Industry Soap Box - Best of Times, Worst of Times: The Truss Industry's Dickensian Moments...

Charles Dickens in his 1859 novel – A Tale of Two Cities opens with the classic line

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”

This line highlights a dual reality pairing both hope with despair – something I feel we can align with the truss industry today.
Going back to the 1990’s and the economic ups and downs we experienced mainly affected how much we did – it did not impact or question our role within the building industry.

Being the industrious group, we are, as much as the downtimes were hard, it toughened us up, and when times were good we, deservedly-so, enjoyed the spoils.

To me, COVID highlighted what we as an industry is capable of, and in my opinion, we went above and beyond expectations in what we could produce.

Since the end of COVID 2022/23 I feel our industry has come under enormous threat yet coupled with some of the biggest opportunities for growth and development – I think we have ever seen since the industry began.

The government of our time has set an ambitious goal for construction in Australia, admirable as it is, it seems to disregard some inherent industry issues and assumes that industry will adjust and take on and meet the challenge.

I am an opportunist and prefer positive reinforcement to keep focused and motivated. But this doesn’t mean I disregard some growing threats – whether real or imagined.

One of the buzz words of the day – offsite prefabrication. The ease in which government and media can portrait the solution to our national housing crisis is to move everything into factories.

Some modular factories are producing – what 1-2 townhouses per day? For a development of 200 units this will require upwards of 100 days / 20 weeks / 5 months before getting to site.

For smaller projects of 10 units this may seem manageable. But if a state requires 30,000 of these per year – we need some 50+ of these factories to ensure annual targets are completed.
We understand the issues in recruiting, training and retaining good technical and skilled staff – I don’t see how the modular industry is going to replicate what we have worked towards over the last 50 years in 1 or 2 years?

The other buzz word of the moment Modern Methods of Construction (MMC), catchy without linking itself to a particular “method”. 

Hats off to the efforts of the FTMA who are doing their best and working hard to ensure our industry is still considered relevant in this conversation on MMC.

Why is this important? As much as we can deliver multiple house and town house units per day, due to the follow-on issues with trades once the frames and trusses are up – we are considered part of the problem. Without the FTMA voice it would be very easy for us to be left behind.

It is our responsibility to ensure we as an industry continue to develop, look what happened to the taxi industry – Uber.
But I believe we are on the right path here, continuing software development, automation coming into all levels of machinery and production systems, new engineering and bracing systems preparing us for the FFI and buildings more easily to be designed, initially to 3 stories with the goal being 4 stories, or more.

This increase in what we can do is fantastic, exciting and somewhat intimidating considering the work that is required for us to more easily design and produce components for these taller buildings – a worthy challenge!

We are also part of a larger industry and unless we work with other sectors, looking for opportunities to expand what we do, everything the FFI, FTMA, FWPA are working towards will slow its progress in reaching its full potential.

For those who know me, my attempt here not to be too controversial will be quite the Herculean effort!

The consulting structural engineers do a great job – why? We follow their designs and nothing collapses. We all know what some cowboy carpenters are like onsite – with Brisbane experiencing its first quasi cyclone – Alfred, I was amazed how resilient the engineering in our housing is – yes, I did expect more issues!

But are these designs helping the efficiency of the industry? Or are the easy to implement standard structural designs – that work. But they also add cost due to their overdesign, resulting in a massive, and in some cases completely unnecessary use of structural steel.

And the truss plant is then accused of being too expensive.

Some builders know how they want things done, have done it for years and understand how long and how much they will make – just by looking at a plan. How does this allow innovation to benefit the construction industry?

Something I have butted into for a while now – Builders want everything to change – except the way they do things.

We all know the costs of structural steel compared to most EWP’s, having structural steel designed and delivered by 3rd parties can add cost, delays and issues in working with our timber products.

We will never get rid of structural steel; Architects and their designs will see to that! But where we can we should – more to be supplied by the truss industry, more timber which we all know can do the job, means we can control more of the project, more control allows us to ensure things are designed, manufactured and delivered in one go.

Where the truss industry sits in the construction industry process, borders on insulting. The knowledge that truss plants have regarding the capabilities of timber, I believe exceed most structural engineers, granted their profession gives them a better understanding of loads, bracing requirements etc. But our knowledge on how timber can be used efficiently – I believe is completely under appreciated.

In my version of a perfect scenario – Architectural plans, engineering done to identify loads and bracing capacities required, then much like roof trusses by others, wall frames should also be done – by us. Builders are then engaged to complete the job as designed.

We are not like other building product suppliers. Where materials can be produced in mass, shipped to site like paint or plasterboard. Due to their mass manufacturing discounts can easily be offered to attract sales volumes.

The truss industry produces bespoke, engineered components specifically designed to maintain the structural elements of a building – we add value to a project, not just a paint job.

The Factory built house/townhouse assumes all issues are dealt with; accuracy and quality can be standardized and repeated. This all sounds great, is more than likely true – until it gets to site.

Our industry is full of equipment to cut timber to a millimeter accuracy, software designed to ensure nail plate tolerances are structurally sound – yet slabs have a tolerance of 50mm!

Our problem? Yes, we accept this, with many truss plants spending a lot of time doing site measures, sending packs of timber to site to be stick framed, sending pre-nail frames to site, later to be straightened and braced.

Can we change this? Yes, through applied pressure to our industry bodies – FTMA, FWPA etc. To influence the NCC.

We get slabs right it is going to make 3 to 4 story construction so much easier – we all know the bracing and tie down requirements for N2/N3/N4 (cyclonic is a different universe) now image doing more 3 story buildings in these wind conditions.
We need to look to the light gauge steel sector – they have done a great job for example in simplifying tie down and bracing from top plates to slabs – minimizing threaded rod – we are capable of this as well, yet timber construction still operates as if it is the year 2000.

So, what are the opportunities? We all know of the efforts of the FFI to allow truss plants via nail plate software to design, without engineer signoff to 15m / 3 stories as the 1st step, the goal is to get to 4/5 stories.
This opens our opportunity to enter the growing class 2 market, more easily design within the townhouse/class 1a sector where more town houses are now 3 stories high.

We should think broader than this – where can our products be used Class 1/1a/2/3/4/5/6/8/9? – we are the most efficient, resilient and operational supplier to the construction industry. I know some truss plants out there are already in these areas today, but the opportunity for us to have a bigger piece of this pie is there for the taking.

I know I just rolled off all these building classes like it was nothing. They are not without complications – project contracts, and not enough building plans incorporating timber in their designs for example, but we need to share these concerns and support our industry associations in working with others to overcome them.

This is not an overnight process. We have taken 50+ years to get where we are. I feel it will take quite a few more to fully realize these opportunities. 

A concept I have been very vocal about, where I can be, we as an industry need to walk before we run. 

Adding sarking to wall frames? Adding windows, albeit requires frames to be delivered vertically, adding other elements like electrical wiring etc. All sound good on paper, but it is up to truss plants to work with their builders to see what and where we can add more value to projects to increase efficiencies – the light gauge steel framing industry in adding sheet roofing, guttering and down pipes has been successful, this does not mean we need to copy it – rather learn from it and see what we can offer.

Before I get off my soap box, Tim Woods’ presentation at the last FTMA conference had some cold facts we need to pay attention to – peak housing class 1 was in 1995, since then the number of houses being built has roughly remained the same – meaning we have been fighting over the same pie for 30+ years. 

Yet this pie now has more players – light gauge steel and project builders looking to import detached housing from China! Slowly but surely reducing our piece of it.

The growth opportunities for our industry is in higher density buildings – as above I feel it is bigger than this. We need to be better – as an industry in these market segments – as efficient and productive as we are in detached housing. Our software is better, our production capacities are increasing, our engineering is stepping up to meet the challenges – it is now up to our risk appetite as an industry to expand into these new frontiers.

Travis Taylor, Chief Building Systems Officer/Managing Director, Multinail Asia, presenting at the FTMA National Conference 2026

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