The Government and the business chambers of the forestry sector The meetings of the Technical Table will resume on Tuesday for the construction of houses with wood, as a first step to advance material standardization norms.
The meeting is organized by the National Directorate of Industrial Forestry Development, whose head, Sabina Vetter, in an interview with Télam, highlighted the importance of agreeing on labels that serve as a general parameter for officials, developers, architects and merchants, in order to avoid confusion. that complicate the development of the activity.
The meeting will also include the participation of representatives of the Cabinet Office, the Secretariat of Industry and Productive Development, different national institutes (INTI, INTA and INET), the Argentine Institute for Standardization and Certification (IRAM), national universities, provincial officials , associations, centers and business chambers and professionals in the timber sector.
Télam: How is the area of the forestry industry preparing to promote construction with wood?
Sabina Vetter: This March 14 we are going to resume the technical table for the construction of houses with wood, which was formed a few years ago and has been carried out during other efforts. In 2020, due to the pandemic and a rearrangement of the entire management, this table could not be convened.
The main actors that make up this sector will be present, which is the last link in the forest industry, the one with the highest added value and the one with the lowest investment cost that it requires if we compare it with other large-scale investments. Comparing it with sawmills or the paper industry, houses with wood are the ones that require the least investment, generate more jobs and give more possibilities to small businesses so that they can access this added value to wood in our territory. Throughout the year we are going to hold more meetings and the idea is that more actors will join.
-What are the main axes of the call?
– One of the main issues we want to address is the labeling or standardization of wood. It is mainly a demand from the construction sector, which encounters a difficulty: the wood mainly comes from Mesopotamia and is sold in large yards in urban centers, where the origin of the wood is mixed between suppliers and there are beginning to be seen some differences in measurements.
Generally there is no quality control in the corralones, they are only resale points. And that causes builders, developers, architects to encounter certain difficulties when purchasing the product. It may be that a supplier’s batch comes with a measurement that is not the same as that coming from another supplier, such as the thickness, width and length of the table, worse also in millimeter measurements in the tongue and groove joint, for example . Sometimes the tongue does not fit because it is from different suppliers and that creates difficulties for assembling a house. With labeling we think we could solve that problem.
What is the difficulty in reaching an agreement on this issue?
– A lot of work has been done, there is a long way to go, with manuals and a lot of research work from INTA, INTI and the private sector. What is missing is, precisely, the action of standardizing, of putting it into concrete practice. We have to train people, train them to be the inspectorate to validate on the ground that the measurements are standardized, as if it were the certification of a quality standard. In the Directorate we have the Forest Industry area, in which the architect Diego García Pezzano is in charge of articulating with the private sector, with the Housing Institute and the builders, to do the training to be able to get to the labeling.
– Can there be interests from some sectors so that construction with wood does not advance?
– I don’t think there is any productive chain that doesn’t want another to prosper, more than anything with all the benefits that wood has. There are many builders and architects who want to work with wood and many tenders that want to open including it. But everything that is built with wood needs some guarantee that the product that is being bought is really going to serve what is wanted in the construction. Of course it will work, but you have to establish a certain order with respect to quality. The National Directorate has an important role in being able to facilitate and generate adequate conditions so that private companies can have access to this labeling. You have to set up the standard and train the validators, the companies and the pens. In public tenders, there is a need to label the wood, because the officials later have to go to the territory to control the construction, but not having any standard or parameter is difficult. In a masonry house, the thicknesses and materials are very clear. That is the part that is missing in the construction with wood.
