Canadian mass timber to make Vancouver schools more earthquake-resistant

Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources, the Honourable Seamus O’Regan Jr., today announced a $1,482,000 investment in British Columbia’s Vancouver School Board District #39. This investment will enable the construction of two local schools as part of recent seismic upgrades to make B.C. schools safer.

Bayview Elementary School and Sir Mathew Begbie Elementary School are part of a Vancouver School Board pilot project for future mass timber schools. The original structure of Bayview Elementary School was demolished, making way for a new school to be built over the existing footprint with a greater resistance against earthquakes. The building consists of two-storeys of classrooms and teaching areas, as well as a gymnasium and Neighbourhood Learning Centre.

Mass timber is an engineered, wood-based structural building material suitable for large-scale infrastructure projects such as buildings and bridges.

Popularity of mass timber is increasing all over the world because it uses less energy and emit fewer greenhouse gases (GHG) and pollutants over their life cycle than traditional, energy-intensive construction materials. Read more about it here and here.

Sir Mathew Begbie Elementary School will be a completely new, 34,000-square-foot modern design with open learning spaces. With the use of mass timber as the primary building material, the total carbon benefit is approximately 1,400 tonnes of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of removing hundreds of cars from the road for a year.

Funding for the project is provided through Natural Resources Canada’s Green Construction through Wood (GCWood) Program, which encourages the use of wood in non-traditional construction projects, such as tall wood buildings, low-rise non-residential buildings and bridges. The program aims to position Canada as a world leader in innovative wood construction technologies and the low-carbon economy.

Projects like this help Canada achieve its 2030 climate change goals by finding effective ways of building sustainably using Canadian wood products, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving seismic performance.