started out, you couldn’t really do mass-timber buildings in B.C.,” said the founder and CEO of Vancouver-based construction firm Intelligent City Inc.

Other than a pilot project at the University of British Columbia, mass-timber buildings could never go higher than six storeys before proponents pushed hard for regulatory changes that doubled the storey count to 12.

Those changes pushed Intelligent City on its current path towards mass production of greener construction options within an industry not known for environmental sustainability. Other B.C. companies are also jumping on board as demand grows for green construction opportunities.

Intelligent City officially launched its mass-timber assembly plant last month in North Delta, tapping software and robotics to address three major problems plaguing housing construction: climate change, affordability and supply.

Robotic arms at the new factory are now working on mid-to-highrise home and office mass-timber building projects, the first of which is set to be deployed in Vancouver next year.

The global construction sector accounted for 38% of carbon emissions in 2019, according to United Nations Environment Programme estimates released last year, and other efforts to reduce the sector’s environmental impacts are broadening across the local economy.

Nexii Building Solutions Inc. revealed in September that it had raised $45 million from investors. The fundraising round pushed the Vancouver-based company’s valuation up to $1.55 billion. Nexii said it’s the fastest startup in Canada to ever reach “unicorn” status following its founding in late 2018.

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