This study considers structural engineers' and architects' perceptions of structural timber in multi-story construction contexts. Qualitative approaches-interviews and focus groupswere used to investigate attitudes, perceived norms, and perceived factors that hamper or facilitate the prescription of wood use in construction. Wood was perceived as an appropriate building material. Architects', and even more so engineers', perceptions of negative aspects of wood focused on decay, instability and sound transmission. Although wood-based construction was seen as a required professional skill, it was not expected to improve one's professional status. Positive aspects of wood in construction included its strength, environmental friendliness, simple handling and appropriateness for use in conjunction with industrial methods, whereas knowledge gaps and weak support from the wood industry have reduced the use of wood among structural engineers and architects. Both professions perceived their influence on material selection to be weak. They sensed that most of the influence over material selection rested with developers and contractors. The paper contains suggestions on how to make these two professions more influential advocates for wood in construction.

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This study aimed at identifying the problems and needs connected with builders' use of wood products in building and renovation projects and developing a method to channel these needs into product innovation activities. It is built on the understanding that users of a wood product experience needs that may reveal themselves only when a product is used. Therefore, the empathic design was used to detect these needs. Two building contractors and two apprentices were studied for five working days at two renovation projects. In total, 11 product and service needs concerning wood products were identified. Most of the identified needs were related to the potential for time savings. The needs were later presented and discussed in a workshop with a team of persons from different parts of the wood product supply chain and innovation concepts were outlined. The workshop participants found the approach both informative (about hidden needs) and productive (by generating new product ideas). Although the results must be generalized with caution, the study indicates that an empathic design method, integrated with an idea-generating stage, is a suitable approach for product development in the wood sector.

Technological development gives forest companies opportunities to maintain competitiveness in the highly cost-sensitive market for forest products. However, no previous studies have examined the technological development decisions made by forest companies or the support tools used when making them. We therefore aimed to describe and analyze 1) the processes used when making such decisions, 2) the associated decision situations, and 3) the use of and need for decision support tools in these processes, with a harwarder concept as case. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with respondents from six forestry organizations. Two theoretical frameworks were used to analyze the interviews, one for unstructured decision processes and one for decision situations. The respondents’ descriptions of their decision processes were consistent with those observed in other industries, and it was shown that decision-making could potentially be improved by investing more resources into diagnosing the problem at hand. The main objective in decision-making was to maximize economic criteria while satisfying threshold requirements relating to criteria such as operator well-being, soil rutting, and wood value. When facing large uncertainties, interviewees preferred to gather data through operational trials and/or scientific studies. If confronted with large uncertainties that could not be reduced, they proceeded with development only if the potential gains exceeded the estimated uncertainties, and implemented innovations in a stepwise manner. These results indicate a need for greater use of existing decision-support tools such as problem-structuring methods to enable more precise diagnoses, simulations to better understand new innovations, and optimization to better evaluate their theoretical large-scale potential.

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