North America’s largest mass timber producer, Mercer Mass Timber (MMT), has announced a partnership with an Australian-based digital software provider to make their mass timber-specific and code-compliant digital design platform freely available to architects and engineers throughout the continent.

Mass timbers like cross-laminated timbers (CLT) and glulam are used as an equal but more environmentally-friendly alternative to concrete and steel in many building applications.

With this partnership, the goal is to quickly advance mass timber from a niche product to a common commodity in building construction.

MMT wants to make it easier for specifiers like architects and engineers to choose mass timbers in their designs and also connect more seamlessly with supply chains to source building materials and connectors.

“This is sort of a team made in heaven because this is exactly what we were looking to do,” says Ricardo Brites, Director of Engineering/Virtual Design and Construction (VDC), at Mercer Mass Timber.

MMT is North America’s largest mass timber producer, with production plants in Okanagan Falls, B.C., Spokane Valley, Washington and Conway, Arkansas. They can produce up to 255,000 cubic metres of CLT and glulam per year, which is more than their next two competitors combined.

Initially called CLT Toolbox and designed for use by specifiers exclusively for mass timbers, demand for this digital design platform has been so great because of its ease of use that it has been renamed SPEC Toolbox, now taking other code-compliant materials into account within the building design software.

Rather than developing an in-house design tool specific to its products, Brites says that MMT decided to partner with SPEC Toolbox, which works with multiple mass timber producers, because MMT’s overall goal is to advance mass timber use and consumption, describing North America as the last frontier for widespread mass timber adoption.

Brites says that more widespread use of SPEC Toolbox benefits all mass timber producers because it coincides with a trend towards greater product standardization within the industry, indicating that about 80 per cent of what MMT can produce can also be manufactured by other mass timber producers. Greater standardization also promotes greater consumption because by using this digital design software, specifiers won’t need to have a strong understanding of the product line of each individual mass timber plant when designing buildings.

“What the software accomplishes is that it gives mass timber producers a seat early on at the design table, which largely has not existed up till now,” Brites says.

He describes each MMT plant as “agnostic”, meaning that all are capable of making the same products from the same softwood species as needed, although each plant tends to use local species. The Okanagan Falls plant is focused significantly more on glulam production, for example, that is often included in projects on both sides of the border.

Mercer Mass Timber has announced a partnership with a digital software provider to make a mass timber specific and code-compliant digital design platform—called CLT Toolbox—freely available to architects and engineers throughout North America.

SPEC Toolbox has already been rolled out to specifiers in Australia, New Zealand, Britain and Europe. Its launch in North America was announced this summer with a presentation provided by company representatives to North American specifiers at the recent Woodrise 2025 Conference in Vancouver.

At present, the typical method being used by specifiers to include mass timbers in their building designs is to develop in-house spreadsheets that provide the code parameters where mass timbers could be applied as an alternative to concrete or steel.

Both Brites and Adam Jones, CEO and Founder of SPEC Toolbox, say that developing these spreadsheets is an onerous and labour-intensive task, representing a significant barrier to more mass timber adoption in building construction. On average it has been estimated that this task adds about 500 hours of unpaid work or consultancy hours for each engineering firm.

SPEC Toolbox represents a breakthrough because it substitutes the development of these spreadsheets with a code-compliant, easy-to-access digital platform. What once might have taken days or weeks in a design office has been reduced to minutes or hours, much to the joy of both the design community and mass timber producers.

The launch of this digital platform offers both a free and subscriber-based version.

“No engineering software out there is free like ours,” says Jones, looking beyond CLT to what’s currently available to specifiers from the concrete or steel sectors. “That free aspect is also very important for educators.”

Brites adds that the launch is timely as demand for mass timber in building construction is growing exponentially. He says that at present, the number of projects in North America specifying mass timber in the design phase is twice as many as all mass timber projects that have been completed in North America to date.

“We are expecting 15 to 20 per cent growth per year (in mass timber demand) for the next five years,” he says, adding that in terms of mass timber consumption, North America is about a decade behind Europe.

Making it easy and commonplace for specifiers to choose mass timbers in their designs is considered the final hurdle to overcome for widespread usage.

“There is a big infrastructure gap to mass timber use today,” says Jones. “In university, there is a lack of broad-based knowledge of mass timber compared to concrete and steel. So, our software makes it as easy as possible to design with mass timber products, because engineers will choose the path of least resistance and if mass timber is in the ‘too hard’ basket, that’s been one of the roadblocks for industry so far.”

SPEC Toolbox was launched in Australia and New Zealand two years ago and in Britain and Europe early in 2025. The software company started with a small team and now has 46 employees.

“We’re maybe the only team dedicated to this problem, but we are also the most dedicated,” Jones says.

In preparation for launch in North America, SPEC Toolbox hired a building code expert to ensure that specifying mass timber for local projects adheres to all local building codes.

“We’ve gone through all the local design codes and methodologies in building out the software,” Jones says, with the initial release of a beta tool used by actual engineers to ensure that it met the design community’s needs before it was launched publicly.

As mentioned earlier, while the software solves the building design challenge for specifiers to include more mass timber, it also solves the supply chain issue for them and that’s where the partnership with MMT comes in.

“The product availability and what is preferred in the supply chain is on the app so it does give the users that understanding,” says Jones. MMT products can be specified directly within the engineered designs.

It also provides an educational role, particularly with newer engineers working in building design who may not have obtained training in the use of mass timber or gained knowledge of its availability.

The software platform will be updated roughly every three weeks to improve and refine the product and also to respond to user feedback.

On the horizon in 2026, SPEC Toolbox plans to include calculations for sustainability into the software where specifiers can also compare mass timber with concrete in steel where greener construction is an important design consideration.