Project Aims

The project specifically addresses the need to create and hand over tools, to facilitate development of profitability and competitiveness through strengthening the design abilities of present and future users of this resource

Within the Teaching Package itself, tools will be included to ensure that young persons understand how the timber industry is addressing Social (stakeholdership, employment, training, infrastructure) and Environmental (green credentials, carbon cycle, conversion and transport energy, disposal) Policy Aims. 

Both the UK Wood Chain Study (2000) and a high-level Professional Engineering Review (2000), identify shortage of qualified people as a major problem. Similar packages are underway for steel (STEELCAL) and concrete (COMPACT), and pan-materials links will be established, through Co-Construct, to approximately 7000 professionals in the UK. 

Through the engineering institutions and the JBM, links will also occur to countries and regions including Australia, Canada, Ghana, Hong Kong, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, and the West Indies. This will assist UK-based teachers, and visiting academics from these regions. It will encourage such students and post-graduates to choose UK courses, and through them, maintain and grow our future influence. Furthermore, the direct benefit of large student populations to the economy of many UK towns and cities is not underestimated.

Teaching Packages support taught courses, avoiding expense through staff costs, and loss of fee earning time. Conventional courses are impossible to structure to target needs of all student groups/syllabi variations. Degree-level teaching is increasingly modular. Information is required straight away, with lengthy background research by tutors not viable. The low coverage of timber engineering throughout UK universities reflects these pressures. This is a serious inhibition to the fulfilment of identified industrial priorities for wood chain research.