Timber Twenty Podcast’s Post

Transcript

Cam, thanks for being on the pod. Yeah, thanks Trevor. OK. So for those folks who haven't been present at the conference or haven't had a chance to come by the booth here at Master Conference, we're with MTC Solutions. So we're your structural hardware provider for a lot of different aspects of of mass timber construction providing you know concealed beam hangers, some of these types of things here as well as multitude and variety of self tapping fasteners and. So the the fasteners themselves have really enabled sort of the growth of of mass timber construction here in North America. At the booth we've got kind of a couple other crazy like fire samples and and things like that. So we're we're an engineering company, a group of engineers kind of altogether selling structural hardware. But the reason why I bring up that we're engineers is cuz we do a whole whack of testing and that's really critical for us and the clientele and the partners that we have in the industry, so that we can actually help them earlier on with like the engineering on the engineering side of things. Help them understand how these products at they're specifying in their buildings are gonna impact building performance as well as constructability, installation and so. Starting with working from with them at the beginning in the engineering and the concept and and design phase we move through on on the bidding side and help those guys get their quotes done on time with with good pricing. And then moving on to the installation side of things and we understand this really well. You know we've been part of over 600 mass timber projects across North America since we were founded. And so we've seen a lot of installs, we've seen a lot of problems and we've developed a good kind of repertoire or repository of. Of experience when it comes to these types of things. So I think our our impact, our our our feedback is always really well appreciated. And we come at this from like a humble, humble approach and just have developed a bunch of different design guides and that kind of stuff to both cater to the engineering and architecture audience as well as catering to the installers and the directors and everyone else kind of in between, especially fabricators like KMT. Awesome. How's the show been for you? Ohh, it's my first time here. I've heard you know many legends and myths about the show since I kind of came up in Mass Timber, you know starting around 2019-2020. And so coming here for the first time and recognizing the scale of it has been pretty impressive. You know, very first morning walking into the breakfast room and you got, I don't know something in the realm of 300 to 400 tables almost sitting around in this one big room. So and then coming into the. The trade show floor and seeing all these really beautiful displays and just meeting people that you've been talking with for two plus years, it kind of on Zoom and just or over the phone and then putting a face to the name and then you come up to somebody and you're like, Oh my God. It's, it's it's you. Yeah. And you know, we've been working, you know, for for like a month with this guy on a project and we kind of dropped communication because things move forward and we go on to the next phase of the project with the installer or something. But it's super cool to be able to engage in that, learn about a bunch of different new things and like being here, showing off these fire samples that we just keep saying they're fresh out of the oven because we just tested them kind of at the end of January, brought them to the shop. After after the testing puts a nice coat of varnish or lacquer on them and then ship them down into crate just in time for for the conference. So they've been a really good tool to demonstrate and show every different kind of stakeholder that's here how you know, wood burns and what we're trying to do to make things a little bit more efficient. You know, accommodating gap sizes on projects more in line with the tolerances that you would typically see on construction sites with mass timber. But still being able to achieve the fire rating that you need and have the confidence to say, yeah, this is rated for a two hour. Pirating, even even with some type of gap, with or without, like an intumescent tape or some type of caulking around that solution and then ultimately trying to reduce the amount of beam width in those cases. So really cool having these things present, being able to not have to go and say, oh hold on a second, let me switch my screen here to this guy or this report. Just having everything, all the tools available to you in person. It's just so much more effective and the network and kind of friendships. During the show and kind of in the evenings of the show that it had to have been forming is just, you know, it's awesome, A bunch of temper nerds. Let's dig into that a little bit more because I would say you win the MVP award for attending the most after conference events. So why don't you tell us a little bit about that? Well, my feet hurt because I've been kind of walking back and forth Portland, you know, here on the on the trade show floor and then once the show ends, you know, walking, you know, from one kind of group party with a bunch of engineers. To another group with a bunch of installers, you know the all the different suppliers, we kind of jump into each other's events and so have kind of teasing each other a little bit, which is all in good fun, which is great. You know, it's cool to see the energy and the passion that people still have. You know, you're mixing in talking about your passion for mass timber and then, you know, kind of going about some of the some of the cool things that you've been doing in your personal life. So there's this really cool element of personality that comes with the trade show and just the energy that you feel. And so even though we're out until 2:00 AM in the morning, you know, we're back here at 6:30 or 7:00 AM, starting back on the floor and having some kind of. Continuing the conversation from the night previous and kind of go moving back into to work, so it's it's fantastic. What was the best event you attended? I had a really fun time at. The the homes open house they had a their their mass timber office here in in Portland so seeing being in the building itself having some drinks and. Clinking glasses with some of the people that you're sitting down and designing things with it. It's pretty cool. They had a ping pong table, bunch of ping pong tournaments going on back and forth, a lot of yelling. At one point I was like ohh man my ears because everyone was really riled up from the from the ping pong tournament, but that was a really great event and then everyone has. Cool things going on. Yeah. Yeah, awesome. Well, thanks so much for taking the time to meet with us. Yeah, thanks, Robert. Alright, take care. All right, ladies and gentlemen, that is going to do it for this podcast from the International Mass Timber Conference. Thanks so much to my guests once again, Levi, Mark, Cameron. You guys did great, all the considering the fact that I came up to you through a camera in your face and asked you to speak off the spot, you know, during the chaos with the conference floor. You did great. You're beautiful. I love you so much. And to you folks for listening and for all the wonderful people that came up to us at the Classic Coffee and introduce yourselves, all the fans of the podcast, My Lumber listeners, I really appreciate all the wonderful feedback that we got. We've got some great episodes coming up in the next few weeks. We'll catch you later.