SLB Programs Are Critical for the Lumber Industry’s Continuing Growth
Broadstone Saratoga / Urbal Architecture / Axiom Engineering / Chad Case Photography. Courtesy of WoodWorks.
The Softwood Lumber Board (SLB) is an industry-funded initiative with a specific mandate: promoting softwood lumber to increase and diversify demand and increase market share. The SLB’s mandate is to make softwood lumber the preferred building material in commercial, residential, and outdoor construction in the United States from both economic and environmental standpoints.
“The concrete and steel industries have a lot of money, but by pooling our resources, I believe the lumber industry has an opportunity to be on the offensive,” says Ashlee Cribb, Vice President of the Wood Products Division for PotlatchDeltic and Second Vice Chair on the SLB Board of Directors. “And we are gaining momentum because of the work being done across the Softwood Lumber Board programs. These programs support the growth of wood construction by providing technical support and educational resources, removing obstacles in the code, and making other smart investments that our company could never make on our own.”
The impact of the SLB’s work is significant: The SLB’s investments have generated more than 16 BBF in demand since inception, equating to $44 in revenue for every dollar spent. This market growth is made possible through complementary, SLB-funded programs that advance growth for the lumber industry. The American Wood Council (AWC), Think Wood, WoodWorks, and SLB Education focus on creating, defending, and implementing building codes and standards, amplifying design and construction best practices, inspiring innovation in new performance applications, and providing technical solutions to challenges for specifiers and contractors.
The SLB is the majority funder of the American Wood Council and WoodWorks and the primary funder of Think Wood and SLB Education, so without the industry’s continued support, these programs would require new funding sources—or they would shrink or disappear. As alternative materials intensify their competition for market share, these programs are critical infrastructure for defending and growing lumber demand, supporting the SLB’s concentrated strategy to capture 2.9 billion board feet of incremental annual demand by 2035.
Advancing Wood Through Codes and Standards
The AWC develops codes, standards, regulations, sustainability data, and design tools and guidelines for wood construction, preventing wood products from being excluded from construction markets. In the face of stiff competition from alternative materials in both residential and non-residential construction, the AWC’s engineers and building and fire-code experts work to maintain and expand market opportunities for light-frame construction and mass timber.
With funding support from the SLB and U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities, the AWC led the successful industry effort for taller mass timber buildings up to 18 stories in the 2021 and 2024 International Building Code. In the 2027 code cycle, the AWC successfully opposed a rollback effort by the concrete, masonry, and steel industries targeting allowance for 100% exposed mass timber ceilings in Type IV-B buildings.
“The American Wood Council is making more wood projects possible by ensuring building codes are evolving to favor wood construction,” says Caroline Dauzat, Owner of Rex Lumber.
The AWC is making major strides in gathering wood product sustainability data to provide the transparency that the building design community demands for material specification. Through improved data collection, the AWC recently produced new regional softwood lumber Environmental Product Declarations representing a much larger portion of lumber volumes in each region. These efforts show the important environmental impact of wood’s sustainability and the role wood can play in reducing the carbon footprint of our buildings.
Driving Project-Level Influence to Expand Wood Adoption
WoodWorks has the unique mandate of working directly with design and construction teams to support and influence projects, with the goal of facilitating a shift toward wood within firms. Building designers often need support to expand their understanding of where wood solutions can be used, to minimize the learning curve when trying an unfamiliar design approach, to help overcome hurdles with building authorities, and to help successfully outline wood’s value proposition to clients. WoodWorks is a credible and trusted ally to design teams, helping its clients realize successful wood buildings.
“WoodWorks is finding architects and structural engineers where they are in projects and either adapting existing projects to use innovative wood technologies or from the very beginning using wood as the construction material,” says Trey Hankins, CFO of Hankins, Inc. “And that’s very crucial to find folks where they are so that we can make it easy for them to use wood in the projects that they are going to be producing.”
WoodWorks tracks every project it influences and converts, providing a valuable dataset to measure impact and market conditions. Of the 2,525 total projects WoodWorks has converted to wood from 2019 to 2024, the majority (73%) are light-frame, predominantly in low-rise multifamily. Light-frame and light-frame/mass timber hybrid projects also represent the largest opportunity for incremental annual growth by 2035 at 1.66 BBF.
The program also leverages educational events at a variety of scales to build relationships and create opportunities to engage with design teams. That educational work extends to the construction industry, where WoodWorks is overcoming a key barrier to adoption of lumber-based construction systems by partnering with 60 training centers and universities across the U.S. for contractor and installer instruction, resulting in more than 36,000 hours of training for over 2,200 workers, and helping contractors learn to estimate, schedule, and efficiently execute wood projects.
Inspiring Wood Use Through Strategic Storytelling
Think Wood is a communications and education program building interest and intent to specify wood among architects, developers, engineers, and commercial and residential contractors. Since its inception, Think Wood has evolved from an awareness program to become a trusted resource for information about wood structural systems for the design and construction industry.
“Through the work of the Think Wood program, it’s very clear that people are turning to wood by choice through a better understanding of the benefits of low carbon construction, sustainable products, and the aesthetic appeal of wood,” says Nick Arkle, CEO of the Gorman Group.
Think Wood develops and distributes engaging content across its channels (including project profiles, stories highlighting trends and emerging technologies, case study videos, downloadable resources, and continuing education) to promote lumber’s value proposition in construction. The campaign has built a large professional audience that includes more than 56,000 highly engaged users, and Think Wood continues to grow its effectiveness: A 2025 survey found that 72% of highly engaged users say they are more likely to use wood for future projects after engaging with Think Wood resources.
Educating Tomorrow’s Decision Makers
The SLB Education program ensures the next generation of architects, engineers, and contractors are passionate about building with wood. SLB Education launched the Wood Institute in 2020 as the first comprehensive, one-stop shop for continuing education about wood topics. Last year, learners completed 12,984 courses on the Wood Institute—the equivalent of reaching six professionals per hour, every business hour of the year.
SLB Education is also the lumber industry’s answer to advancing wood design in postsecondary schools—something that competing industries have been doing for decades. One of the program’s most effective initiatives is a series of faculty development workshops that have trained 224 faculty from 170 university programs to incorporate wood design into their curricula. A follow-up survey found that 79% of educators who interacted with SLB Education had already introduced or planned to introduce curriculum focused specifically on wood design and construction.
“The SLB’s programs are doing a great job educating the design industry on wood’s benefits in nonresidential markets from a construction and sustainability perspective,” says Vaughn Emmerson, Engineering, Technology, and Fabrication Manager for Sierra Pacific Industries. “The SLB’s work in education stands out to me, because if we can influence decision-makers early in their career, they’re going to have a voice in hundreds or thousands of projects in their career.”
Growing Lumber Demand Together
The SLB’s four core programs are the engine that drives demand growth for the lumber industry. The impact of this work is clear. Without the SLB’s investments, lumber use from 2020-2024 would have been 3.5% lower. Learn why industry leaders are uniting behind the SLB to drive market share growth at: softwoodlumberboard.org/why-it-works.
