Working with Sylva Foundation, Snug Homes and Kiss House we will develop a collaborative platform that connects timber in English forests with construction demand. Making it easier for construction companies to source local timber, and supporting the management of our woodlands.

This three-year project is Funded by the Forestry Commission’s Woods into Management Forestry Innovation Funds.

Why is it important that we manage our woodlands?

Woodlands need new generations of trees to grow and thrive. But our woodlands face huge pressures from climate change, invasive species, disease and pests. These pressures limit the ability of British woodlands to look after themselves. Management of woodland encompasses actions to improve the ecological condition of woodlands and build their resilience to climate change. Currently around 41% of woods in England are not actively managed.

In addition to the important environmental and social roles of our woodlands they also provide us with wood, a material so every-day that it is often overlooked. And yet, the use of wood in our homes has been shown to have health benefits: it helps lower stress, blood pressure and heart rates; and provides better indoor air quality. Another benefit of wood is that it can store carbon. Using it in buildings locks-up this carbon and reduces the use of high-carbon materials such as cement and steel. We need to use more timber in construction if we are to meet our climate change commitments.

The Woods into Management Forestry Innovation Funds stimulate the development and testing of new ideas that can help improve the ecological condition of woodlands via increased demand for wood and increased levels of woodland management. Our project is funded under the Routes to market for ash timber funding stream. Ash dieback is expected to cause millions of our ash trees to die over the next 10-20 years. Using a proportion of the wood from infected trees could help owners offset the cost of managing ash dieback and provide them with opportunities to improve ash woodland habitats. Yet many owners have no easy way of bringing wood to market.

By building a digital timber supply network this project sets out to increase the use of Ash and other local timber in construction. Together with our project partners we will design and build tools that streamline processes, making it easier for construction companies to source local timber, and for those managing woodlands to market their timber. Data capture and analytics will give clearer visibility of supply and demand, enabling better decision making and reducing risks of timber procurement.

Our Partners

Sylva Foundation is an innovative environmental charity. They envisage a wood culture where people understand and promote the good stewardship of woodlands and are mindful of their utility, while being conscious of their fragility. Their service myForest brings the latest technology to people who create and manage forests. myForest is a focused GIS platform that currently supports over 8,500 users who have collectively mapped and manage +160,000ha of woodland. Through further development and gamification of their platform this project looks to address some of the challenges that prevent woods from being actively managed by providing an accessible route to market for timber.

Kiss House  delivers innovative Passivhaus homes, building systems, and products for self-builders, developers, housebuilders, and the mass market. The Kiss House team is dedicated to changing housing for the better, so that people can live better, healthier, more fulfilled lives.

After decades delivering bespoke homes, they have innovated a high-quality housing product, delivered via a vertically integrated solution. The timber component based; low-rise residential construction system has a high degree of in-built architectural flexibility and is designed to utilise ethically sourced multi-grades of timber from sustainable local forestry. The system minimises reliance on engineered timber and creates a new market opportunity for variable grade timber not usual in this application. The system delivers a wide range of Passivhaus compliant, low embodied carbon housing typologies, without uncertainty and complexity. The system is currently patent pending.

They also have a patent pending Passivhaus compliant ground floor system that virtually eliminates the requirement for concrete and steel, and which is viable on the vast majority of sites. They have further reduced their carbon impact by innovating an enhanced natural fibre insulation which is currently in testing with Bangor University BioComposites Centre. It has the mass market potential to displace petrochemical based products and is further testament to their commitment to decarbonising residential construction.

Snug Homes is a Bristol-based enterprise focussed upon changing the way homes are designed and built by involving the residents and community from the outset and focussing upon low carbon design and construction. Snug offers super low energy modular timber homes built offsite using modern methods of construction and their Bristol house has won a number of awards including the “Projects” category in the 2022 Alliance for Sustainable Building Products awards. They hope to use English ash timber as replacement for internal joinery components currently made from imported birch ply.

The project also draws on the expertise of supply chain and procurement specialists Materials in Mind, and Evolving Forests.

CloudForest

CloudForest provides digital solutions that enable timber supply chain collaboration. We are driven by a love of landscapes, great architecture, and by an ambition to see diverse forests that deliver a wide range of benefits for the environment and across society.

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