Mass timber - how to court insurance

With mass timber buildings on the rise, Professor Jim Glockling looks at the impact of insurance considerations and how the newly published Mass Timber Insurance Playbook can help.

One could be forgiven for believing that the provision of insurance is automatic; that the only choice to be made is which insurer gives the best service, value, and free cuddly toy or cinema tickets. Such is the competitiveness within the marketplace you could be forgiven for thinking that, but insurance is not a ‘right’, and in exceptionally rare circumstances something crops up that makes insurers more guarded. When that happens there can be far reaching consequences for all.

In the late 1980s, huge fire losses were occurring in food processing factories and cold stores. The main culprits were polystyrene-filled sandwich panels from which the buildings were constructed, in association with weak regulation in comparison to other countries that did not insist on sprinkler protection, and poor small-scale testing that failed to demonstrate the very different catastrophic fire behaviour that occurred at full scale – delamination. Insurers became wary of such a high level of risk and consequently, insurance became more difficult to get. The solution was an insurer-developed large-scale test for sandwich panels (LPS 1181) that prevails to this day.

In more recent history, light timber frame building has come under similar scrutiny due to extraordinary fire losses both during construction (as the fire resisting layers are the last to be applied), and once built (due to fire spread in voids). The industry has responded with a myriad of control measures, but even now insurance can be punitive for buildings over a certain height.

As part of the Fire Protection Association's continuing commitment to increase fire safety awareness across the built environment, a number of informative feature articles are available to read on our website.?You can read the full article here.