Wood-be engineer selected for international conference

7 July 2010

For engineering student Alastair MacLeod, it was the opportunity of a lifetime and the destination too spectacular to pass up.

The 23 year old fifth and final year student was selected to attend the 11th World Conference on Timber Engineering in Italy last month, thanks to a pilot program sponsored by Australia's Wood. Naturally Better program.

Alastair was one of eight students from around Australia selected to attend the prestigious international conference held in the northern region of Trentino.

The conference attracted more than 400 speakers and submissions and was attended by more than 500 engineers, architects, educators and manufacturers.

Topics included wood in architecture and civil engineering, wood and multi-storey structures, resources and the global environment, wood engineered products, and advances in timber and earthquake and fire resistance.

Alastair said that the conference gave him access to experts in wood engineering and would help him to carry the knowledge into future studies and practice.

"Increasingly, wood is the building material of choice for architects and engineers seeking to achieve key environmentally friendly design objectives," Alistair said.

"To understand how wood is being applied to modern construction and engineering processes around the world and how this is minimizing the environmental impacts of construction is an incredible opportunity."

Wood. Naturally Better spokesperson Ric Sinclair said it was important to ensure engineers of the future understood that utilizing sustainably sourced materials such as timber in construction would help Australia offset overall greenhouse gas emissions.

"Timber building products come from a renewable resource, they have a low energy requirement for manufacture compared to other materials, and they store significant volumes of CO2," he said.

The strong enthusiasm shown for the WCTE project by participating universities meant sponsorship opportunities would be expanded for the 12th conference, which will be held in New Zealand in 2012.