A building named Crest is rising six stories above Lonsdale Ave. in North Vancouver to add 179 units of housing to the neighbourhood, but it is also something of a billboard for British Columbia’s ambitions for construction in mass timber.

It is the second mass-timber project for developer Adera, which is undergoing somewhat of a conversion to building more with engineered wood products, rather than more traditional, two-by-four wood-frame construction.

“We’re just around 500 homes that are under construction or have been built in the last, call it two years maximum, (using) mass timber technology,” said Adera senior vice-president marketing and sales Eric Andreasen.

Mass-timber methods call for designs to be drawn using sophisticated 3-D computer models. Components are then manufactured to precise specifications, with windows, doors and openings needed to install pipes, wiring and mechanical systems pre-cut into the panels and beams.

Construction becomes more like assembly as parts are delivered to a site, which requires less clearing, smaller foundations because the material is lighter, and fewer deliveries because the components arrive already whole.

The components might cost more, and manufacturing needs to be planned ahead of time, but Andreasen said framing up a mass-timber structure takes 30 to 40 per cent less time than conventional framing.

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