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| Friday, 30 April 2010 00:00 |
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Earlier this year, TDA coordinated a series of surveys intended to gain an overall understanding of the use and reliability of timber and environmental credentials, and to identify “timber decision makers”.
These national surveys included three different stakeholder groups: timber merchants, builders, and specifiers. By the conclusion of the project, two of the four survey topics – “timber in alterations and additions” and “decking” –had become the focus of the outcomes. Although the questions varied depending on the stakeholder group, the general aim was to see how each group related to the various topics and how their views, likes or dislikes flowed up and down the chain of specification, use and supply. Also of interest was the influence which stakeholder tastes had on others in this chain. The survey evidenced some striking similarities among the stakeholder groups. In particular, timber was found to be the building material of choice for both builders and specifiers. Although the outcomes highlighted some drawbacks, the positive benefits of timber attributes such as “all natural”, warmth, ease of use, range of material, flexibility, ease of maintenance, sustainability, and so on, well outweighed any perceived disadvantages. Survey questions addressed industry desire to know whether builders or specifiers saw any difference between using timber for new work or for alterations and additions. The survey also investigated whether building professionals require timber and timber products to be targeted or expressed as being for one particular market sector. Certainly the merchants saw this as a possible conflict – as this would require the holding of duplicate stocks – but it was quite clear that most builders and specifiers felt this unnecessary. They considered that they were trained and very skilled in matching timber availability with application, and that any system which took away that flexibility may have a detrimental effect on overall usage. This was, no doubt, a welcome outcome for merchants and producers. The survey afforded a particularly positive understanding of the use of timber decking. In the face of increased competition from new products such as wood plastic composites and bamboo, it was good to see that natural timber decking, with all its shortcomings (outlined in the results), is by far the leading choice for builders, specifiers and, it seems, their clients. Once the surveys concluded at the end of March, TDA embarked on a series of seminars in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth to outline some of these findings to the timber industry. The idea was to share some of the feedback with industry – in particular, with merchants and producers -- and to include any localised knowledge or experiences that could enhance the overall results. Highlighted in the preliminary survey reports was a need to review some of the industry marketing and information sharing activities. These reports look at new product suggestions and pull no punches when reviewing the feedback on pine decking. The full strategic reports will be electronically published in May on the TDA timber.net.au website. If you participated in the survey – or are just keen to know the outcomes – keep an eye on that site: we will get the file links up there as soon as possible. The two titles to look for are:
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