This is a guest article by BCL Timber
BCL Timber Projects provide a flexible approach to delivering wooden slatted walls and acoustic timber ceilings. Their open-configurable slatted wood panel systems allow the creation of unique and striking designs tailored to a projects’ specific design & performance requirements.
Their panels are hugely popular in educational settings, large infrastructures, atria and big spaces. Ideal in lecture theatres & noisy cafeteria, the high-performance Class A timber panels come in a huge range of acoustic fabric colours & timber coatings, allowing unique designs for clients to choose from. BCL offer full fire testing for all manufactured systems which is a key part of compliant building in today’s more regulated construction environment.
Sustainable Timber Procurement Policy
BCL’s FSC certification, whilst historically always part of their sustainable ‘Timber Procurement Policy’ is now an absolute essential part of their product offering and a standard requirement on any project. This ensures compliance with their procurement policy and to maximise environmental scoring with such schemes as BREEAM & LEED. Public and private sector procurement policies now specify that materials must come from responsibly managed sources with a clear chain of custody. BCL’s Timber FSC certification is essential in providing evidence of this to contractors, ensuring true efficacy of sustainability on a project.
BCL offer over 25 solid wood species sourced from USA, South America and Europe, all bearing the FSC mark of sustainable forestry. This allows architects & contractors multiple options of wood provenance, durability, texture, and colour to meet specific design or environmental goals. This is then paired with project specific design and flexible panel sizes to suit layouts (delivered in 3D Revit, BIM Level 4 compliance), removing any requirement for further panel modification during installation stage on site.
BCL’s sustainability goals include waste reduction at head office as well as on-site. The bespoke timber slat lengths can be ordered from sustainable suppliers with minimal waste and used efficiently when multiple slats are coming from one length. Any timber offcuts are then efficiently used to heat the warehouse using a wood waste burner. BCL also reduce their carbon footprint in other ways; almost half their vehicle fleet are electric.
One of their largest projects to date is London Bridge Train Station completed in 2016. The redeveloped station features both Class B and Class A acoustic timber panels in the main concourse. The selected wooden slatted ceiling uses over 7,000 square metres of FSC-certified Western Red Cedar panels in three distinct patterns.
In 2021, a secret-fixing timber slatted panel system was installed at York St John University's Creative Centre, and is a standout part of the building’s design. The building is distinguished by its facades, which are decorated with various timber finishes to create a “supertexture”. The work comprises of curved timber panels made of FSC-certified Siberian Larch wrapping the entire exterior of the building and timber soffits, internal cladding to the walls and ceilings of the vast entrance lobby and class A acoustic timber panels in the auditorium.
A growing company meeting certification standards
BCL’s FSC certification will continue to be an essential part of its product offering and value to the market. As the company grows it will also extend its offering of designing flexible timber panel systems to not only the UK market, but shipping supply-only systems all over the world, and growing economies. With a focus on projects that value the expertise and assurance of one the most popular and widely recognised timber panel systems in the UK’s major construction market.
Discover more work and projects from BCL Timber on their website.