Considering using mass timber for the first time? IMEG’s Robert Norton provides key considerations in this episode of The Future Built Smarter. A senior structural engineer working out of IMEG’s San Francisco office, Robert has more than a decade of experience designing with mass timber. He says the material is more than a trend—it transforms how a building is experienced. “Being in a wood building makes you much more comfortable. The wood provides a lot of warmth and it feels homier.”

Mass timber also changes how a building is designed and constructed, he adds. “It becomes part of the architecture.” Unlike steel or concrete buildings, where beams are often hidden behind ceilings, mass timber showcases every structural component. “Everything you do as an engineer is on display. All the connections, all the columns, the beams, the floor systems—they’re visible for people to either enjoy or not enjoy, depending on how well of a job you do.” This emphasis on exposure means early collaboration is critical. “We really want to be as integrated as possible with the architect and engineers, so when we do get drawings from the fabricator for the mass timber panels, it's definitely ready to be installed.” Robert’s team has also developed specialized connections. “Most of those off-the-shelf connections don’t work, so we’ve done a handful of specialized details that create that really seamless look in the building.”

Thanks to its prefabricated panels, mass timber also speeds up construction,. “The mass timber product is assembled in pieces that come to the site and are dropped in place. You’re saving up to 30 percent off your schedule just in the floor system alone.” The material also is highly sustainable, having much less embodied carbon than steel or concrete, he adds. And contrary to widely-held misconceptions, mass timber is fire-retardant. Unlike typical framing lumber, Robert says, “mass timber chars on the outside, forming a protective layer that insulates the core. That allows us to meet one-hour, two-hour, and even higher fire ratings—often without additional fireproofing.”

While upfront costs can be higher with mass timber, early planning can help overcome that, Robert says. “If you have designed for steel or concrete and then ask the team to ‘convert it to mass timber,’ you will almost certainly see a 25 percent to 30 percent cost premium. That’s the wrong way to approach it. To make mass timber competitive, it needs to be part of the project from day one. Doing that, you’re going to find the mass timber prices really drop dramatically.”

Mike Walsh, IMEG Senior Director of Industrial, joins this episode to discuss small modular reactors (SMRs) and their potential for becoming an integral source of power for manufacturers and industrial campuses.

SMRs typically produce 50 to 300 megawatts of power, unlike traditional nuclear plants that generate between 1,000 and 1,500 megawatts. Mike is quick to clarify, however, that the adjective “small” is relative in comparison to traditional reactors. “They’re not small—they’re just smaller,” he says of SMRs. “They’re still large, sophisticated facilities. But their modular construction changes everything.”

SMRs work on the same basic principle as traditional reactors: nuclear fission heats water into steam, which drives a turbine to produce electricity. Unlike traditional reactors, the reactor portion is manufactured within a factory—where conditions are controlled and quality assurance is consistent—and are then shipped to a location. They require significant real estate—typically 10 to 100 acres, but still far less than the 250 to 400 acres for a traditional nuclear plant.

Their smaller footprint makes SMRs particularly well suited for industrial campuses. And while roughly two-thirds of a traditional nuclear plant’s thermal energy is lost as waste heat, SMRs can capture and reuse that excess energy. “If we can use that heat for industrial processes or building systems, overall efficiency on an industrial site could reach 80 or 90 percent,” Mike says. The 24/7 on-site generation of power also will be highly beneficial to industries as the reliability and strain on the grid continue to worsen, energy costs rise, and owners begin to see high demand factors on utility bills.

With few new nuclear plants built in the U.S. since the 1970s, the path forward for SMRs is murky. “No one really knows yet how these will be regulated,” Mike says. “You can’t apply the same rules that were written for massive, one-of-a-kind nuclear facilities. This is new territory.”

Economics also is a factor. Early SMRs will be expensive, but Mike draws a parallel to renewable energy’s evolution. “Solar was once prohibitively costly too,” he says. “Then technology improved, production scaled, and prices fell. The same thing will happen here.”

The general perception of nuclear power will also need to be overcome. ”It's the not-in-my-backyard syndrome kind of thing,” Mike says. “There are reasons why nuclear accidents happened in the past, but it’s highly improbable that that would happen with these newer facilities and the way they have some passive ability, if they lost all power to the site, to still cool that reactor and not have a meltdown.

Despite the challenges, Mike believes nuclear power will be an essential part of a diversified energy mix of the future, which will also include wind, solar, hydro-electric, and, for some time at least, coal. “There are a lot of pieces of the puzzle for how we are going to create energy now and into the future.”

Several companies are now building various versions of SMRs. One of them, Kairos Power, is constructing a demonstration reactor in Tennessee; IMEG is collaborating with HDR on the project. The facility is expected to be online in 2027 and will provide essential data on performance, safety, and cost, laying the groundwork for future deployment.

Compared to traditional nuclear plants that take decades to bring online, Mike believes that the faster production and startup of SMRs will be key to addressing current and future energy needs. “SMRs are made to help with a problem we have right now, not a problem we're going to have in 30 years.”

This episode features IMEG civil project manager Matt Pohlhaus in a discussion on how artificial intelligence is transforming site design. Based in the Washington, D.C., metro area, Matt leads land use and civil engineering projects across Maryland and West Virginia. Increasingly, he says, AI is becoming as much a part of his toolkit as CAD software or site surveys.

“We use artificial intelligence daily,” Matt explains, describing how it’s woven into tasks both big and small—from communication to design. “If you’ve ever been stuck trying to get some language out the right way, just throwing a few prompts into ChatGPT or something similar” can result in a “very well-worded email” and freeing up time, he says.

On the conceptual side, his team is utilizing AI-driven generative design software. With just a site location and a few inputs, the program quickly produces fully fleshed-out site layouts. “When a client asks, ‘Can we put a 60,000-square-foot grocery store on this site?’ I can now show them in minutes,” Matt says. In the past, that answer might have taken days of drafting and another round of meetings.

The ability to test ideas in real time with clients has proven invaluable.

“The coolest thing about it is everything updates on the fly,” Matt says. He describes meetings where clients ask to move a building across the site or add a parking garage—what once required rescheduling is now an instant adjustment. “It becomes a lot more conversational,” he says. “I think clients tend to see us more as a partner than just a consultant drawing lines on a screen.”

A medical office building project, for example, completely shifted direction during a single meeting. The client had arrived with a looping driveway design they thought was final, but after moving the building within the AI model, the layout quickly evolved into something more straightforward, visible, and cost-efficient. “That was probably a 20-minute conversation,” Matt says. “And the scheme they ended up moving forward with was completely different from what they came in thinking they were going to do.”

Another project—an industrial site tied to a rail line—showed off the software’s deeper analytical power. The developer wanted to run railroad tracks into the property, but when Matt layered in topographical data, a problem appeared immediately: the proposed line ran over a 30-foot cliff. “If anyone’s been on a train before, they don’t go up and down hills all that well,” he says. By shifting the entry point half a mile, the team avoided an impossible design and a change that in the past might have taken weeks of back-and-forth.