Commercial and mult-residential building costs are cheaper with wood
posted: 25/Apr/2016
Cost is often high on the list of priorities and factors when choosing building materials for projects, and yet the true cost comparison between materials is often not fully understood. WoodSolutions through an extensive research program on comparative material costs (results here) has culminated in five new Technical Design Guides which demonstrate that there are large savings to be made by specifying wood and wood products.
Four typical commercial and multi-residential projects (a 7-storey office, an 8-storey apartment, a 2-storey aged care facility and a single storey industrial shed) were independently costed by experienced industry quantity surveying companies for timber, concrete framed and steel framed options. In all cases, the costs of the timber structural solutions were found to be significantly lower or lower than the competing non-timber solutions. You can read more about the research and it's findings, including further savings that can be made by using wood products on site too, here.
Eileen Newbury, Marketing & Communications Manager at FWPA (parent to WoodSolutions) says "This is an exciting result for design, construction and development professionals. The results provide hard data to support accurate costing of future projects."
Copies of the summary Guide and four separate detailed project Guides are available for free download here.
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